Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest Review

Rare is a company made famous during the SNES days because of the advancements they made graphically in their games. These enhancements helped Nintendo push the SNES to its limits and made it possible to push back the release of the N64. During those days, Rare was one of Nintendo’s best assets, since all of their games were best sellers and are now well known by nearly all gamers around the world.

Nintendo’s Donkey Kong character hadn’t been used for some time when Rare decided to bring him back to life. Using the latest in technology, they were able to render him in 3D but then they had those 3D characters and environments turned into 2D to be used on the hardware as it was not powerful enough to display detailed 3D characters.

Donkey Kong Country was one of the first console games to use that technique if I remember correctly, and at that time people really believed they were playing a next generation game on a current generation console. Rare then kept releasing sequels to the first game at a really fast rate until late 1996 when the N64 was released.

Being a huge fan of those games, I actually bought all 3 the day they were released. I played those games to death when I was a kid and managed to find every secret in the games and finished them countless times. Now that they are released on the GBA though, I can play them anywhere I want so I’ve decided to buy them a second time and enjoy them some more.

Not everyone though has played these games when they were first released in the mid 90s so I think it was a really wise idea to release them again on the GBA as the DKC games are some of the best platformers to ever be released. And no matter how old they get, they still compare to what is being released today.

My favorite one of the trilogy has and will always be DKC2. Why? First of all, I really liked the characters as I thought Donkey Kong was big and slow while Diddy and his girlfriend Dixie were faster and more agile. Secondly, the game had better looking graphics and the environments were a lot cooler than in the first DKC and I think that the series peaked in DKC2. It was a challenging game and it brought many new concepts not found in the original that were then carried over to the 3rd one.

The goal of the game is simple: you have to complete every stage in the game to get to the last boss and defeat him to save Donkey Kong. Simple? Maybe, but if you really want to complete the game 100% (or 102% in this case) you’ll have to find every secret in the game. You have to collect different kinds of coins in order to get to secret stages and, in the end, defeat King k. Rool for a second time in the game.

Those coins are scattered in the stages in bonus games that are hidden literally everywhere. Some are behind walls, others in hidden barrels. You’ll really have to take your time sometimes and search for all the secret locations as some can be difficult to find.

Added in the GBA version are new minigames and hidden stuff. You can find pictures to complete your very own DKC photo album as well as race and find new coins that weren’t available in the original version. You race as Expresso (an ostrich from the first game) and you can upgrade her by finding golden feathers scattered in every stage of the game.

There are also other ones like a helicopter minigame that has been added to Funky’s place and I found it challenging at times though most of them are easy to complete. There’s also a bug catching minigame and, finally, there is one that is accessible from the main menu. It’s a time attack race that you can perform in any stage of the game. The goal is, of course, to finish the stage as fast as possible. While there isn’t really any reason to do so, if you do play with a friend it can be fun for a while. These minigames don’t add much to the overall experience but it’s nice to see that Rare took the time to add a few things to convince people who had bought the original to give it a second try.

As far as 2D gaming goes, I still think it’s one of the best looking games ever. The pre-rendered backgrounds still look amazing and the game has really aged well. Soundwise it seems that a few changes were made. The music is exactly the same though the GBA speakers aren’t that great, but some of the sound effects were changed for some reason or it seems like it. It doesn’t affect the game at all and most won’t notice but I thought some of them sounded odd and were not as good as the original though it might be that hearing them in the GBA speakers made them sound different.

So while I know that there are always plenty of GBA games being released and that most of them are new concepts, I still think that you should give this 10 year old port a try, especially if you haven’t played the original. It’s fun, fast, challenging and it offers lots of replayability as well as the possibility to play with a friend. Definitely worth the purchase as it will make a nice addition to your portable collection.