Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

Released on November 20, 1995 by Nintendo, and developed by Rare, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest follows the original with more challenging 2D platforming action.

Donkey Kong Country changed what seemed possible. The Super Nintendo, three-years into its American lifespan, could suddenly pump out 3D graphics and CD-quality sound like your home computer. The Super Nintendo had already given its owners a seemingly infinite amount of awesome games: Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Mario Kart, Star Fox, Earthbound, Super Metroid, Final Fantasy VI...the list could go on for pages. Now, what were these new wonders? Would the Super Nintendo continue delivering new joys forever?

It should actually be full of Super Nintendo games!

Actually, yes, it would, though Rare's Donkey Kong Country games serve as a sort of victory lap, featuring some of the greatest graphics and music of the Super Nintendo's original lifespan (Obviously, I only mean"forever" in the sense that, with the amount of incredible Super Nintendo games, a retro-gamer can find joy in the system for an entire lifetime).
A year after Donkey Kong Country's release, Rare returned with the 1995 sequel, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest.  Some people accused the original Donkey Kong Country of having less than stellar gameplay, and of not being challenging enough. Those people are both wrong and crazy, but Rare took their words to heart and created a tighter, more difficult game for the sequel.

Literally everything in this picture can kill you, including the token and bananas, which are just siren's songs.

The first Donkey Kong Country game features 2D platforming action, giving the player control of Donkey and Diddy Kong as they traverse diverse environments, collecting bananas like Mario does coins (100 bananas equals an extra life), among other items, and progressing through levels on world maps in order to reach and defeat a final boss, in that case, K Rool the crocodile. The original features challenging jumps, timing challenges where the player must launch from moving barrel to moving barrel, animal transformations, and boss fights. If you get hit once, you die. Thankfully, the game features a tag-team element, where the player can smash a liberally-scattered DK Barrel, freeing whichever Kong they aren't using. That Kong follows whichever one the player is using, and the player can switch between the Kongs at will. Get hit and your Kong still dies, but you immediately take control of the unused Kong...of course, if you then get hit with that Kong, your life is over, just like when your middle school girlfriend/boyfriend broke up with you for a cheerleader/jock/cheerleader jock.
Every level features a save barrel at the mid-point, and the letters "K," "O," "N," and "G," hidden across the level in order--get all four letters, and the player is rewarded with an extra life.

Then lands on the weird porcupine and dies.

Donkey Kong Country 2 follows, but adds several wrinkles to this formula. The first is that Donkey Kong is out. The first game featured a banana-pilfering K Rool...this one features a Donkey Kong-pilfering K Rool. This time around, Diddy Kong takes center stage with his girlfriend Dixie Kong--I am assuming, no relation--in order to save the titular ape.  I don't like how that previous sentence contained both references to incest and the phrase "titular ape." I really need to clean this blog up.
Like its predecessor, Diddy's Kong Quest features animal enemies that can be vanquished by jumping, or by each Kong's basic attack, in Diddy's case cartwheeling, in Dixie's spinning. Diddy also runs faster and jumps higher than Dixie, but Dixie can use her hair to glide after she jumps. Dixie's gliding is beneficial for not only long jumps, but jumps where precision is more valued. The player will need this precision, because--second wrinkle--with more difficult jumps, and more spikey, lava-coated, stingy, death-bringing objects and enemies to avoid, DKC 2 is indeed more difficult than its predecessor.

Wait, is there anything in this game that doesn't kill you?

Those "touch me and you die" enemies, like bees, can only be avoided, or felled by other means.
For instance, as in the original, Diddy and Dixie (well, Donkey, in the original) can toss barrels they find at enemies, and at select moments, can either ride or turn into an animal helper. There's Rambi the rhino, who can charge and ram through enemies, Enguarde the sword fish, who can swim swiftly and skewer enemies, Bocephus the flying squirrel, who can bite enemies and give them rabies, Squawks the parrot, who can fly and spit Kola nuts at enemies, and Squitter the web-spitting spider, among several others. I made one of those up.
Just like in the first game, using these Kong friends is a blast, particularly the hard-charging Rambi.

That rat's gonna feel it in the morning.

Each level also contains a very-well hidden "DK Coin," and several bonus barrels featuring short challenges, in order for the Kongs to earn bonus coins. These are needed to access the game's final world.
Each of the game's seven worlds feature five + levels, and a respective space for four other, deservedly less-beloved Kong's who Diddy and Dixie can meet for various ends. There's Wrinkly Kong, who can save the player's progress (for a price) and give gameplay tips, Cranky, who gives level secrets (also for a price), Swanky, who charges the Kong's to play a quiz game to earn extra lives, Beatrice Kong, who berates the Kongs for their shockingly subpar skills at karaoke, and Funky, who can fly the player to previously played worlds (yep, that costs, too!). Not all of those are real.
These Kongs must be paid in tokens for their services. These tokens can be collected from all of the game's levels (and they "respawn" every time the player dies, making it not entirely difficult to acquire them).
This leads to the one patch of scabies in Diddy's Kong Quest's fur: at very select moments, the saving system feels a little mean.

I wish I only had one patch of scabies in my fur.

Say you've been struggling to beat one of the game's bosses, because, like Bocephus the flying squirrel, Donkey Kong Country 2 doesn't play around. Finally, you beat that boss and move on to the next world. You only have one life left, and zero tokens (there's none to find in a boss battle). You make it to the next world, but there's no save point in sight (you can only see up to the level you've progressed to). Hands shaking, you fight through this challenging first level, and somehow, miraculously, do not die. However, when you move on to the next level, horror of horrors, one of Wrinkly Kong's Kong Kolleges are nowhere in sight. You can't yet save. You've got to beat another level. Somehow, you make it near the end of this level, and you haven't died once. You even get to the letter "G." Surely, the end is at hand. The level's final jump is incredibly challenging, and yet somehow you make it. Up pops the Kong Kollege. You enter to save your game. That's when you realize it: you only have one token. Wrinkly charges two to save. You cannot save your game. You re-enter the previous level to find a token. You die. Game over. Now you get to start back on the previous world, at the spot before you had beaten the boss. Crap.

I'll juggle for a save!

Donkey Kong Country 2 exists in a strange realm between two very different gaming eras. The first featured games that had to be exceedingly difficult to stretch out gameplay, because technological limitations meant they could neither be lengthly nor saved. The latter, current era, mostly features less challenging, longer games that allow the player to save at any moment. Donkey Kong Country 2 is difficult, fairly long, and makes saving in the earlier portions of each world a challenge. As much as all that dying and starting over at a boss in the previous world is a remnant of the previous era to increase gameplay time, DKC 2 embraces second era game-stretching techniques, as well. If you haven't guessed, that technique is forcing you to find all those DK and bonus coins in order to truly finish the game. You will most likely only undertake this quest at the end of the game, because by then it has become a necessity. All of the save points have been opened by then, the game informs you of which levels still have unfound items, and world-to-world travel is free, making this portion of the game thoroughly modern. While Donkey Kong Country 2 is incredibly fun and features brilliantly designed levels, once the player reaches the latter half of the coin quest, just a bit of fatigue sets in, just like with all of the Youtube-conditioned readers skimming through this right now.

Here, look at the pretty picture.

Thankfully, there are factors to offset this fatigue, namely, that the game looks absolutely incredible, and sounds phenomenal (and in the case of you reading, that the vending machine in the break room has Doritos). The graphics were made by the same Silicon Graphics workstations as the original DKC, but here they are even more highly refined and detailed. For instance, the Kong Letters, once a static item on the screen, are now fully three-dimensional spinning objects. Colors are bright and beautiful, the palette a little more yellow, orange, blue, and purple, than the heavy green, white, and red of the original. Diddy and Dixie are fantastically rendered, as are their animal sidekicks and enemies. The backgrounds are evocative and imaginative, as are environmental details like fog, clouds,wind, rain, lava, and water. However, one thing outshines the game's graphics: David Wise's incredible soundtrack.

"Hot Head Bop" in your head right now, along with your usual thoughts of desperation and loneliness.

Donkey Kong Country 2's music has likely been covered by more artists than any other video game's soundtrack. Wise's high-quality samples and sounds, put to work on his incredible compositions, are a feast for the ears. It's nearly impossible, even years after playing the game, to look at one of the stages and not have its specific music pop into your head. This music is highly atmospheric, percussion heavy, with a strange naturism unique to the DKC game series. "Hot Head Bop," "Stickerbush Symphony,""Forest Interlude," these titles are now legendary, even eclipsing the first DKC's "Aquatic Ambiance." If Donkey Kong Country 2 was an otherwise terrible game, the soundtrack would still make it worth playing.

Glad they let you use Enguarde in this level, instead of Bocephus.

Thankfully, Donkey Kong Country 2 is not a terrible game. It is an excellent, near perfect one, featuring only the minor flaws I described above. Any fan of 2D platforming games who hasn't yet played it should take a deep look at their priorities...gaming priorities, I mean, not like, neglecting your family priorities. Also, you should bring a friend along for the experience (playing the game, not neglecting your family). Like the original, DKC 2 features a two-player cooperative mode, with each player controlling one of the two respective Kongs. The players can tag each other in, or take over the gameplay once the first player has perished. Just like in the first game, this mode is awesome. The whole game is awesome. With the slightly higher production values, the greater challenge in not only collecting more items, but navigating greater obstacles, and the incredible replay value due to all of the above, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest is a can't miss title.

Yes, I'm bragging. No, that game clock doesn't count the 20 extra hours I spent dying.

November 20, 1995 Nintendo/Rare

Graphics: 10.0/10.0

Sound: 10.0/10.0

Gameplay: 9.5/10.0

Lasting Value: 9.5/10.0


Overall: 9.8/10.0