Donkey Kong Country / YMMV

Awesome Music: See here.
Best Boss Ever: King K. Rool. Unlike the other bosses, who are just giant versions of normal enemies with static patterns, he's a unique enemy who changes his attacks as the fight goes. This makes him much more of a fun fight in spite of his difficulty. Plus his battle music, the aforementioned Gangplank Galleon, is easily among the game's best tracks. And the cherry on top: his Credits Gag Last-Second Villain Recovery.
Best Level Ever:
- Both Minecart levels, but particularly Mine Cart Madness, which are extremely fun to play and have just the right balance of difficulty.
- The factory levels as well, being some of the fastest-paced in the game. One of them is also responsible for naming Blackout Basement. And also because they have a unique soundtrack that many consider the best in the game.
- The bonus stages, where you get to play as one of the animal helpers and do nothing but run, swim, fly or bounce around, collecting hundreds of little tokens.
- Slip Slide Ride, taking place in a crystal cave. It's the only level of its kind in the whole game, so it stands out. It's also the only level with slippery surfaces, and one of the few to heavily use the rope climbing mechanic.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Returning to DK's treehouse after clearing Gorilla Glacier in the GBA version will trigger a short Easter Egg with Very Gnawty (the first boss) getting startled by DK/Diddy and then quickly leaving. What exactly he was doing in there is anyone's guess.
Breather Boss:
- Dumb Drum is a very simplistic and easy boss, and a relieving fight after how hard most of Kremkroc Industries, Inc. was.
- Master Necky Sr. is just a slightly tweaked rematch against Master Necky, and is a relieving and easy boss that serves as a much needed change of pace after the entirety of Chimp Caverns, especially the level that climaxes it, Platform Perils.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Diddy Kong almost completely outclasses Donkey Kong and most players use him for most of the game. His speed lets him plow through lines of enemies with a single cartwheel, and makes it easier to extend jumps by rolling off cliffs. He's also ideal for bonus-hunting, because he holds barrels right in front of him and can walk against walls to check if they're breakable. DK only needs to be brought out for dealing with stronger enemies, which aren't especially common until the later worlds.
Difficulty Spike:
- This starts in the first world of the game with its fifth level, Barrel Cannon Canyon, which requires precise aim, especially in the last section with a lot of directional barrels, and just two levels and a boss battle later, in the second world's second level, Mine Cart Carnage, is another considerable difficulty spike, since it requires precise jumping skills to avoid the enemies and to stay on the rails (although there is a shortcut).
- The fourth world, Gorilla Glacier, and its first level, Snow Barrel Blast, are considered another spike from previous levels. Said level has Frictionless Ice throughout most of it, it is longer than the levels preceding it, the barrels are challenging to get through, and partway through the level, the snow begins to cover up the screen.
- Finally, the last world, Chimp Caverns, has the five hardest levels, climaxing with Platform Perils, in which the player has to make a long sequence of jumps from one moving platform to the next — and then some of the platforms have enemies that must be killed with barrels, requiring precisely timed inputs to grab and throw them while still making those jumps.
Disappointing Last Level: Other than Platform Perils, Chimp Caverns does nothing that Monkey Mines didn't already. It features the fifth cave level in the game, two rather straightforward mines and two incredibly difficult walkways, plus a recolored version of the Master Necky boss (called Master Necky Sr.). Aesthetically, it seems more like a mid-game stage instead of the final stage of the game, while the stage that preceded it - Kremkroc Industries, Inc. - feels more like a Very Definitely Final Dungeon. Some wish the underused Ice-Cave tileset got featured more in the last world.
First Installment Wins: While the sequel is largely considered to be the better game, the first game is undeniably the most iconic of the three and what most will likely think of first when thinking about Donkey Kong Country. There are also a minority of fans who prefer this game over its sequels (being the only one where you get to play as DK himself may have something to do with it). The Retro Studios titles Returns and Tropical Freeze tend to borrow a lot from the original, rather than its sequels.
Good Bad Bugs:
- Through a glitch involving a steel keg and Rambi, you can turn the rhino into a grey Donkey Kong which DK looks like he's humping if he rides.
- There is also the famous "warp glitch" resulting from an oversight where on the first world, if you time a B-press just right when a Kong is on the "corner" of a path, you'll be warped ahead to Orang-utan Gang (a level near the end of the third world). However, it causes a "hole" in the map's pathway, so you will never be able to backtrack to earlier levels as a result. This glitch was patched in later releases of the game, however.
Growing the Beard: It was with this game that the whole Donkey Kong series came into its own, rather than being little more than Mario's parent franchise.
Hype Backlash: Contemporary reviewers (Electronic Gaming Monthly in particular) went absolutely apeshit bananas over DKC when it was released, mostly because of its then-impressive prerendered graphics. Now that prerendered, faux-3D visuals are a relic of the mid-90's, it's much easier to see the game as a very solid and fun platformer from the era, but not the kind of awe-inspiring masterpiece that so many critics declared it to be in 1994.
Memetic Mutation:
- "If you don't buy this game, you are stupid! Yes, I know that's insulting, but it's also the truth."^Explanation
- "Disappointed Kongs" is a meme wherein Donkey Kong and Diddy arrive at their empty banana hoard, with whatever the user doesn't like placed over the "Kong's Banana Hoard" sign, before performing their animations whenever they fail a bonus game.
Polished Port: The Game Boy Advance port has graphics and music that match the original very well, plus it includes a few bonus minigames and rearranges the order of levels to make the difficulty curve feel more fair. It also lets the player save the game whenever they want, instead of needing to find Candy Kong's Save Point.
Once Original, Now Common: At the time of DKC's release, the CG visuals were incredibly mindblowing considering most of its contemporary platformers were largely made in 2D^note. While the visuals still largely hold up today thanks to the game's artstyle, what was originally "mindblowing" at the time now looks a lot less impressive and more simplistic and dated, especially when compared to its post-SNES sequels.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- Expresso the Ostrich. Despite having the advantage of flying small distances and insane speed, Expresso is the only animal buddy that can't attack enemies, and almost every level that he appears in has a good amount of enemies to avoid and perilously tiny platforms, making it harder than walking without an animal.
- Finding the Bonus Caves, due to ridiculous Trial-and-Error Gameplay. They mostly get replaced by more obvious Bonus Barrels in the sequels.
- While the animal bonus stages are fun, what isn't is that if you collect the third animal token needed to enter one, you will be immediately taken out of the current stage to do the bonus stage. When you exit, you go back to the last checkpoint you were at, causing you to lose progress.
- Squawks' flashlight can be a pain in the dark cave levels, as anytime you turn or backtrack, his flashlight shines in the players' face a lot, which can be disorienting.
Suspiciously Similar Song: The second half of Gang-Plank Galleon sounds very similar to the Iron Maiden song "Hallowed Be Thy Name."
That One Boss: Queen B. in the original SNES version is a cakewalk, but in the GBA version, she surrounds herself with bees after being hit, and getting to her requires disposing of the other bees first. All while she wavers up and down as usual. It's not impossible but it's definitely more challenging.
That One Level:
- Orang-utan Gang, on its own, is only a mildly annoying level thanks to the Manky Kongs and jumping Kritters, but trying to 100% the stage is an entirely different beast altogether, as it has quite possibly the most amount of Guide Dang It! moments in the entire game with trying to access every bonus stage.
- Snow Barrel Blast is a nasty wake-up call level that demands precision platforming and timing, and it throws in an obstructive blizzard to make things even harder. The only mitigation is that there’s a shortcut you can take midway through.
- Two levels later, Ice Age Alley includes a secret that requires keeping Expresso alive from the start of the level to three quarters in. If you fail, hope you didn't break the checkpoint barrel (which is very easy to do accidentally when using Expresso), or you now have to complete the level before you can try again.
- Tanked Up Trouble, a level with a moving platform that requires fuel to continue. There is little to no room for mistakes. Miss one or two fuel tanks and you'll end up eventually losing a life.
- Platform Perils, the last non-boss level in the game and arguably the hardest level of the entire game, and one of the hardest in the SNES Donkey Kong Country trilogy from a pure platforming standard. The official Strategy Guide from Nintendo Power even summed it up perfectly with, "Might as well save the hardest stage for last!". Like the name says, this level is filled with platforms which fall seconds after landing on them, and there are a lot of Gray Krushas which can only be defeated with a barrel, and without access to one, they could push you into a Bottomless Pit. Like other levels, this one requires precise jumping and a lot of skills to avoid the Krushas and Zingers.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The presentation changes in the GBA port might annoy fans of the SNES version's organic atmosphere. It's a lot brighter and has cartoony screen transitions which weren't present in the original.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Manky Kong enemies, who are a described by the manual as a group of "Kong reject orangutans," indicating they were either exiled from the Kong clan proper, or are merely a lesser rival to them. Given the similarities they share with the Kongs, being primates that throw barrels as their main attack, they could have served as a collective Shadow Archetype to the Kongs, as well as an antagonist in later games. However, they've never reappeared after this title.
Underused Game Mechanic:
- Barrel cannons are more common in this game than the second and third, and many of them either rotate or move back and forth, but the kind that rotate while moving are found only in Snow Barrel Blast.
- There's only one Ice Cave-themed level in the whole game, whereas all other environmental settings are featured at least twice.
- DK's Hand Slap move. Most people who play the game probably don't even know this move exists, no thanks to how situational and outclassed it is.

YMMV / Donkey Kong Country

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