Today, November the twenty-fifth, marks the fifteenth anniversary of the release of the original Donkey Kong Country in North America (though yesterday it was fifteen years since it was released in the UK, the home country of Rareware, designers of the game in question).

This Super Nintendo classic seems to go quite under appreciated today (with some gaming websites and magazines shamefully labeling it as “overrated”), but I would like to take a moment to turn the clock back and explain why this platformer deserves all those millions of copies it sold.

Back in 1994, the Nintendo/Sega rivalry was at its most intense. What with SEGA’s mud-slinging commercials and whatnot. Only one primary Mario game had been released on the SNES at the time, while a certain blue hedgehog managed to pop out not two, not three, not four, but five different games by this point. Sonic lead a new wave of “coolness” which started appealing more to players while Mario and Link seemed to be going more “slow and steady” (though today, the SNES is widely considered the greatest console of all time).

Enter Rareware (now just Rare). Rareware was interested in making a game using pre-rendered 3D graphics, and they found a good starting point by resurrecting Nintendo’s Donkey Kong character, who hadn’t been prominent in years, and reinventing him (it has been rumored in the past that Rareware was originally trying to make a new Mario adventure with help from Nintendo, but the big N thought it might hurt the sales of the upcoming Super Mario 64, but the legitimacy of these rumors is questionable).

Rareware took the once villainous Donkey Kong, and turned him into the hero. They continued to give him a sidekick in the form of cooler-than-he-looks Diddy Kong, and built a new franchise around the big, lovable ape.

King Kong ain't got nothin' on me!

And those pre-rendered 3D graphics turned out to be a very smart move, and upon release the game’s visuals were hailed as revolutionary. To this day, the game is pretty to look at. And its visual design is  far more memorable then most of today’s games, now that developers just care about making things look realistic and gritty.

But you combine those visuals with the return of a gaming legend, not to mention strong platforming gameplay (with secrets abound) and a completely awesome soundtrack, and Donkey Kong Country struck gold!

Speaking of the soundtrack. The music of DKC was so widely praised that its soundtrack was one of the first video game soundtracks released on a CD in the western world. If you ask me, it’s still one of the most memorable of all gaming soundtracks.

So not only did Donkey Kong Country have revolutionary visuals and music, and re-established Donkey Kong as a force to be reckoned with, but its immense popularity  is what really turned the tide in the SNES vs. Genesis/Mega Drive console war. How many games can claim that they almost single-handedly took their console back to the top so late in a console generation? There are a few that can claim to have an established a console either as a launch title or early on (like Mario, Sonic and Halo), but I’m hard pressed to think of another one that turned the tide after the new kid on the block had been stealing its console’s thunder.

Some claim that Donkey Kong Country is basically Super Mario World with 3D graphics (as if that’s a bad thing), but these people are ignoring the historical importance of the game.  It helped Nintendo  achieve victory over its greatest rival and reminded people why they liked Nintendo to begin with. Sure, there are more important games, but to label Donkey Kong Country as overrated is wrong-doing. It remains one of the biggest hits in the Nintendo library, it is constantly one of the most downloaded Virtual Console games and has been rereleased several times. In terms of overall quality, its sequel has it beat, but one never overlook the original. It is the game that saved the SNES and helped gamers rekindle their love of Nintendo. Oh, and it’s fun too!

DKC FTW!

Whoahmigosh! Has it really been 15 years?!