Retro Corner: Donkey Kong Country (Super NES) Review

A new edition of Retro Corner is up as I will be looking at the first game of Donkey Kong Country. Tropical Freeze for the WiiU saw a release five years ago and Retro Studios really took up Rare's mantel. In 1994, the original DKC got released on the Super NES and Rare would take the famous ape to a new level. Nintendo at the time rarely (no pun intended) let a third-party studio use their IPs even under their watch. In the end, this paid off for them as the company had an old name they could sell off once again. I think once this came out, it probably was the finally nail in the coffin for the Sega Genesis. By then Sega exhausted its big titles as Phantasy Star IV and Sonic 3 and Knuckles have already came out. With two more DKC sequels and a large catalog of Big games after the next two years made it clear that Sega was truly finished with Gen 4.

If you didn't know, Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't really fond on the idea of taking his concept and changing it. In all honestly, I can see where the guy was coming from and who would want someone changing their concepts around. Despite how he felt, Miyamoto must have trusted Rare to some degree and I'm sure he had a little input. Once the game came together, he probably calmed down a bit and knew these developers weren't amateurs. Of course, I have no proof that this man really had these thoughts so don't take what I say seriously. As for Rare, they would continue producing their version of DK until they got sold off to Microsoft in 2002. Fortunately, that is when Retro Studio came in and after working with Metroid, Nintendo tasked them with a new DKC game. So far, they have been a great replacement for Rare and continued what they did for the series even now.


Donkey Kong Country (Super NES) Review​