Donkey Kong Country Returns

If there’s a Nintendo platforming franchise I’ve seldom discussed, it’s Donkey Kong Country. I’ve only ever played the very first game, on the SNES, and even wrote a quick “Gaming Memories” article about it some time ago. The two sequels? I’ve never played them, though I know they are available among the Nintendo Classics, and so are all the Donkey Kong Land games for Game Boy consoles. DK 64? Also never played, but I heard a lot about it (as well as all the ways that fans improved its system on emulators). Anything else? Well, I could talk about the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, but the plumber has no business stealing the spotlight today.

This series returned on the Wii. Developed by Retro Studios (instead of Rare, obviously) and released on November 21st, 2010 in North America, this entry sees a return to playing with both DK and his buddy Diddy Kong as a new villain rises on their island. Notably, this game had a port for Nintendo 3DS released in 2013, and an HD rerelease for the Switch in January 2025; today, I am covering the Wii game.

Tiki Threat

Oh, that's a big one. Good. It'll just be more satisfying to
break it into pieces at the end.

A normal day on Kong Island is interrupted by the eruption of its volcano. Out of the bubbling lava come large rocks that break, revealing tiki monsters that instantly cool down in the open air. Along with them, a gigantic tiki monster appears from the depths of the volcano. The deity instantly requests a tribute to appease him. The tikis get to work, hypnotizing the island fauna to do their bidding. They direct the animals to steal… what else? Donkey Kong’s banana hoard, of course!

DK is all "What is he even trying to do?"

Diddy Kong sees them doing this and swings down to check the hoard – there’s not a single banana left. Diddy’s yells awakens Donkey Kong, and the ape sees elephants and giraffes dragging mountains of bananas away. He is ready to jump into action, but a tiki shows up, cornering him in his hut. It attempts the hypnotism trick, but it doesn’t work, as DK is too strong-willed to be hypnotized. Or maybe too stupid. The ape gives the tiki a beating and bursts out, ready to get his stuff back.

It's a big island, full of dangers! (Big thanks to Longplay
Archive for the playthrough I pick these screenshots from!)

Beware of the angry Kongs falling from above!

DK chases them through eight worlds on his island, starting with his home jungle at sea level. This is a proper 2.5D platformer; the original Donkey Kong Country games, on the Super Nintendo, cheated around this by having 3D-styled environments and characters, but having them all be sprites, in classic 2D fashion. Returns takes full advantage of the technological jump; this time, the forefront isn’t the only plane that matters. Lots of things can happen in the background, like enemies or obstacles coming forwards, or small portions of stages, which DK and Diddy may access through their blast barrels. Similarly, the game occasionally employs camera tricks to break the monotony.

The world is designed with DK in mind. It is HIS island,
after all. Hence the pressure pads that he can activate by
slamming the ground. Sorry, Diddy. Apparently, you
don't matter as much.

I would have said that, just like in the Country games on SNES, DK and Diddy form a team… well, yes and no. What I loved in DKC was that if you lost DK but had Diddy, you could keep playing with the smaller monkey, who lacked DK’s brute strength but was just as agile. It was just a matter of finding a containment barrel to rescue the ape. Here, if you’re playing solo, Diddy cannot be used on his own; he’s more of an add-on, as finding him in a barrel heals DK, adds two extra hearts, and provides a neat improvement to jumps thanks to the monkey’s jetpack.

However, if you play with a friend using a second controller, then Diddy is fully usable, and even has his Peanut Popgun which, like the jetpack, he’s had since DK64. In my opinion, although it’s never necessary, Diddy’s jetpack is such a useful tool that it makes a lot of areas much easier than they would be with the big ape on his own.

Keeping the Kongs Under Control

Although there's only 2 or 3 of these, I really like the
sunset stages for the beautiful ambiance they place.

As you can imagine from a game on the Wii, this entry couldn’t do without a few features involving motion controls – stuff often regarded unfavorably for how it disrupts gameplay that would work better as button presses instead. The game is played using the Wii remote and Nunchuk. DK and Diddy move with the control stick, jump with A, and can grab items, vines, or greenery (which is usually on the ceilings or sides, and which the Kongs can cling on to and move using their hands) with B. The Kongs can beat many enemies just by stomping them, but some are impervious to this.

When the fire is put out, this guy is safe to stomp.

For everything else, motion controls are necessary, and they just involve shaking the remote and nunchuk. When DK is stationary and you shake, he’ll slam the ground, which doesn’t hurt all enemies but can make some of them vulnerable. This can be used to impact the environment (pun intended), destroying crates or stone blocks in the path, or objects in the background. If you shake while DK is crouching, he will blow air, which can be used to disperse some plants, spin windmills, and put out candles or enemies on fire.

While moving left or right, DK will do a roll, which is faster than moving and can even defeat some enemies. With Diddy on him, DK can roll continuously. In both cases, jumping while rolling will make the Kongs jump further. It’s great, if not vital, for a lot of jumps; but it is annoying that it’s tied to shaking the remotes.

Notably, all these motion control features were given to buttons on the HD remake on Switch.

The barrels add something to the game that requires precision
and timing. As if the rest of the game didn't.

And, of course, this game wouldn’t be complete unless it had Donkey Kong Country’s staples: A wide variety of barrels that can propel the Kongs all over the place. Barrels that spin at regular intervals; barrels that instantly send the Kongs flying in one direction; and barrels that move when there’s a Kong in them, just waiting for DK or Diddy to blast out.

Then there’s minecart stages where your only real ability is to make small or big jumps to avoid obstacles coming your way, crushing enemies, or switching between tracks. The new thing is rocket barrels, which a Kong will jump on and ride; you have no control on its speed, but A must be pressed or held to make the barrel go up. These stages are tricky because the Kong only has one HP there, and any contact with obstacles, enemies, or the water/ground is an instant loss of a life.

Many ways to die in just one hit.

Rambi the rhinoceros is back! This mount is powerful enough to defeat most enemies, break through stones, and crush spikes to reveal hidden passageways; but, as per tradition, the rhino only appears in specific stages.

There is one major difference with every other Country game and the N64 entry: In Returns, both Kongs have forgotten how to swim, and landing in the water is an instant kill. The excuse was that the developers of this entry didn’t like making underwater stages. This was rectified in the sequel, Tropical Freeze, but the omission is blatant here. It feels like something is missing if I'm not chased by an octopus moving around like a spiky ball.

Gotta Collect Ev-E-Ry-Thing

OOOOOOOOOOOO!

This entry takes cues from the previous platformers of the franchise in another way: There’s so much to collect and look for. There’s the classic bananas, 100 for an extra life. Then there’s Banana Coins, which can be spent at Cranky Kong’s shop in every world. There are two bigger collectibles, though: KONG letters and puzzle pieces.

Gathering all KONG letters used to grant an extra life in the SNES games. Here? Not so much. If you collect them all in a stage, you get a mark for that stage. If you collect all the KONG letters in a world, you unlock its Temple Stage. Completing that one nets a special Rare Orb. Collecting all eight Rare Orbs unlocks a final Temple Stage. Collecting the KONG letters counts towards the game’s 100% completion. Also, for them to count in a Stage, you must catch all four before hitting the end goal barrel.

Never go think that this game is too easy; when the Temple
stage comes around, it will remind you of your foolishness.

Most pieces are not too tricky to find, but some are
hidden in dastardly places.

In contrast, puzzle pieces don’t count towards completion; instead, your reward for gathering all 5 to 9 of them in a stage is unlocking a new file in the game’s Gallery, accessible from the main menu. Good luck, though; those tend to be hidden where they can easily be missed, and are much harder to collect. Unlike KONG letters, if you finish a stage but haven't found all the puzzle pieces, you keep the ones you've found and can go back for the remainder afterwards.

Gotta grab 'em all bananas, for an extra puzzle piece!

There’s always at least one puzzle piece hidden in a secret area, in which you’ll need to catch every other item in the room (banana, coin and life balloon alike) within 30 seconds for it to appear

The Banana Coins can be spent at Cranky’s shop for extra lives (trust me, you’ll need them), extra health, temporary invincibility… or Squawks, who will appear at the bottom of the screen and, well, squawk when you are near a puzzle piece. Just gotta find it. The last shop item is a special key that will open a path towards one more level in every world; it’s only mandatory if you want to play every level.

Hey, that money's gotta go somewhere!

For The Most Dedicated

What you need for 100% completion is: Beat every level and boss, and collect every KONG letter (since these unlock Temple stages, which are necessary towards this goal). That’s it.

So many stages here have surprises you do NOT expect until
you encounter them, after which it just becomes a job of
remembering every little tweak and trick and then aceing
the stage, since it will always play out exactly the same.

When a stage has been cleared once, you unlock a Time Trial mode. In this, you are tasked with clearing the stage as quickly as possible, with Bronze, Silver and Gold Medals as rewards. Brush up on your speedrunning skills, I guess!

And then! After you’ve beaten the game and reached 100%, you can go for 200% completion. For beating the bonus Temple, you gain access to Mirror Mode, in which you can replay every stage as Donkey Kong alone (no Diddy, therefore, no jetpack), and you only have one heart of health. Just in case this game wasn’t already goddamn hard enough!

World 1 is relatively simple throughout (though there are
hints of the difficulty that would follow)... and then, the
first Temple wipes the fucking floor with your ass.
Here, have the real taste of what's coming.

And yes, it IS a crazy hard platformer. The base stages, in general, aren’t too bad, though there are outliers and surprises in terms of difficulty. This is the type of platformer that greatly rewards knowing what’s coming next, though that also makes going through a stage the first time a grueling experience. This is especially true of the Temples which, due to the requirements to unlock them, assume that you’re at least somewhat skilled, and as a result are much harder. And not just by a little, either; more like, “Lose 50+ lives on the first run-through”. I’m not exaggerating. Oh, and yes, those stages must also be cleared in Mirror Mode afterwards…

Which means that if you want to do everything this game has to offer, you must beat every stage three times minimum, assuming you can get all KONG letters and puzzle pieces in one go, get the Gold time medal first try, and then also beat each Mirror version without any hassle. Yeah… I’m not doing that. I barely had the patience to finish the damn thing.

Final words

Instead of spinning octopi substituting for spike balls,
we have octopi thinking they're torpedoes. Sure, why not.

I don’t want to take anything away from this game as it is genuinely good. Its soundtrack takes songs from the original Donkey Kong Country and updates them for the new era. The game looks great and makes full use of the 3D aspect to add fun stuff perspective and distance tricks for the player. Every stage has tons of secrets, due to the necessity of hiding so many puzzle pieces. In spite of the difficulty, level design is great, with new platforming features being regularly introduced.

I appreciate that there are many options to help the player, in a big part thanks to Cranky’s shop. Donkey Kong has many moves he can use to move around or attack opponents – even blowing air can be useful! However, the risk of motion controls is them triggering when the console detects motion when it wasn’t the player’s intention – not that it has high odds of happening, but it can. Also, with pressure pads in many places, I know the game was designed primarily for DK in mind.

Of course, the minecart levels have their own boss.
I didn't think he was that tough, just kinda annoying.

I think I would have personally preferred if a single player could play as both DK and Diddy interchangeable, instead of Diddy being more of an add-on to DK than a full-fledged playable character as he is in multiplayer mode. I could see why that decision was taken, but still, it’s a minor disappointment. I also wished a little more focus had been given to the animal companions, since only Rambi returns, and only for 3 or 4 levels, tops. In both cases, maybe it’s nostalgia talking.

I do wish Rambi had been used more often. Something like
once per world would have been awesome.

The biggest thing, though, is undoubtedly the difficulty. Do not be fooled by the game’s looks or tone. It’s going to mess you up. Donkey Kong Country Returns is, no joke, one of the hardest platformers I have ever played. I usually make the joke “This game has infinite lives, and you’re gonna need them all”, because intensely tough platformers usually don’t bother with a Lives system. However, this game does, and has an upper limit of 99; which feels unnecessary once you consider that you can literally “buy” lives whenever you want, and that stages contain so many bananas scattered that you earn lives almost as quickly as you lose them. Between that and the Banana Juice, which grants DK several more hearts of health, there are plenty of reasons to spend those Banana Coins that are everywhere… On the plus side, it means that you’re probably never going to see the Game Over screen.

I really could have done without the Super Guide, which causes a pig to appear either at the start of a level or at any later checkpoints, when you have lost 10 lives in that level. Nintendo was big on those in that era, and though it can be helpful for younger/inexperienced players, to others (like me) it feels like a backhanded insult: “Here, you're clearly not good enough, let us help you out”.

For once, I didn't cover the entire plot of the game. But then
again, is there really much to say? We climb the island and
kick out the Tikis. In grandiose fashion, of course.

I did start this game with the intention of collecting all the puzzle pieces, but I quickly gave up and settled for 100% completion with the KONG letters only, which proved to be a challenge on its own. Some stages are freely explorable, allowing for easy backtracking, but others are designed in a very rigid manner where the only way is forwards. This is especially true of the grueling Temple stages, where every single mistake is costly, Diddy barrels only appear at the very beginning (if at all), there are no checkpoints, and healing hearts are ungodly rare. A point came where I just pulled through out of a desire to finish the damn thing, and my enjoyment greatly varied from one stage to the next. It toed the line between enjoyment and frustration.

Again, not to take anything away from this game’s quality, because it really is good. Just know what to expect of it, as it’s not gonna pull any punches.

See you soon for more!