Following the success, Nintendo purchased a large minority stake in Rare, which became a prominent second-party developer for Nintendo during the late 1990s.ĭonkey Kong Country re-established Donkey Kong as a popular Nintendo franchise and is credited for helping Nintendo win the console war of the 1990s and maintaining the SNES's popularity into the fifth generation of video game consoles.

With 9.3 million copies sold worldwide, it is the third-bestselling SNES game and the bestselling Donkey Kong game. Donkey Kong Country received several year-end accolades and set the record for the fastest-selling video game at the time. Its quality and design were favourably compared to the Super Mario series. It was released in November 1994 to acclaim critics hailed its visuals as groundbreaking and praised its gameplay and music. It was the first Donkey Kong game neither produced nor directed by the series' creator Shigeru Miyamoto, though he contributed design ideas.įollowing its announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1994, Donkey Kong Country was highly anticipated and backed by a major marketing campaign that cost $16 million in America alone. Donkey Kong Country was inspired by the Super Mario series and was one of the first home console games to feature pre-rendered graphics, achieved through a compression technique that converted 3D models into SNES sprites with little loss of detail. Rare assembled 12 developers to work on Donkey Kong Country over 18 months. Nintendo sought a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993) and commissioned Rare to revive the dormant Donkey Kong franchise. In multiplayer modes, two players work cooperatively or race each other.Īfter developing Nintendo Entertainment System games in the 1980s, Rare, a British studio founded by Tim and Chris Stamper, purchased Silicon Graphics workstations to render 3D models. They collect items, ride minecarts and animals, defeat enemies and bosses, and find secret bonus stages. The single-player traverses 40 side-scrolling levels as they jump between platforms and avoid obstacles. As a reboot of Nintendo's Donkey Kong franchise, it follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they set out to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Donkey Kong Country is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

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