bingewatches

Don’t call it a comeback. While Nintendo has kept DK’s barrel in the air since his debut in 1981 — reissuing his modern classics, making him playable in multiplayer games, throwing him a supporting role in the Mario movie — his 2025 is more of a Kongaissance ripped from the Matthew McConaughey playbook. Donkey Kong got the final major release of the Switch era. He’s poised to land his own spinoff blockbuster. He got a theme park! And now he’s back leading his own 3D adventure game, Donkey Kong Bananza, a true test of the Switch 2’s capabilities. 

Nintendo did not grant Polygon access to an early copy of Donkey Kong Bananza, so we’ll be playing right alongside the early Switch 2 adopters when it arrives on July 17. I couldn’t get too Cranky about it because (1) I’m more of a Funky and (2) by the time we heard the news, I was deep into a replay of where DK’s modern lineage really begins: 1994’s Donkey Kong Country, a great reminder that Donkey Kong has always been a star.

With very little to do on my Switch 2 besides getting owned in Mario Kart World Knockout Tour races by drivers coasting in 19th place, I turned to the Nintendo Switch Online service for instant Kong gratification in the annals of SNES history. It had been eons since I sat down to complete Donkey Kong Country, a game that Nintendo and its third-party partners have iterated on for 30 years. With roaming enemies, collectible hunts, destructible environments (hiding secrets, no doubt), Bananza stands to build on the formula that has defined Donkey Kong over those three decades. But I was thrilled to discover that the madcap 2D side-scroller developed by Rare, back when Nintendo had no clue what to do with the character, was a lean, mean test of platforming skillz. Forged in the fires of crude 3D modeling, the game plays smoother than ever — though relentless waves of obstacles shielded by imperfect hitboxes make it eternally frustrating. (In… a good way? I’d say yes, as long as you don’t hurl your Switch 2 into a wall.)

The Donkey Kong Country port on the SNES on NSO is the stripped original release without any of the mini-games or additional narrative beats packed into the Game Boy Advance port. From a story level, it’s total platforming nonsense — and better for it. In the opening seconds of Donkey Kong Country, our hairy hero drops into the Kongo Jungle’s “Jungle Hijinxs” and immediately gets to work, bopping Kremlings sans context. Diddy Kong eventually pops out of a barrel and joins the fray, with Cranky, Funky, and Candy Kong showing up between stages to quip and save progress. King K. Rool and his army of crocodiles are barely established — they’re just there to stomp to the curb. It’s a game lacking plot, nor is it in need of any. If you ever meet anyone who says they wanted more Candy Kong in Donkey Kong Country, alert your local authorities.

Fans of Rare’s Donkey Kong Country games know just how expansive the action became as the series evolved; Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest might be the pinnacle of running and jumping in every direction to unlock the full array of collectibles and secrets. The original Donkey Kong Country is much more rudimentary, and in a way, more primal. The solutions to getting from point A to B are clear, just a pain in the ass with limited lives. It feels like Rare being true to both Nintendo’s Mario methodology and offering stiff competition to Genesis breakouts like Aladdin — Donkey Kong Country can go from breezy to mind-bogglingly difficult in a single tire bounce. Impatience is punished.

Maybe it’s a symptom of every other game I play today being a Metroidvania, but the hell of Donkey Kong Country acrobatic left-to-right courses was a welcome alternative to directional freedom. My goals were very clear and the equation to solve them required lives I often didn’t have. Treetop levels where you barely have enough runway to sprint jump to safety. Minecart rides where being a micro-second off means plummeting to your death. Moving platform stages that require either dodging enemies that drop from the sky or knocking them out with barrels even though you can’t quite see them ahead of you. The sheer amount of monkeys who can throw shit at you, combined with Rare’s one-hit-kill approach, mean there are more jump scares in Donkey Kong Country than the most recent Resident Evil. (I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I would have finished Donkey Kong Country without the luxury of the NSO “Suspend Point” function — I am weak.)

Donkey Kong Country was lauded for its use of pre-rendered sprite and background graphics — leading to folks who got waaaay attached to the Rare version of DK — but this time around, I was struck more by the lighting and texture Rare layered over the levels. A sunset might dim the eye-popping colors of the tropical landscapes. Blizzard conditions make you squint in the already frenzied barrel-blasting of Gorilla Glacier. “Torchlight Trouble” only gives you the narrow beam of a flashlight, carried by a parrot partner, in which to take out Klumps. Evil is always lurking in the shadows. It’s nuts. 

Completing Donkey Kong Country is not finishing Donkey Kong Country. On a run where I simply wanted to survive every level and defeat King K. Rool, I netted about 55% completion. That’s because Donkey Kong Country is for secret-hunting sickos. As those who have thrown themselves off every bridge to discover hidden-level barrels will tell you, achieving 101% (not a typo) in the game requires dedication and exercised reflexes. Some levels lead you right to the secrets with a trail of bananas. Others would be classified as cruel and unusual punishment in multiple states. If you really want those Ks, Os, Ns, and Gs, you have to work.

After the Donkey Kong games of the 1980s, Rare found a way to redefine simplicity with Donkey Kong Country. The company’s subsequent 2D games all had to beef up abilities and complicate the enemies as the side-scrolling opened up. Its only real 3D Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong 64 game, veered closer to a collect-a-thon to fill expansive maps — and Nintendo’s own Bananza should share a lot of its DNA (but hopefully be much more successful).

Donkey Kong Country is the basics — elaborate, vicious basics. Zig here, zag there, duck, roll, jump. A speedrunner’s dream, a cozy gamer’s anxiety attack. Playing it in 2025 is closer to navigating a motion-triggered tripwire grid than a platformer. A Donkey Kong game as that scene from Entrapment where Catherine Zeta-Jones narrowly avoids letting her butt touch a laser. (Please, no Candy Kong jokes). If Bananza can capture an ounce of DK’s real legacy, testing your penchant for pressing A at exactly right time, it might have a chance at living up to one of Switch 2’s current best games, even if that game is over 30 years old.