| Donkey Kong Country | |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) | Platform |
| Developer(s) |
|
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Platform(s) | |
| First release | Donkey Kong Country 18 November 1994 |
| Latest release | Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze 14 February 2014 |
Donkey Kong Country[a] is a video game series created by Rare and published by Nintendo. It is the central series of the greater Donkey Kong franchise and follows the adventures of the gorilla Donkey Kong and his Kong companions as they battle enemies, such as the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings. Donkey Kong Country consists of eight side-scrolling platform games developed by Rare and Retro Studios for Nintendo's home and handheld game consoles.
The original Donkey Kong Country, released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1994, was the first major Donkey Kong game since the unsuccessful Donkey Kong 3 (1983).
History edit
Conception and first game (1992–1994) edit
Around 1992, Rare Ltd, a British game development studio established by the brothers Tim and Chris Stamper, purchased Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) Challenge workstations with Alias rendering software to render 3D models. Though they had purchased the workstations to produce games for the Nintendo 64, which was in development at the time, Rare discovered it was possible to use them with the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). They developed a compression technique, Advanced Computer Modelling (ACM), that converted 3D models to pre-rendered SNES sprites with little loss of detail.
Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln learned of Rare's SGI experiments during a trip to Europe in 1993. At the time, Around this time, Nintendo was embroiled in a console war with Sega, whose Mega Drive competed with the SNES. Nintendo wanted a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993), which featured graphics by Disney animators. After impressing Nintendo with a demonstration, Tim Stamper—inspired by Mortal Kombat's use of digitised footage in place of hand-drawn art—suggested developing a platform game that used pre-rendered graphics. Nintendo granted the Stampers permission to use the Donkey Kong intellectual property.[1] The franchise had been largely dormant since the unsuccessful Donkey Kong 3 (1983),[2][3] so Nintendo figured that licensing it posed minimal risk.[1]
SNES sequels and handheld games (1995–1997) edit
Hiatus and ports (2000–2005) edit
Retro Studios games (2010–2018) edit
Story and characters edit
Gameplay edit
Music edit
Other media edit
Reception and legacy edit
Notes edit
References edit
- ^ a b Waugh, Eric-Jon Rossel (30 August 2006). "A short history of Rare". Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on 15 October 2016. Retrieved 17 July 2017.
- ^ Parish, Jeremy. "10 interesting things about Donkey Kong". 1Up.com. Archived from the original on 23 June 2012. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
- ^ Parish, Jeremy (21 November 2019). "Donkey Kong Country turns 25: Gaming's biggest bluff". USGamer. Archived from the original on 20 November 2020. Retrieved 19 May 2020.