Donkey Kong Country (1994 video game)/YMMV
These things about Donkey Kong Country (1994 video game) are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.
- Best Boss Ever: King K. Rool. After a game full of easy and predictable boss fights, this tank of a crocodile puts you through a grueling three-phase slugfest where he keeps pulling out different tricks the longer the fight goes on, such as tossing his crown at you like a boomerang, dropping cannonballs on your head, crushing you under his girth, faking his defeat with a fake credits scene... it's a tough fight, but not overly so, and you're going to have fun every step of the way.
- Breather Boss: Neither Really Gnawty or Master Necky Sr. are hard per se, but they put up way more of a fight than the boss sandwiched between them: Dumb Drum. All you have to do is kill the waves of enemies he summons (with each wave only consisting of two enemies) and dodge his easily telegraphed ground-pound attacks, and he'll explode. Cue victory animation.
- Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Donkey Kong may be the star of the show, but most people tend to play almost exclusively as Diddy. It isn't that DK is bad, but aside from being able to kill Klumps, Krushas, and Armies with a single stomp, Diddy outclasses him in every other regard due to being faster and controlling slightly, but noticeably better.
- Crowning Music of Awesome: Gangplank Galleon, which starts as a fun, happy-go-lucky pirate jig that's catchy, but not exactly fit for the final boss fight... and then comes the shift into SNES-style hard rock, just in time for K. Rool's fight to really kick into high gear. Now you've got a theme perfect for the final showdown against the bastard that stole your bananas!
- Aquatic Ambience is a soothing, beautiful tune that plays for the underwater levels, and can only be described as pure bliss in audial form.
- Not to be confused with the band of the same name, Fear Factory is a thrilling piece full of industrial grit that wouldn't sound out of place in Goldeneye.
- Demonic Spiders:
- The Rock Krocs of Stop & Go Station. They're creepy-looking, lightning quick, and invincible. The only way to keep them at bay is to hit a special barrel, but the Krocs quickly spring into action mere seconds after you hit the barrels meaning that anything less than perfect play almost guarantees that you're going to take a hit, especially near the end where swarms of these things are congregating. Is it any wonder that there's a hidden shortcut to bypass most of them?
- The Grey Krushas in Platform Perils are a pain, too. It's not that they're necessarily hard to kill since you're always given a barrel to throw at them, but the issue lies in the fact that you can not let anything happen to the barrel before you throw it at them. Sometimes you have to escort a barrel around enemies that can easily break it, other times you're coming at the Krusha from a weird angle, but if you miss your throw or waste your barrel, you will die because the Krushas take up the entirety of the small platforms they're patrolling, and Diddy and DK alike will bounce off them to their deaths if they jump on them.
- Ensemble Darkhorse: Diddy Kong may play second banana to Donkey Kong but he's just as popular, if not moreso due to being a spunky little guy who controls better than his buddy. Not only would he be the star of the sequel, but he'd go on to make a ton of appearances in both this series and all sorts of Mario spinoffs.
- Plenty of gamers also found Cranky Kong's grumpy Jerkass attitude to be hilarious. Unsurprisingly, he'd go on to become a series mainstay after this.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Cranky Kong's attitude as a jaded, grumpy old gamer who sneers at newer games and their players while yearning for the good ol' days has aged incredibly well, and only gets funnier as the years go by thanks to him predicting the rise of nostalgic elitists who refuse to give newer games a chance.
- Nightmare Fuel: The game over screen has been known to scare, or at the very least creep out kids thanks to the bleak tone of seeing the lovable Kongs all beaten up and hopeless, and the dark background and somber music don't help. To older gamers though, it's more depressing than anything.
- Scrappy Mechanic: While it can be fun to blitz through levels with Expresso's breakneck speed and fluttering, his inability to jump on and hurt enemies can really hamper the enjoyment of using him.
- Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Donkey Kong Country still holds up as a solid platformer, but it's harder to appreciate than the games that came after it since it's a lot more simplistic and bare bones than, say, Donkey Kong Country 2 or Tropical Freeze.
- Squick: Poison Pond. The level isn't too gross at first since it's just a green, slightly foggy palette swap of the beautiful water levels... and then you realize that you're swimming in a lake that's been desecrated by industrial pollution. Thank goodness for cartoonish video game logic being in effect, because God only knows what kinds of carcinogens, toxins, and other disgusting things DK and Diddy could be swimming in...
- That One Boss: Queen B. is a lot tougher in the GBA version thanks to her newfound Flunky Boss status. After taking a hit, she summons a few Zingers that you'll have to kill before you can hurt her, and they fly around in perfect sync with her until you get rid of them. Their patterns become a lot harder to dodge as the fight goes on, meaning that if you can't get rid of at least enough bees to comfortably dodge, prepare for pain.
- That One Level: While this game's the easiest of the SNES trilogy, it still has some really tough levels.
- While opinions vary on where the game's difficulty spike truly sets in, a lot of people agree on it happening around Snow Barrel Blast. Whether you've been struggling with the early mid-to-mid game levels or not, the poor snowstorm-induced visibility, extended barrel cannon sequences that require perfect aim to avoid instant death, and a plethora of annoyingly-placed Zingers buzzing around all make for a nasty kick in the balls. Thankfully there is a shortcut to bypass most of the level, but it's very well-hidden.
- While a lot of the levels in Kremcroc Industries are a lot of fun, Oil Drum Alley and Blackout Basement are still tough. The former has a lot of tricky platforming across oil drums that ignite and burn out in set patterns across wide stretches of bottomless pits, only for the patterns to change mid-level and throw players off. And as for the latter? Platforming that is just as tricky as Oil Drum Alley, but substitute burning oil drums for the lights constantly switching off and stranding you in pitch-black darkness. Enemies and bottomless pits alike are perfectly hidden in the darkness, which means that you'll have to play very slowly and carefully lest you die over and over again.
- Fittingly, the Chimp Caverns have plenty of hard levels to wear down the player before the fight with K. Rool. You've got Tanked Up Trouble, which has you having to grab barrels of fuel to keep a mobile platforming moving, and missing just one will more often than not cause the platform to run out of steam and drop you to your death. And that's just the first level, another nasty highlight is Loopy Lights, which has the player hit the barrels from Stop & Go Station to light up a dark mineshaft full of nasty platforming segments and annoying jumping Klaptraps that are good at catching the player mid-leap. And finishing things off is Platforming Perils, where you have to escort barrels around annoying collapsing platforms and kill every Grey Krusha in your path with there being absolutely no room for error: either kill them, or die because they prevent you from jumping onto your next platform.