Video Game / Donkey Kong Country

It's a jungle out there, go ape!

NOT ON 32 BIT. NOT ON 32X ADAPTERS. NOT ON CD-ROM. NOT ON Sega. IT'S 16 BIT AND IT'S ONLY ON SUPER NES. DONKEY KONG COUNTRY. JUNGLE FEVER SPREADS NOVEMBER 21.

— Donkey Kong Country EXPOSED: The Making of Donkey Kong Country

Donkey Kong Country, originally released in 1994, is the first game in the Donkey Kong Country series. Donkey Kong and his sidekick Diddy Kong travel across Donkey Kong Island to get back their stolen banana hoard from the Kremlings, an army of anthropomorphic crocodiles led by King K. Rool.

The best-selling game for the SNES not to be developed by Nintendo, and the third-best-selling overall^note Behind Super Mario World and Super Mario All-Stars, with over 9 million units sold. At the time of its release it became the fastest-selling game ever made up to that point.^note However, note that overall sales figures are skewed by the game being bundled with consoles in certain markets. Shortly after its release, the game received a follow-up on the original Game Boy in the form of Donkey Kong Land, which would become the first game in its respective series.

It was followed a year later by Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest.

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Donkey Kong Country provides examples of...

• 100% Completion: The game takes it up to 101%, giving you a slightly different ending for completion. Achieving it requires finding all bonus areas (including one that is hidden inside another bonus area).
• Abandoned Mine: The mine levels, which make up for two worlds (Monkey Mines and Chimp Caverns). Two of them involve using a mine cart to get from the beginning to the end.
• Accordion to Most Sailors: "Gangplank Galleon" opens with an accordion jig to suit the battle aboard a pirate ship.
• Acrofatic: King K. Rool, despite his very tubby and cumbersome appearance, is actually quite athletic. He's quick on his feet and is able to leap long distances.
• Adipose Rex: King K. Rool. (Adipose T. Rex, even: he's also a tyrant lizard.)
• Advancing Wall of Doom: Some of the temple-themed levels feature Gnawties in giant stone wheels, which chase after DK and Diddy until stopping in an alcove. The underwater stage Croctopus Chase uses pursuing Croctopuses instead. Neither is technically a one-hit kill, but they're as dangerous as anything else since you can only ever take just two hits before dying.
• Agitated Item Stomping: Diddy stomps on his hat whenever he loses a bonus game or if the platform in Tanked Up Trouble runs out of gas. Amusingly enough, if you move him close enough to the edge of a platform before it happens, he throws it down a pit and jumps after it. He also does this at least once in the TV series.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Rambi the rhino pants like a dog if you let him stand still for a few seconds. The armadillo enemy Army also does this in this game.
• Alliterative Name: In addition to levels, the worlds nearly all have alliterative names, with names like Monkey Mines, Vine Valley and Gorilla Glacier. It extends to the names of certain characters as well: Cranky Kong, Candy Kong, and King K. Rool.
• All There in the Manual: The plot of the game is almost entirely in the manual; the only hint in-game that there's foul play going on is when DK or Diddy enter the cave in their treehouse where they hoard their bananas, which elicits a sad response from them when they find out it's empty. Cutscenes were added to the Game Boy Advance port to give an in-game explanation of the plot.
• Alternate Album Cover: The game's soundtrack features three different album covers. The US and German releases, DK Jamz, features renders of Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Rambi, Winky, Expresso, and an animal crate atop a jungle background, with an alternate card sleeve release in the US featuring close-ups of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong. The Japanese release, meanwhile, reuses the game's Japanese box art.
• Antepiece: "Mine Cart Carnage" has Kritters in mine carts in the second half that you must jump over. The first you encounter, though, is on a rail below the one you need to get on, so it's easy to avoid yet foreshadows the Kritters that will be on the same rail as you.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The game puts an exclamation mark next to a level whose bonus areas have all been found, so that the player won't waste time backtracking to make sure they got every secret.
  • On top of that, the game has an Instant-Win Condition when it comes to finding secrets; the player only has to find the rooms, not win their challenges or even finish the level for them to count for your percentage. This makes backtracking for the secret rooms much easier, since you can just find the missing secret and then kill yourself to exit the level to save time. Except of course for that one bonus level hidden within a bonus level.
• Aquatic Mook: Bitesizes (piranhas), Chomps (tiger sharks), Clambos (pearlclamps), Croctopus (octopuses) and Squidges (jellyfish). Bitesizes look weak due to their small size, but they're strong enough to harm the Kongs even if they're riding Enguarde; Chomps swim at a moderate speed, but their large size can make them hard to dodge sometimes; Clambos stand on the seafloors and shoot pearls at a fixed direction; Croctopus move around while spinning their extended tentacles, and are completely invincible (even against Enguarde); and Squidges move in a zigzag pattern, each with a specific speed.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • While wild monkeys and apes do enjoy fruit, bananas usually aren't a regular part of their diet, and they certainly don't hoard them, much less to the ludicrous degree DK does. Wild monkeys born in the Americas and Africa (settings similar to where DK and Diddy live) didn't even have access to bananas (native to Indomalaya) until the trees were planted there by humans. Amusingly, crocodilians (like K. Rool and his Kremlings) do enjoy sweet fruit as a snack in spite of being carnivores.
  • Apes can't swim either, mainly due to lacking instinctual behaviors that would enable it — though, like humans, they could learn how to swim, at least theoretically. Most would still sink like stones due being less bony and having a lower fat to lean tissue ratio, which the swimming mechanics in no way reflect.
• Ascended Glitch: When the game was released for Nintendo Switch Online, Nintendo released a video on their YouTube for "Classified Information", with the first trick being how to obtain a massive amount of lives in Millstone Mayhem using only Diddy and the first Krusha seen in the level and abusing the fact that you can get a 1-up from jumping on eight enemies in a row. The game abuses this by considering each time Diddy lands on Krusha to be a different enemy each time, thus causing the game to give him an extra life for every landing following the 8th.
• Bait-and-Switch: During the final boss battle with King K. Rool, after the Kongs take him out after his second phase, he collapses. Donkey (or Diddy) does his victory pose as the camera pans away from them, and then...the credits roll! Although, there is something very off-putting about these "kredits". After they finish crawling up the screen, it says, "The End?" Then we pan back to see K. Rool getting back up, and we begin the third and final phase of the battle. After this phase, we get to see the real ending.
• Bash Brothers: Donkey and Diddy, uncle and nephew. They travel together across their island to retrieve their banana hoard and defeat the Kremlings responsible for the theft.
• Battle Theme Music: Every normal boss shares "Bad Boss Boogie". King K. Rool gets one that shares a name with his stage, "Gang-Plank Galleon". The pattern is replicated in the second and third games with other themes, while the Retro-developed sequels give each boss its own music.
• Bee Afraid: This game and its sequel have Zingers as enemies, giant bees in multiple varieties that appear all over the place in levels; there's also a King Mook of them, Queen B., who serves as the boss of Vine Valley. In fact, their designer, Steve Mayles, is afraid of wasps and translated this fear into the Zingers' design, in a curious blend of cartoonish and horrifying◊.
• Big Bad: The ruler of the Kremlings, King K. Rool, and the mastermind responsible for stealing the Kongs' banana hoard. No gimmicks or personas (unlike the sequels), he's the big bad king guy.
• Big Storm Episode: Ropey Rampage, the second level of the first world combines this with Jungle Japes. The rain clears up once you reach the exit.^note Because the Game Boy Color could not implement the rain effects like the Super Nintendo and Game Boy Advance could, the level takes place during normal weather in the game's GBC version.
• Blackout Basement:
  • The Trope Namer is a level in Kremkroc Industries, Inc., that is set inside a factory where the lights go on and off at will, leaving the player in temporary total darkness, unable to see anything in front of you at all.
  • Two other levels mess with the lighting. Torchlight Trouble is dimly lit, but Squawks accompanies you for the whole stage, holding a flashlight in the direction you're facing. Loopy Lights is dark except for light sources, and gets temporarily lit up when you touch barrels similar to the ones from Stop and Go Station.
• Black Sheep: A minor enemy are evil orangutans called "Manky Kongs", which All There in the Manual reveals are an evil branch of the Kong clan who were cast out for their wicked ways.
• Bleak Level: Stop & Go Station from the second world has a very oppressive and unnerving atmosphere compared to any prior level, no thanks to its creepy, invincible enemies and minimalistic music.
• Bold Inflation: The GBA port of the game spells King K. Rool's name as "K.ROOL" for no reason at all.
• Bonus Stage: This game and its sequels have loads of secret areas filled with goodies, some of which behave more like part of a normal level and some of which behave more like levels in their own right. But unlike in the sequels, where you'd usually get a special coin as reward, here you're simply gathering traditional collectibles like bananas, lives, KONG letters and Animal Buddy icons.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy:
  • You have to fight both Master Necky Jr. and Master Necky Sr., bosses that only can be hurt by jumping on their heads. Unfortunately, their heads are too high for Donkey or even Diddy reach. Good luck that someone inexplicably left a tire lying around, allowing the Kongs to bounce onto their enemy's head.
  • Queen B. would be invincible if barrels didn't keep magically re-spawning in her lair.
• Boss-Only Level: Every boss is situated in its own level at the end of each world. Gang-Plank Galleon stands out, as it's placed on the world select map but takes you right to the fight with K. Rool when selected.
• Bootstrapped Theme: Jungle Hijinxs (1-1) marks the musical debut of "DK Island Swing", which would become the iconic theme song of the entire series.
• Breakout Character: Diddy Kong, DK's little buddy and sidekick who would become the protagonist of the direct sequel, star in his own spinoff and even become a series mainstay alongside Donkey Kong in the multiplayer Super Mario Bros. spinoffs.
• Breakout Villain: The debut of King K. Rool, who would become Donkey Kong's own Arch-Enemy and the Big Bad of the Donkey Kong Country games.
• Checkpoint Starvation: The Game Boy Color version has modes unlocked after beating the game that allows for playthroughs of the game with either the halfway point barrel or the kong barrels removed, and is needed to 102% the game.
• Circling Birdies: Diddy will get a ring of stars over his head if you lose a life while playing as him.
• Clamshells as Mouths: The game has a clam enemy called "Clambo" who has eyes and a tongue inside a shell that has a top and bottom half as its mouth.
• Classic Cheat Code: At the save file menu:
  • B, A, R, R, A, L (Barrel) — Grants 50 lives upon starting or loading a file.
  • Down, Y, Down, Down, Y (DYDDY -> Diddy) — Instant access to the animal bonus stages.
  • Down, A, R, B, Y, Down, A, Y (Darby Day) — Sound Test. Change songs with Select.
  • B, A, Down, B, A, Down, Down, Y (Bad Buddy) — Allows either player to switch in two-player co-op, not just the active player.
• Collapsing Ceiling Boss:
  • The second phase of the final battle against King K. Rool involves K. Rool causing cannonballs to rain down from the top of the Gangplank Galleon.
  • In the Game Boy Advance remake, Really Gnawty causes stalactites to fall from the ceiling.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: The Two Player Contest mode gives two sets of Kongs to each player. Player 1 gets the Kongs in their regular red clothes while Player 2 gets Kongs wearing yellow.
• Completion Meter: The game keeps track of bonus rooms and K-O-N-G letters the player finds in each level. The Game Boy Advance port also has a virtual scrapbook for special pictures found in-game.
• Compressed Adaptation: The Donkey Kong Country Competition Cartridge, a very rare authorized romhack of the game that was distributed for the Powerfest '94 and Blockbuster World Video Game Championships II competitions. The entire game has a 5 minute time limit, and the farthest you can possibly get is Croctopus Chase, where the game freezes after you complete it, since the goal is to get as many points as possible instead of finishing it. The two player modes and save feature are disabled^note It is possible to get back to the Dummied Out title screen if you use up all 50 of your lives quickly enough, but it won't do anything, and the Animal Tokens are removed, making it impossible to access the bonus stages without cheating.
• Continuing is Painful: Everything is easier when both Kongs are free. However, when you restart from a checkpoint, you start off with only one Kong. Unless the level is generous enough to place a DK Barrel right next to the checkpoint, you're gonna have to grin and bear it and try making it through the difficult segment again with just the one.
• Copy Protection: If the game detects that you're playing an illegal copy of it, it'll display a blue screen saying "copying is illegal".
• Credits Gag: One such gag is actually worked into the Final Boss fight in the game. After two bouts with King K. Rool, DK assumes a victory pose, the camera pans to the sunset and some very suspicious "kredits" (listing the names of various enemies as production staff) roll, followed by a faintly ominous "The End?". Sure enough, K. Rool isn't quite finished, and he gets up for one final round before he is well and truly trounced.
• Crystal Landscape: Slip Slide Ride, level 4-2.
• Damsel in Distress: Invoked by Cranky Kong in the SNES manual's plot setup: when Donkey tells Cranky that the Kremlings have trapped Diddy in a barrel and stolen all of his bananas and he vows to get them back, Cranky thinks that that is a stupid idea for a video game plot because it doesn't have "the screaming damsel in distress". And at the end of the manual's setup, when DK has enough of Cranky's complaining and goes off to save Diddy and retrieve the bananas, Cranky follows after grudgingly while muttering, "Well, it's not exactly rescuing a Princess, but it'll do in a pinch."
• Dark Reprise: "Mine Cart Madness" is an ominous, dark remix of the main DKC motif first heard in "Jungle Groove", the first level's very lively theme.
• Death Mountain: Gorilla Glacier is the classic icy version. The Kongs have to venture through snowy summits, be it through steep slopes or blast barrels.
• Difficulty by Region: The game has numerous small changes in the Japanese version (Super Donkey Kong) that made it slightly easier in a few levels.
• Disembodied Eyebrows: When jumping on the boss Master Necky (or his Underground Monkey version), his eyebrows would jump off.
• Dual Boss: In the GBA port, Necky's Revenge has Master Necky and Master Necky Snr. teaming up. In other versions, it's just the latter.
• Dungeon Bypass: There are six levels with a shortcut at the beginning that takes you to, or very near, the end of the level. This includes some of the hardest levels in the game.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • This game is starkly pared down compared to the latter two. In addition to having the animal-buddy-token bonuses unseen in any other installments, the first Donkey Kong Country game lacks hero coins and a secret world. Also, unlike all later games, which force you to win each bonus challenge to win every bonus prize, the first game simply expects you to find all the bonuses in order to get 100% Completion. Likewise, this game lacks Bonus Stage Collectables, whereas later games would use them to entice the player in unlocking hidden content.
  • Bonus rounds that are entered through barrel cannons use the regular automatic ones instead of having a "B" marking as in later games, and a higher ratio of bonus rounds are found by entering gaps in walls which usually need to be broken open.
  • In this game, the only time you control Animal Friends without the Kongs riding them is in the Animal Token bonus stages. DKC2 introduced barrels that transform you into the Animal Friend shown on them, which appear frequently throughout both normal and bonus stages in addition to the Animal Friends found in crates. This also means that the first game has no levels primarily designed for the abilities of the Animal Friends (save for Expresso and Enguarde's bonus stages), while the later games, by virtue of allowing you to control an Animal Friend without the possibility of losing them, include levels that are designed around what they can do.
  • The setting is also the most restrained of the series. While the characters are anthropomorphic and one boss appears to be a living oil drum, you'll find no ghosts, robots, banana birds, or sentient Tiki masks in this game. This also applies to the environments, which consist of rather mundane and pretty realistic jungles, caves, ruins, mountaintops, and factories. Later games would feature twisting bramble mazes in the sky, giant hornet hives, haunted forests, hollow trees being torn apart by a giant saw blade, and groves of giant mushrooms.
  • The "lose life" music is identical for every level (and no music plays at all if you fall in a pit), whereas the second and third games had different arrangements depending on the setting of the level. There is no "level complete" fanfare in the level itself; it plays on the map instead, and is the same for every level.
  • Candy Kong is only in the first game, absent entirely in the second and third installments (at least in the original SNES versions; she has cameos in the GBA ports).
  • There is no goal post at the end of a level; you just run through an opening and it fades out to the world map.
  • This is the only game besides Donkey Kong 64 where the main villains have no unifying theme (whereas the other games have pirate, industrial, tiki, and viking themes respectively) besides being crocodiles. In general, there are a lot fewer Kremling enemies here than in later games, with most of the enemies being hostile wildlife; starting in Diddy's Kong Quest, Kremlings would appear more often and with more varieties.
  • Among the game's enemies are orangutans known as Manky Kongs, stated to be "Kong rejects". This is the only time another Kong would be an enemy in a Donkey Kong Country game (Jungle Beat, a separate game, has Kong bosses), and the next orangutan to appear in the series is Lanky Kong, a definite good guy.
  • Squawks shows up in only one level and isn't a playable animal buddy, instead just following and holding a flashlight; he's also much smaller than normal. He becomes playable in the next two games and has a general supporting role for the rest of the series.
  • While the sequels would have secret worlds and alternate endings, the first game did not have a hidden world and there was only one ending. The only effect reaching 101% completion has is changing one of Cranky Kong's line in the ending.
  • The mini-games were quite a different beast compared to the sequels. The games consisted of a life balloon shuffling in barrels, stomping on Klap Traps to gain bananas, spelling names, and collecting items like bananas, lives, and Kong letters. There were also mini-games where you controlled the animal buddies and gathered as many tokens as you could for lives. The sequels would use completely different mini-games.
  • DK Coins and currency didn't exist in the first game.
  • The text used for level names was a generic white font. The sequels would use the stylized yellow font while the white font was kept for NPC text.
  • The K-O-N-G letters were smaller and sparkle here, while in the later games they're a little bigger and spin vertically (and shrink to the same size as in the first game upon being collected).
  • Underwater levels are completely underwater from start to finish, and never contain bonus areas. This is not the case in later games, where levels with water may have surface areas, and even when the level is again entirely submerged, it exits out to a little dry-land area at the end.
• Easy Level Trick: Stop and Go Station has you constantly flicking timed switches in order to not be attacked by a whole cave full of invincible enemies (which temporarily fall asleep when the switch is tripped). It's considered one of the harder levels in the game because of this, although a shortcut leading to just before the end of the stage exists, simply by going left and back into the entrance immediately at the start.
• Elite Mooks: The Krushas. Donkey Kong is the only one who can defeat them. Diddy can't do anything to them. The Grey Krushas, however, can't be beaten without Barrels.
• The End... Or Is It?: The Kredits that roll after "defeating" King K. Rool end with "The End?". It's not, as the croc gets back up and continues the fight after they finish.
• Eternal Engine: Kremkroc Industries, Inc., the fifth world. It is located not too below Gorilla Glacier, and causes a lot of pollution to its surroundings (which damaged the original lush environment of the place). Features include Oil Barrels, bouncy barrel tires, platforms that travel across rails, a polluted underwater area, and directional platforms found in a level with intermittent lights. The boss is Dumb Drum, a Mook Maker that aims to stomp the Kong and unleash assorted enemies before eventually giving up.
• Excuse Plot: The Kremlings steal Donkey Kong's beloved Banana Hoard. Why? Who cares? DK has an excuse to go on an adventure to cave their skulls in. This was averted in the GBA port, however.
• Facepalm: The eponymous Donkey Kong does this after losing a minigame.
• Fake Difficulty: The water levels are hard mostly due to the small screen size making it extremely difficult to see what's ahead and react in time, resulting in many hits from something flying on screen before you can react.
• Feathered Fiend: There's a race of vultures known as Neckies, along with Mini-Neckies and King Mook versions of both species: Master Necky, an oversized Necky and Master Necky Snr., more powerful version of Master Necky.
• Fishing Minigame: In the GBA port, Funky Kong gives you a choice between his jet barrel and a fishing minigame. This is also present in the Game Boy Color port, except it's only accessed through the bonus menu and not through the main game.
• Flawless Victory: Completing the final Barrel Cannon sequence in Snow Barrel Blast as fast as possible rewards you with a blue 3-UP balloon.^note Specifically, firing from one barrel to the next each at the very first opportunity; if a barrel has to pass or spin again before you get to the next barrel, or you hit a Zinger, you will lose the opportunity to collect the 3-UP balloon.
• Flunky Boss: Boss Dumb Drum, who pops out common mooks for you to fight. In fact, you can't even hit him at all, he dies after all of his mooks die.^note In the Game Boy Advance remake, Drum doesn't damage itself — instead, TNT barrels appear after defeating a wave of enemies, which the Kongs must pick up and throw at the boss.
• Flunky Boss: One of Dumb Drum's two attacks is dropping increasingly lethal enemy types into the arena.
• Follow the Money: Bananas are often used as hints to where the bonus stages are; in some areas, they spell out letters suggesting a specific controller button to press. Chances are that if grabbing that banana will be hazardous to your health, it may be prepping you for a Leap of Faith.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When you beat Kongo Jungle, a pirate ship appears in the waters on the left side of the world map. Every time you beat a world, it gets closer to the island, ultimately culminating in the Kongs boarding it to fight King K. Rool.
  • The final showdown against K. Rool is fought on a pirate ship. The next game would turn this into the enemies' new motif.
  • World 5 has an industrial gimmick; DKC3 makes the villain an evil machine and makes the enemies more technology-based, including buzzsaw bees and bazooka-wielding Kremlings.
• For the Evulz: It seems the only reason K. Rool had his troops steal DK's banana hoard, aside from them being the "the perfect food", was simply to steal it.
• Fragile Speedster: Diddy is this out of the two main heroes. He can jump higher than Donkey Kong and is harder to hit, but he's also weaker and can't take some of the tougher enemies out as efficiently as Donkey Kong can.
• Freaky Electronic Music: "Fear Factory", although the track is more Ambient than Industrial (in accordance with the rest of the soundtrack).
• Frigid Water Is Harmless: The level "Croctopus Chase" takes place in the waters of Gorilla Glacier, but neither Donkey nor Diddy (both who should not even be swimming to begin with since most apes are very poor swimmers) are negatively affected by it. Same with the ice cave levels in the sequel that feature lots of water.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • There are a multitude of glitches that allow you to do eccentric things with barrels. In particular, there's a peculiar glitch where if the player throws a DK barrel, pauses, and leaves the level before the barrel hits the ground, and then dies in another level without doing so above a bottomless pit, the character gets stuck on the ground for no reason instead of exiting the level, requiring one to reset the game. A variation of the glitch involving one dying above a pit can create even more crazy effects, including allowing DK and Diddy to change colour, as well as transforming the Kong sprites into one of their animal buddies.
  • Using the level skip glitch lets you bypass the first two and a half regions, but you won't be able to go back to them until you complete the rest of the game.
• Game Mod: An official one, the Donkey Kong Country Competition Cartridge, was made as part of a Blockbuster video game competition. 2,500 copies were made, and after the contest ended, Nintendo Power mailed copies to subscribers. To date, it’s one of the rarest video games ever made.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: If you enter the cave near DK's house at the beginning of 1-1, you'll see the Banana Hoard is missing, complete with DK looking disappointed as the "Bonus Game Lose theme" plays. After beating K.Rool the first time, Donkey Kong reclaims the Banana Hoard, and upon returning to the cave you'll see the hoard returned to its rightful place, this time with DK congratulating you while the "Boss Victory" fanfare plays.
• Gameplay Grading: The GBA port does this in Time Attack mode. Finishing the level more quickly gets you a better grade.
• Gangplank Galleon: The Trope Namer is King K. Rool's pirate ship, the "Gang-Plank Galleon" (spelled that way in this game only), though here it's a Boss-Only Level. The scenery includes the deck, mast, and ocean, cannonballs are used by K. Rool to attack, and the music begins like a sea shanty. Later games feature full-fledged ship levels.
• Gimmick Level: There are levels with unique setpieces or concepts, though they're in the minority when compared to later games in the series. Standouts include the Minecart Madness levels, a level where you have to constantly fuel up a moving platform, or even a level with Stop & Go Barrels that toggle the effects of its features.
• The Goomba: The Gnawties, which do nothing but move forward and can be killed with a hand-slap, jump, or roll/cartwheel. The Kritters themselves are pretty weak, too, though they have variants that are trickier due to jumping around frequently. Slippas, despite being based on the dangerous coral snake, are also very easy to defeat.
• Green Aesop: Seems to be the point of the Kremkroc Industries, Inc. area, with there being an entire level full of nasty green water.
• Grimy Water: As the name suggests, given that it's set in the Kremkroc Industries area, the water in Poison Pond is tainted a nasty shade of green, though it doesn't seem to affect the Kongs or the sea life.
• Guide Dang It!: Good luck finding all of the bonus areas on your own. For example, one of these bonus rooms is hidden inside another bonus room. You have to get the worst result from a roulette minigame, which spawns a barrel that can be used to smash open a wall before the bonus ends. And you have to do a running jump into the wall with the barrel; if you throw the barrel at the wall or walk into the wall with it, the victory animation plays and you're booted out of the bonus room.
• Happy Dance: Donkey and Diddy Kong will do a short dance whenever the player completes a level in the game (but not in the GBC version).
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: The bosses in this game are rather straightforward compared to those of subsequent games, but the levels preceding them are pretty challenging. K. Rool, being the Final Boss and the only main challenge of his level (and world), is decidedly difficult.
• Hint System: The game has this in the form of Cranky's Cabin. Cranky Kong will, in between grumblings on how much better games were back in his day, drop hints.
• Impossibly Delicious Food: Donkey Kong's bananas are considered the "perfect food" according to the narrator of the manual, so much so that Donkey Kong and Diddy are willing to go on a wild adventure just to take it back from K. Rool and his many minions.
• Improbable Weapon User: King K. Rool demonstrates this by throwing his crown at you, which also functions like a boomerang.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy: A couple of bonus rooms feature Klaptraps that take more hits than any other enemy in the game. They start out moving very slowly, but every time they get jumped on, they spit out a collectible and start moving faster until they're defeated.
• Infinite 1-Ups:
  • The first level, "Jungle Hijinxs", is short and extremely easy and contains tons of life balloons (in addition to the lives you get from bananas and animal tokens). It can be played as many times as you want before moving on to the rest of the game.
  • The rope trick consists of getting on a rope in the stage "Misty Mines" and placing yourself next to the barrels that spawn enemies. From there you can jump on an enemy and then back to the vine without touching the ground. After doing it eight times, each consecutive time.
  • The Krusha trick can be done in "Loopy Lights," "Manic Mincers," or "Millstone Mayhem" (the first ruins stage); play as Diddy Kong and bounce on a Krusha pinned up against the wall as many times as you want to get a ginormous amount of lives insanely quickly - as in, you will earn extra lives roughly three times faster than the life counter can display. You can easily reach 99 (and far beyond, though the life counter doesn't show it) in under 60 seconds.
  • One of the recurring minigames tasked you with repeatedly stomping a Klaptrap (who spat out more bananas and moved faster after each hit). In one level this minigame featured three such Klaptraps, enabling the player to bounce between them continuously, accumulating many extra lives in the process.
• Infinite Flashlight: One such searchlight is held by Squawks in a Blackout Basement level to help the Kongs traverse a very dark cave.
• Insect Queen: Queen B., queen of the wasp-like Zingers and the boss of Vine Valley. As with all Zingers, she cannot be stomped on, so the Kongs have to throw barrels at her to win the fight.
• Instructive Level Design: The game has no tutorial or HUD (other than the number of bananas you have), so it relies purely on visual clues and the player's own intuition for guidance instead:
  • Before you even press start, the games introduction shows Cranky throwing a barrel at DK, which is a move you'll frequently use throughout the game. The select screen with the multiplayer options hints to the player that you can control Diddy as well as Donkey, as well as the fact that you can switch between the two when you have them together.
  • When you start the first level, the very first thing you see is DK rolling out of his treehouse, which clues in the player that this is one of his attacks — and a Gnawty is directly ahead and will kill you in one hit on collision, so the player either has to jump or roll to attack, and will likely try out the latter, which may also clue in the player that the game has a run button. A player will also learn from this that rolling into enemies can cause you to gain momentum from hitting them, especially if you roll into rows of enemies at once later in it. Doing a traditional Goomba Stomp on enemies will help a player take notice of items lurking around the palm trees, telling the player that they can explore off the beaten path. Grabbing a barrel and throwing it also gives you Diddy, and getting hit causes DK to run off, tipping off the player that having a partner grants an extra hit point. The level also anticipates that you'll hop right onto Rambi and start running ahead, which will lead to the player ramming through a wall and discovering the first of many bonus areas in the game. This is meant to tip off the player that the game has many more secrets to find. In fact, as soon as you complete the first bonus room, Rambi will fall right on the ground and reveal a secret hidden in a patch of dirt the ground, giving the player a hint that not only will there be more than one secret room in the level, but that there's another secret room right next to that spot you fell on.
• Invincible Minor Minion: The Rock Krocs in Stop and Go Station. You can only stop their movement temporarily. In the Japanese and GBA versions, they can be killed by DK's hand slap once they stop.
• I Surrender, Suckers: King K. Rool pulls this. Just after you defeat him, fake credits start to roll across the screen. They're pretty obviously fake, but seconds after they finish, K. Rool gets back up and continues to fight. Subsequent tries have him just fall over and then get back up, though the first time it happens is likely to catch a player off-guard.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: The game set the tradition in itself and subsequent games of featuring a depressing, or even disturbing Game Over screen to invoke this trope. This specific game has DK and Diddy badly beaten up on a black background, sporting 'X' bandages, accompanied by funeral dirge music with an eerie wooden "GAMe oveR"
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: In the SNES manual, the story begins this way. The game doesn't bring this up though, and the first stage is set during a sunny afternoon.
• Jungle Japes: The first world is called Kongo Jungle, as a homage to the real-life Congo Jungle in Africa, and takes place in a dense palmtree rainforest. Features include ropes the Kongs can hang on, barrels that can be used to blast onto far distances, and specific biomes like an Underground Level and an Under the Sea level.
• Jungle Jazz: "Jungle Hijinx", which starts out with tribal drums and ambient jungle sounds, leading up to a swingy tune.
• Kaizo Trap: Don't let your guard down at the end of "Mine Cart Carnage", because one last Kremling comes careening at you right before the exit.
• King Mook: The bosses in this game are just bigger, badder renditions of common enemies you see in the game, except Dumb Drum, which is just a bigger, badder rendition of an enemy-spawning oil can.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook:
  • Klaptraps' large, biting jaws make it a bad idea to roll into them from the front. That said, they're still weak enough to be defeated any other way, including rolling into them from behind.
  • Klumps are immune to Diddy's weaker jumps, due to their helmets. However, Donkey Kong can defeat them with a stomp, and both Kongs can take them out with a roll.
  • Blue Krushas laugh off Diddy's stomps and both Kongs' rolls. DK's stomp is strong enough to defeat them, though.
  • Gray Krushas are even stronger than blue ones. None of the Kongs' standard attacks will faze them, and only barrels can take them out.
• Last Lousy Point: The 101st percent can be obtained by reaching a Bonus Stage hidden inside another Bonus Stage. The first bonus stage is a matching game where you time your jumps to match three objects. You can only get to the second bonus stage by winning the worst item (a single banana), which causes a barrel to drop. You then have to grab that barrel and crash through the wall before the "celebration fanfare" is over. And you can only use Diddy, because he holds the barrel in front of his body (whereas DK holds it over his head, and you don't have enough time to throw it and then enter the resulting opening).
• Last-Second Villain Recovery: During the final battle with King K. Rool, Donkey Kong and Diddy seem to have K. Rool knocked out cold after the seventh hit, after which, the credits start to play. However, these credits appear to have K. Rool and the Kremlings credited as the game's programmers. After the credits end, K. Rool awakens and Donkey Kong and Diddy have to hit him three more times to completely defeat him.
• Law of 100: A hundred bananas earns you an extra life. In the Animal Friend bonus stages, a hundred tokens also earns an extra life, though unlike the bananas these are exclusive to the bonus stages and any leftovers aren't kept after you leave.
• Leap of Faith: The game is notorious for this, but it's actually undeserved. There are many secret barrels hidden down pits, but if you look carefully, the vast majority of them are just barely visible on the bottom of the screen. The few that aren't generally have fairly blatant hints (usually in the form of bananas) that there's something there.
• Lethal Lava Land: Of all things, Chimp Caverns becomes this in the Gameboy Advance port. The previously dark, watery appearance of the area's map is replaced with a cavern filled with red light and a cracked, glowing floor.
• Level Goal: You know you're approaching the end of a level when you see a wooden sign saying "EXIT". Later games have more creative level goals.
• Lizard Folk: The Kremlings are anthropomorphic crocodiles.
• Logo Joke: This game and Diddy's Kong Quest have the Rareware logo be drawn in with green wireframe and fill with color, before shrinking to the bottom right to accomodate the Nintendo logo.
• Long Song, Short Scene: "Cave Dweller Concert", the background music for the cavern levels, is unusually long, taking nearly 3 minutes to loop once. The early cavern levels are all too short for its length, and even the latter ones will almost certainly be interrupted by either a death or bonus level, both of which will make the song start from the beginning.
• The Lost Woods: Vine Valley, the third world, mostly consists of forested levels. It is a pine forest that makes up for the third playable world in the game, located not too below Gorilla Glacier. In addition to receiving limited sunlight due to the dense vegetation, it's also home to a treetop village overrun by enemies and a nearby Temple of Doom with kingsnakes, as well as a palmtree region where rebellious Kongs (known as Manky Kongs) attack their benign relatives with barrels. The boss is Queen B., a large Insect Queen who rules the Zinger mooks.
• Maniac Monkeys: The Manky Kongs, who throw barrels at you. They're members of the Kong family that were disowned because of their aggressive behavior.
• Medium Awareness: After beating King K. Rool once, a set of fake credits scroll down the screen. And then he gets up and starts attacking again. First time around, most players might lose a life to this trick.
• Mighty Glacier: Donkey Kong is this out of the two main heroes. He can't jump as high as Diddy and is easier to hit, but his strength allows him to stomp enemies Diddy has a harder time with and throw barrels farther.
• Minecart Madness: The Trope Namer is here with a few levels based on this in Monkey Mines and Chimp Caverns. In these levels, The Kongs ride a minecart across a broken minecart track while avoiding head-on obstacles and jerk Kremlings (appropriately named "Krash") riding in their own minecarts.
• Mook Maker: The Oil Drums continually spit out weak enemies, typically Slippas. Dumb Drum escalates this to a boss, as its attack strategy is sending enemies at you.
• Mook-Themed Level: The game mostly uses generic names for enemy-themed levels (for example, Reptile Rumble is a level about fighting hordes of Slippas, coral snake enemies), The sole exception is "Croctopus Chase", where the player gets pursued by octopi enemies that are called as such.
• Non-Standard Game Over: In the extremely unlikely event that you allow the platform to get too far away from you in Tanked Up Trouble, the game will automatically play Diddy or Donkey's Bonus failure animation, a life will be docked from you, and you'll go back to the level select screen as if you'd otherwise died normally. Letting the platform run out of fuel and fall down would normally render the level Unwinnable by Design, so this makes sense.
• No OSHA Compliance: Kremkroc Industries has the rather perilous Blackout Basement, where the lights go on and off every few seconds.
• Not Your Daddy's X: The instruction manual says that the titular character "is not your father's Donkey Kong!" This is literally true, as the Donkey Kong from the arcade games is now Cranky Kong, this Donkey Kong's grandfather.
• Offscreen Start Bonus:
  • The very first level begins with DK crashing out of the front door of his house. If you go back in, you'll find an extra life. You can also go into the cave below the house where the banana hoard should be... except since it's stolen, you get a very disappointed and sad response from the protagonists.
  • One particularly hard stage, "Stop and Go Station", can be skipped by going back into the cave you come out of at the beginning, which will transport you directly to the stage exit (but miss some secrets).
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Either of the Kongs will go down in one hit from any attack or collision with an enemy. If another Kong is following you, they'll take over, but otherwise you lose a life.
• Over 100% Completion: The game tops out at 101%. In a bonus area of Oil Drum Alley, stop the barrels on the single banana for a barrel to break the right wall and get another bonus area for the extra 1%.
• Palette Swap: Lampshaded by Cranky Kong in the Game Boy Advance version of the game, after a boss battle with "Really Gnawty" (a recolored version of the first boss, "Very Gnawty", which is itself a big version of a normal enemy called "Gnawty"). Cranky lampshades it again after the Kongs defeat Master Necky Sr., a palette swap of Master Necky Jr.
• Patchwork Map: Donkey Kong Island goes from a tropical rainforest, to a mine setting in the side of a grassy hill, to a temperate forest, to an ice capped mountain, to a polluted grassland, to a giant cave. This is actually justified, as most of the game involves you climbing up a very large mountain which will have similar changes in scenery in Real Life. It's pretty logical about the change too; the temperate forest is at a higher altitude (and thus colder) than the jungle, and the ice cap is higher still.
• Piranha Problem: Bitesize, a piranha enemy who inhabits the game's underwater levels. Like many of the game's underwater enemies, the Kongs cannot harm him by themselves, but can harm him by charging Enguarde the Swordfish at him.
• Polluted Wasteland: Poison Pond combines this with Under the Sea. The water in this level is green due to being polluted with toxic waste from Kremcroc Industries, Inc.
• Power-Up Food: Downplayed. Bananas don't do anything special on their own, but collecting 100 of them grants you an extra life.
• Pre-Final Boss: Since King K. Rool doesn't get his own world here (his boss stage being on the island's main map otherwise used to travel between worlds), Master Necky Snr. (or in the GBA port, Master Necky and Master Necky Snr.), the boss of Chimp Caverns, the final world, ends up being this.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: Krusha laughs off almost any attack, and grey ones laugh off every attack aside from barrels.
• Recurring Boss: Two bosses fought early (Very Gnawty and Master Necky) return later, slightly faster and more difficult, but otherwise near exactly the same.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Rock Krocs have burning crimson eyes, and their entire level gimmick is avoiding ever being near one when they're active and said eyes are visible.
• Rules Lawyer: The player "puts the controller down" (which counts as finishing) when K Rool still has one hit point. The Kongs stand there for a few seconds before K Rool runs into them, hitting one Kong and triggering the other to tag-in... right on top of Rool's head.
• Scenery Porn: For its time, the game was relatively gorgeous looking with plenty of pleasant backgrounds on the eyes such as the jungle levels, the ice cave, the forest levels, and the water levels.
• Sequel Hook: The GBA port has a different ending from the SNES original. K. Rool returns on the Gangplank Galleon just before the credits sequence and threatens to blow up DK Island. The Kongs jump off the ship into the water as it sails away, and Cranky effectively lampshades this trope:

  Cranky: Call that an ending? Looks like a cheap stunt setting up the story for the sequel!

• Sequence Breaking: There's a glitch on the first map screen that allows you to bypass huge chunks of the game; on the world map of Kongo Jungle, rapidly pressing the A Button while Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong are moving on the dotted path between levels may cause the player to be teleported to the middle of the level Orang-utan Gang, all the way in Vine Valley. In the same level, there's another glitch that allows you to skip ahead to Manic Mincers in the final world, Chimp Caverns. Note however that this only works in the original version of the game; the glitch was fixed in a subsequent revision of the SNES game and its ports.
• Sequential Boss: The final boss of the game is King K. Rool. After you defeat him, fake credits roll by. After the credits, the boss gets up for a second go.
• Shout-Out:
  • The whole look of the treetop stages is nicked straight from the Ewok village in Return of the Jedi.
  • The name of the level "Manic Mincers" is a reference to classic ZX Spectrum game Manic Miner.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Gorilla Glacier, the fourth world, contains all of the game's snow and ice levels, including its only ice cavern. In one of the levels, the dense snowfall makes visibility more difficult, and you have to pay attention to where the launch barrels are aiming to avoid falling.
• The Smart Guy: Cranky Kong, the elderly Grumpy Old Monkey that gives out advice and tips.
• The Smurfette Principle: Candy Kong is the only female character in the game. She can save your progress, or in the GBA version, initiate a dancing minigame.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Slippas are low-lying coral snakes that move quickly along the ground, but they are simple to defeat.
• Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: The game follows a very similar logic to the Super Mario Bros. series, starting with Jungle Japes, then it's the Underground Level world, followed by The Lost Woods, Slippy-Slidey Ice World, Eternal Engine, a second Underground Level world and finishing on Gangplank Galleon.
• Sound Test: There's a cheat that allows you to access the music menu. On the Game Boy Advance remake, hold Select while pressing B, A, L, L, A, Down^note It spells out "BALLAD", see? on the game select screen. In the SNES version, press Down, A, R, B, Y, Down, A, Y.
• Spelling Bonus:
  • Every level has the letters K, O, N, and G in them. Collecting them all grants an extra life, but doesn't count for completion percentage. Misty Mine has an interesting take on this: all four K-O-N-G letters are in a single bonus area.
  • Some bonus rooms require you to hit letters in roulette barrels to spell out KONG to get an item. Others have free-floating letters spinning in a circle, and you have to touch the flashing ones in order to spell out things like the Animal Friends' names, or the company names RARE and NINTENDO, for a reward. The secret bonus-area-within-a-bonus-area requires you to hit the spinning letters in "DONKEY" in the correct order for a 1-Up, then do the same with "KONG" for a 2-Up, and finally with "COUNTRY" for a 3-Up.
• The Spiny: This game has two types. There are Zingers who are the standard spiny, immune to everything but barrels, but this game also introduces the Klaptrap, a low-lying Kremling with large snapping jaws, which makes it immune to the Kongs' frontal attacks.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To, of all things, Aladdin (Virgin Games). The whole reason this game has its famous pre-rendered graphics was because Nintendo wanted Rare to make something that looks better than Aladdin and its Disney-animated sprites.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Parodied on Rare's website where Leigh Loveday answers the question of why K. Rool wants the bananas by stating it might be a possible convoluted plan to steal Donkey Kong's tree house, or that K. Rool just likes bananas.
• The Stinger: In the final battle against K. Rool. At some point, he will lie defeated on the ground, while faux credits roll listing K. Rool and his minions as the game developers, each with a "K" title, followed by "The End?" appearing on screen. The camera then pans back to K. Rool, who grunts, jumps up, and resumes the battle by suddenly jumping on top of you. This ended up being played for laughs in later Donkey Kong Country games, with K. Rool feigning defeat or being knocked out and waking back up a moment later to keep fighting, often multiple times in the same battle.
• Strange Secret Entrance: Some secret levels in the game are accessed by unintuitively jumping down "bottomless" pits into off-screen barrel cannons.^note Technically, most of them are just barely visible at the edge of the screen, and the truly offscreen ones generally have bananas indicating where to jump. Few if any require a true Leap of Faith.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Neither Donkey nor Diddy have any trouble swimming underwater, not even indefinitely. Quite ironic seeing how gorillas in Real Life possess Super Drowning Skills.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The infamous Game Over screen◊ can come across as this. You're enjoying an upbeat, lighthearted game, only to lose your last life and get a depressing image of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong beat up over a black background. The music sounds depressing, too.
• Tactical Suicide Boss:
  • Boss Dumb Drum is an animated iron barrel that hovers above the top border of the screen and spits Mooks relentlessly. Once in a while, it descends to try to squash Donkey and Diddy. The player just has to move out of the way, because it eventually breaks itself doing that. If Drum only released enemies and kept itself afloat, they would be unable to win. In the Game Boy Advance remake, Drum doesn't damage itself — instead, TNT barrels appear after defeating a wave of enemies, which the Kongs must pick up and throw at the boss.
  • King K. Rool can only be hurt by jumping on his head. However, you can't jump on his head because his crown is too pointy. So naturally, his main method of attack is to take it off and throw it at you like a boomerang, leaving his head exposed for the duration.
• Take Over the City: It is suggested, in addition to wanting to eat Donkey Kong's treasured banana hoard, the K. Rool also want to take over Donkey Kong Island as shown in World 5, Kremkroc Industries where the Kremlings are taking the islands resources(oil, gas, and charcoal) for their own.
• Tech-Demo Game: The game was developed as an effort to prove the aging SNES was capable of high-quality graphics.
• Temple of Doom: There's a "Millstone Mayhem" stage as the last non-boss stage in Monkey Mines, as well as a "Temple Tempest" level near the end of Vine Valley. In them, Donkey and Diddy have to venture through temples overrun by dangerous mooks, as well has large stone wheels that roll back and forth. Said levels served as inspiration for the Angry Aztec world in Donkey Kong 64.
• Temporary Platform: There are dropping platforms, and a Gimmick Level ("Tanked-up Trouble") with a moving platform that will fall if you dodn't keep it constantly fueled up. There is another level, "Platform Peril", that consists almost exclusively of various moving platforms that shake and fall after a certain distance.
• Threatening Shark: The game has them as common aquatic enemies. There are two variations of them, a younger, smaller, but faster blue shark and an adult, bigger, but slow green one. The former are actually the more dangerous enemy, as they frequently swim in large packs.
• Timed Mission: Tanked-Up Trouble requires you to pick up fuel drums to refill your railed platform's fuel, which depletes over time. If the platform is allowed to run out of fuel, it will fall off, and you will die even if you get to safe ground^note in the event of such, your current Kong's "failure" animation will play, a life will be taken off the counter, and you'll be booted back to the map (or the Game Over screen, if that was your last life).
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: The level Stop & Go Station features uniquely-labeled barrels, called Stop & Go Barrels, whose use is vital to properly navigate through the path. By default, all barrels are turned on (marked with the word "GO" written in luminous green), which makes all lights in the otherwise dark cavern turn green and all resident Rock Krocs move relentlessly. When one of these barrels is touched by Donkey and/or Diddy, it and all other toggle-based barrels will change their states to off (marked with the word "STOP" written in luminous red), turning all the light sources in the level red and making the Rock Krocs fall asleep; after a while, the Stop & Go Barrels will revert to the default state, causing the light sources to turn green again and waking up the Rock Krocs. Because those enemies are invulnerable, the Kongs must make sure to touch all Stop & Go Barrels they find along the way so they can safely run past them, both in corridors and in hovering platforms above pits, and reach the exit.
• Toxic, Inc.: Kremkroc Industries, Inc., which has ruined a portion of Donkey Kong Island, though the Kremlings (whose own island is a polluted wasteland) probably don't care about that.
• Trademark Favorite Food: This game establishes Donkey's love for bananas. So when the Kremlings steal them, he and Diddy go great lengths to retrieve them.
• Tree Top Town: The Trope Namer is a level in Vine Valley that takes place among several platforms and houses situated high up on trees. A couple other levels share the same theme.
• Turns Red: Queen B. does this, zigzagging around the screen faster after every hit.
• Underground Level: Monkey Mines and Chimp Caverns are the underground-themed worlds, but this type of level is spread throughout the whole game in the form of cave levels, mine levels, and walkway levels.
• Underground Monkey: Krusha comes in two varieties. The first kind is blue with green camo and is only beatable by either of Donkey Kong's main attacks or a barrel (Diddy Kong's attacks are laughed off). The second kind only appears once in the SNES version, in the very last level before Master Neck Sr. and King K. Rool. This version is grey with purple camo; the only thing that can beat him is a barrel, making him the strongest of the Kremlings.
• Under the Sea: There are aquatic levels where Donkey and Diddy have to swim while avoiding several Aquatic Mooks, though they can also summon Enguarde so they can traverse the waters more swiftly. The levels have a maze-like design, so it's easy to get lost unless the player pays attention to where they're going.
• Unique Enemy:
  • Rock Krocs are exclusive to Stop & Go Station as part of the level gimmick.
  • Gray Krushas only appear in Platform Perils.
• Upgraded Boss: In the Game Boy Advance version, most of the bosses have different attack patterns than their SNES counterparts:
  • Very Gnawty and Really Gnawty switch color palettes and attack slightly different. While Really Gnawty retains his attack pattern (more or less), Very Gnawty attacks by making stalactites fall from the ceiling.
  • In "Bumble B Rumble", Queen B. now surrounds herself with Zingers after being hit, and you have to kill them before you can hit her again.
  • In "Boss Dumb Drum", Dumb Drum no longer damages itself after you defeat its minions. Instead, TNT barrels appear after defeating a wave of enemies, which the Kongs must pick up and throw at the drum.
  • In "Necky's Revenge", Master Necky Jr. and Sr. attack together, and you have to kill them both. Defeating one will enrage the other.
• Vegetarian Carnivore: The story in the manual says that the Kremlings stole the Banana Hoard because they are a good source of nutrition.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The trope is subverted, as DK and Diddy climb to the top of DK Island for Gorilla Glacier, climb slightly down from the top to reach Kremrock Industries Inc., an area named after the main villains of the game... and then just keep going further down the mountain to Chimp Caverns, a generic cavernous area (when there already was a cavernous area earlier in the game) that looks more like a mid-game stage (it even has a Palette Swap of the first boss as the area boss) but is the actual final stage of the game before boarding K. Rool's ship for the Final Boss fight.
• Victory Fakeout: Subverted. The fake credits are blatantly fake. King K. Rool's battle music continues to play, K. Rool and his Kremlings' names are used instead of the developers' names, and all the roles begin with "K".
• Vile Vulture: The debut of the vulture enemy, the Necky, who serves as the Airborne Mook of the Kremling Krew. Neckies simply fly around, trying to get in the Kongs' way. There are also smaller versions called Mini-Neckies, that hover in place while spitting projectiles. Finally, there are grounded Neckies that stand in one spot and throw nuts around. Master Necky is a very large Necky who serves as a boss in Monkey Mines, and a re-colored version, Master Necky Snr, is the boss of Chimp Caverns.
• Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia: Most of DK's home island is unspoiled natural beauty (of various biomes) and the occasional ruined temple or Abandoned Mine that has been Reclaimed by Nature. However, the villainous Kremlings have established Kremkroc Industries, a hellish Eternal Engine, on the mountainside as their base of operations.
• Violation of Common Sense: Some of the secrets and collectibles require luck or trial-and-error to find.
  • In Barrel Cannon Canyon, there's a secret room that you find by deliberately launching yourself out of a Barrel Cannon at the wrong time, causing you to miss another Barrel Cannon and slamming you through a wall into the secret area. In the rest of the level, pulling off this move would simply rob you of an extra life.
  • In Stop & Go Station, there's a Kong letter floating over a pit that is seemingly impossible to grab without dying — unless you learned about the Kongs' ability to do a jump in midair after rolling off of a ledge by talking to Cranky Kong or reading the manual.
• Warp Zone: This game and Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest both have a few of these. They seems less "official" and more buggy in the first game, but apparently they're intentional.
• Weaponized Headgear: King K. Rool throws his crown as a projectile in the Final Boss battle. This is the only moment in his attack pattern that leaves him vulnerable to a Goomba Stomp.
• While You Were in Diapers: One of Cranky Kong's quotes is "Last time I saw you, you were in diapers!"
• Wicked Wasps: The debut of the series' pesky wasp enemies, the Zingers. A Zinger Queen named Queen B. is also the boss of Vine Valley.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The Final Boss starts playing Fake "Kredits" right before he Turns Red.

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