Donkey Kong Country is a game that I have very fond memories of and really loved playing when I was growing up. The game came out in 1994 on the Super Nintendo, and for its day, it had really amazing graphics. All the backgrounds were pre-rendered and looked very detailed, the character art was great (the sprites all looked like claymation in a way), and the soundtrack was simply amazing. Today, some 22 years or so later, the game holds up very well and is still a lot of fun to play.

Here, I’ve decided to do a casual, fun, and low-stress playthrough of the game in what will likely be two videos. In this first one here, I go through the Kongo Jungle, Monkey Mines, and Vine Valley – the first three of six total regions that need to be completed. I decided to go very light on the save-states and to play the game with a USB SNES-style controller, so this is a pretty pure run of the game. I’m also enhancing the visual quality a bit through the emulator I’m using: resampling the graphics by a factor of four, adding in some high quality filters that bring out the colors and make for crisper visuals, and rendering it at 1920×1080 @ 60 FPS. It should look very nice!

Next time around, we’ll visit the second half of the game and then face off with King K. Rool, so that’ll be something to look forward to, but in the meantime, I hope you have a blast revisiting this classic with me!

As always, feel free to subscribe and stay tuned – more fun is coming! 🙂