I won’t mince my words here: the last month has been a bit underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some solid titles that I finally got to finish and everything’s been interesting enough to where I still wrote about it, but nothing’s quite blown my mind recently. Flywrench might have set the bar a bit too high, for better or for worse. So, it looks like it’s time for another nostalgia reset; what better way to get myself back in gear than to go back to the source? Consider this write-up a follow up to my original Donkey Kong Country piece; since I think I’ve fleshed out obstacle escalation theory a ton by this point, I’ll focus more on differences between the two games this time around.

There’s an old Eurogamer review round-up that sort of laments the lack of differences between the original DKC and Diddy’s Kong Quest, referring to the sequel as a victim of “lack of ambition.” I honestly don’t agree with this assessment; Donkey Kong Country 2 preserves much of the original design philosophy for sure, but the game’s levels are often structured so differently with so many new ideas that I find it quite baffling to describe the sequel as “not terribly imaginative.” If anything, there were so many new ideas that many of them led to a lot of dissonance regarding expectations of flow and functionality between the two games. I’ll try to go over as many of the outstanding features as I can, but first, we should address the change in scope that seems to have thrown off so many of us, myself included.

In a retrospective Retro Gamer interview, lead designer Gregg Mayles describes this best: “If we had made it speed runs again then there wouldn’t have been much scope for us to go anywhere different with it.” The focus then, shifted from a speedrunning-friendly momentum-based platformer to a platformer that emphasized exploration, all while still emphasizing fluidity through interchangeable moving parts. Mayles later adds, “[they] wanted to maintain the same ‘go first’ gameplay where all the barrels and baddies were set up so if you went first time – or got the timing right – then the levels were very fluid, but I also wanted to add something new to it. So the first one was very linear, and the second one introduced exploration.”

This is perhaps the most pronounced improvement from the original to the sequel: secret finding and completion now feels significantly more intuitive and fulfilling. While I never personally had much of an issue with exploration in the original, I have to admit that there isn’t much of an incentive trying to find bonus rooms outside of collectibles that all lead to extra lives and the thrill of stumbling upon treasure troves through tougher maneuvers. Diddy’s Kong Quest, however, shows far more focus: the usual spelling and slot minigames alongside treasure troves have been replaced with timed challenges that actively test players’ abilities as par the level’s themes: for example, the bonus area in the first half of Screech’s Sprint requires players to switch between characters to balance out cartwheel jumps and hovering, a bonus area in the windy Gusty Glade requires players to time jumps across dragonflies while being boosted by a current, and so on so forth. Moreover, secret entrances and bonus barrels are more clearly marked with elements such as stray bananas, enemy clusters guarding paths, platforms that are just off-screen, and even banana arrows redirecting players to areas of interest or spelling out button prompts to supercharge animal buddies/team throw. One particularly clever example comes in the level “Target Terror”, where an enemy throwing barrels at you in the car ahead drops to a track below the main track if you decide to make the jump, signifying for future runs that there’s probably something hidden below.

Another improvement towards secret finding comes in the form of cannonballs that have to be carried across segments of the level to activate a cannon into potential bonus sections; it’s a welcome change since it pools the difficulty into the task of ferrying the cannonball while grappling/avoiding enemies inbetween, instead of attempting to create difficulty via obscuring the bonus area entrance. Finally, the reward is also greatly enhanced: instead of more lives to throw into the fray, you receive Kremcoins that can be used to unlock guarded golden barrels by Klubba and access tougher levels in the Lost World to achieve that true ending and snag that sweet, sweet 102% completion. Again, I never found the original limited exploration in DKC to be much of a detriment, but I nevertheless believe that the exploration loop feels much more fleshed out and substantial this time around.

This layer of calculation behind the mechanics translates to practically every single one of the mechanics in the sequel, starting with the characters themselves. It’d be easy to write off Dixie Kong as a Diddy Kong clone, considering that their weight and physics are about the same and Dixie was originally created by iterating upon Diddy’s design in the first place. However, let’s consider Donkey Kong’s value as a controllable character in the original; outside of being a heavier character to one hit KO Armys, Krushas, and Klumps by jumping (Diddy must generally use barrels and cartwheels to defeat these enemies, or in the case of Krushas, often outright avoid them), as well as the abilities to hand slap the ground (not really useful in the original outside of collecting some stray items with no hints and defeating stunned Rock Krocs in one level) and holding the barrel directly above his head, Donkey Kong mostly serves as the character you play when you don’t feel like risking the more agile Diddy Kong to potential death. Diddy’s quicker cartwheel and faster jump means that he is the weapon of choice for most of the platforming in the long expanses of the original DKC, and Donkey Kong is often there just as a “back-up” second life.

In Diddy’s Kong Quest, Dixie and Diddy are stratified enough to where your second character is more than just a representation that you can take a second hit. Diddy is of course, still a pleasure to control thanks to his quick cartwheel jump providing a “low and long” form of movement, and holding the barrel directly in front gives Diddy a quick form of defense for approaching enemies. Dixie, on the other hand, snags Donkey Kong’s utility of holding the barrel directly above the character’s head and utilizing overhead throws with a bit extra. All of her moves involve her long blonde ponytail, including her ability to hover in mid air by holding down Y to slow her descent and reach dangling collectibles while more carefully maneuvering past flying obstacles. As a result, it might be easier to think of Diddy as the better character for the classic speedy platforming experience, while Dixie is not quite as agile but is extremely helpful for spanning larger gaps and taking your time while ascending/descending vertically.

Moreover, the sequel also places additional emphasis upon having both characters available to you at once. Most of this comes in the form of the team-throw: you can pick up your partner at any time and angle the throw to reach collectibles and platforms/hooks that would normally be impossible to jump to. Additionally, since Diddy and Dixie are both lightweights, Krunchas can only be defeated with the team-throw outside of barrel usage and animal buddies, since jumping onto Krunchas will just result in Diddy/Dixie bouncing off. Finally, certain barrel cannons are marked with either Diddy or Dixie’s face, meaning that you will need to either be using that particular character or throwing that particular character into the cannon to be launched. Having both characters on your screen has an inherently deeper meaning than just possessing another hit; not only will you need to pick the correct character for the best approach, you must often have both on-hand to maximize opportunities with the team-throw and be allowed access to character-coded barrels.

Regarding character control, animal buddies have also been greatly buffed. The original was admittingly a bit more wishy-washy towards usage of animal buddies; while they were intended as a power-up, levels had to nevertheless be designed without explicit usage of them, resulting in many situations where animal buddies at best felt like extraneous helpers that could sometimes help unlock secret areas and provided another hit point of health, and at worst feeling like an active detriment (ex: Rambi’s awkward size and maneuverability in Manic Mincers, or Espresso’s inconsistency safely walking over Klap Traps in Orangutan Gang). As seen previously, animal buddies like Rambi and Engarde can throw out attack hitboxes to break fake walls for secrets, but Diddy’s Kong Quest goes beyond that and often sculpts entire playgrounds for animal buddy abilities, going as far as to include animal buddy transformation barrels for particular sections.

Toxic Tower is a great example of this in action: you start with a very open and wide section that requires very high and lengthy jumps, often on Zingers, to scale the initial heights, as per Rattly the Snake’s speciality with the charged superjump. Then, the stage transitions to a more enclosed series of chambers and tight passageways, with tons of vertical navigation and roaming enemies that require Squawk’s flight and egg shots to clear. Finally, the stage’s final stretch is a straight shot up to the exit, forcing the player to rely upon Squitter the Spider to quickly create temporary web platforms to scale up the chute while pursued by the ever-rising toxic waste. As an addendum to maintaining composure with the animal buddy, “No Animal Signs” will force the Kongs to abandon that particular playstyle while often rewarding players that manage to get that far with their animal buddy intact with a reward, such as banana bunches, extra lives, or in some cases, barrels that can be used (and only appear in that particular fashion) to open up yet another secret area. The end result is yet another design tool that’s been pushed to its furthest extents so far for more varied level structures, broadly increasing the DKC toolkit while maintaining the same core principles.

On that note, Donkey Kong Country 2’s most defining experimental level design trend is perhaps its enthusiasm to dabble with verticality. While the original only had one primarily vertical level in Slip Slide Ride, the sequel happily mingles with scaling heights every other level or so, with some levels that resemble a spiraling zig-zag with interspersed horizontal platforming like Windy Well while others commit hard to a full scalar climb such as the aforementioned Toxic Tower. It seems antithetical at first to design so many vertical levels in a game that’s practically mastered its horizontal traversal with the fast cartwheel jump for maintaining momentum, but in my opinion, it’s simply a different language of platforming that builds off the same organic obstacle escalation and fluid movement, and with that different language comes a different set of tools to express the language more fluently. Skyhooks, barrel cannons, animal buddy abilities such as Rattly’s superjump and Squitter’s temporary web platforms, climbable ropes and chains, and even certain water levels that experiment with the changing height of the liquid and interspersing dry land platforms are just some of the many level elements that are utilized to aid ascending player movement, alongside the usual hazards to spur players into action such as the aforementioned rising toxic goo in Toxic Tower and the bramble walls encountered while flapping about with Squawks. Even within this new territory, DKC 2 subverts its own set expectations with two levels that force players to travel downwards, in the form of Parrot Chute Panic (which has players slowly descend a Zinger infested hive with the help of purple budget Squawks) and Black Ice Blitz (which as a foil to Parrot Chute Panic, goads players into quickly descending a slippery icy chasm to avoid being swarmed by grounded foes). Though it is easy to criticize the sequel for taking such a seemingly drastically different approach to level design, I do believe that Diddy’s Kong Quest deserves to stand on its own merits and absolutely presents a more calculated and methodical, yet just as focused platforming experience.

What stands out to me as this game’s greatest strength is that no idea is ever repeated verbatim, both within the game and with respect to the original DKC. A great way to illustrate these wrinkles that are used to diversify level navigation is through examination of the three minecart levels, which have now been rethemed as roller coasters. Target Terror has Diddy and Dixie leaping between skull cars to hit green checkmark barrels while avoiding red X barrels to open up closed gates and avoid closing already open ones. Meanwhile, Rickety Race recontextualizes the roller coaster ride as a straight up competition, incentivizing players to defeat and bypass enemy skull cars to eventually stomp the goon in first place and snag the level’s DK coin. Finally, Haunted Hall introduces the timer into the equation, and requires the player to collide into + barrels while avoiding – barrels to maintain timer longevity and avoid certain doom from the pursuing Kackles. At the end of the day, all of these examples are horizontal auto-scrollers, but thanks to the varied level objectives defining how traversal must be accomplished, the levels still feel distinct without any single one bleeding into another.

I could go on and on about the sheer amount of fresh level elements introduced in DKC 2 and just how many of them remain memorable to me, from the air draft balloons in Red Hot Ride to the rolling giant tires of Jungle Jinx to the usage of Clapper seals in Lava Lagoon purifying the lava into water and creating this mad scramble to make it in one piece to the other side before the liquid heats up again, and so on so forth. Sure, most of these elements are only present in one or two levels and could be written off as “gimmicks,” but that doesn’t take away from their value. Rare’s willingness to throw realism out the window and tinker with so many different kinds of mechanisms may seem at first quite unfocused, but by embracing experimentation that’s all designed to keep the player moving, that eagerness actually points to a deeper level of commitment that few platformers manage to effectively achieve.

Of course, there’s another piece to the puzzle that stops the game from ever feeling too stale, and that’s the theming itself. Again, Rare’s abandonment of realism is a key motivation; while the original DKC was often limited to natural landscapes and caves outside of Kremkroc Industries, Diddy’s Kong Quest commits fully to the absurdity of fighting alligator pirates in an unfamiliar land and as a result, greatly diversifies its various settings from the decks and sails of the Gangplank Galleon (a fitting beginning, considering that the previous adventure ended here), to the glowing infernal pits of Crocodile Cauldron, to the abandoned urban amusement wasteland of Krazy Kremland that nature has begun reclaiming with brambles and overgrown beehives. You don’t need me to tell you that this is one of the most richly textured games on the SNES, with plenty of corresponding level elements such as the sticky honey walls of Hornet Hole and the eerie disappearing ropes of Ghostly Grove to further sell the exoticism and accentuate the level of detail presented in each environment.

I’d be remiss though, to not spend a paragraph gushing about the soundtrack, something that I’d consider a formality at this point while praising the game. If the original Donkey Kong Country OST was a 10, then this is an 11. Not only are there practically no wasted tracks within the repertoire, but also every notable track ends up being a standout. I’m led to believe that David Wise was in a class of his own, because even to this day, the diverse and richly layered instrumentation is like no other. The whistling wind of Jib Jig, the bubbling lava of Hot Head Bop, the screams of excitement from Disco Train: the sheer attention to detail to embed all these different environmental SFX into the tracks themselves so that the effects never break your attention away from the task of platforming is incredible. It’s the cherry on top of this whole package; sure there’s a part of me that might get a little annoyed falling several stories in yet another mine shaft level, but at least I get to do it while the steel hammer samples in Mining Melancholy go for another run.

I’ll quickly address the lingering complaint that I had from the first game as well; I had previously lamented that bosses in Donkey Kong Country seemed to be a one and done affair, though the sequel does a great job substantially increasing their interactivity. Some are still a bit simple but at least have some extra steps to them: these include the first Krow fight, which you can clear by jumping on egg projectiles and then waiting for Krow to run into the held egg (though it is at least justified by being the first boss fight) and Kudgel, whose boss fight becomes a case of “jump when he lands to avoid getting stunlocked” and then ramming TNT barrels into him when appropriate. Fortunately, the highlights leave these fights in the dust. The clear standout for me here is the fight against Kleever, this giant possessed cutlass that slashes at you relentlessly while you jump to and fro between skyhooks dodging fireballs and waiting for the cannonball to respawn to get your hit in. There’s also a boss fight vs yet another giant bee, but unlike the fight vs Queen B in DKC, this King Zing fight lets you play as Squawks and shoot eggs at the giant bee’s stinger, alternating with an invincible phase where you have to dodge spikes in the closest thing resembling a bullet hell in the series and then segueing into a quickfire second phase where Squawks has to defeat an outer circle of respawning normal sized Zingers before landing the final hit.

Even the final fights vs K Rool (sorry, Kaptain K Rool) have been juiced up, with plenty more jumping and rolling to be done to dodge scores of spiked cannon balls as well as some colorful gas clouds that can mess with your control scheme or movement speed if you’re not careful. The first fight is a bit longer than previous boss fights since it serves as the final boss gauntlet, but there's at least some wiggle room since a Buddy Barrel is given to you at the start of each new phase if you've taken a hit. While the true final boss fight in Krocodile Kore more or less uses the same types of attacks as the first encounter, I appreciate that they’ve at least upped the ante with some new attack patterns and scaling everything they have to throw at you in one “phase” before letting you plug up his blunderbuss with a cannonball for good. All in all, it’s improvements across the board for bosses, and while some of them are still a bit lame, it’s a vast jump up from the one-dimensional and often palette swapped fights of the original game.

So, with all the welcome changes out of the way, do I really have any outstanding major complaints to spill? I’ll admit, I often struggle to find any substantial errs in Diddy’s Kong Quest. It’s a more difficult game for sure, but I also find it surprisingly fair: the game gives you plenty of leeway with all the bananas, KONG letters, and hidden balloons and coins to win more lives at Swanky’s Bonus Bonanza, assuming you’re playing competently enough and exploring levels to their greatest extent. Moreover, most levels are pretty condensed and usually don’t take more than several minutes to clear when carefully approached, with plenty of Buddy Barrels and the Star Barrel halfway through the level as fail-safes if you end up taking a hit or two. I’ve also found during my experience that the obstacle escalation theory continues to holds true, and that dangerous moments are often greeted with plenty of warning prior and enough time to react and adapt accordingly, with instances where I’m confronted with something that I’m genuinely not prepared for few and far between. With that said, there are a few exceptions:

- Web Woods is often cited as one of the most notorious levels in the game: the majority of this stage is spent playing as Squitter, with large stretches of abyss that have to be crossed with disposable web platforms while sniping any Zingers and Mini Nectys in the way. Upon my replay, I don’t think it’s as hard as others make it out to be, but it definitely feels a bit longer because Web Woods forces either extremely careful movement and web shots when going fast ( see Mike Kanis’ recording for an example ) or for casual playthroughs, steady and often strenuous platforming across daunting gaps while juggling enemies at the same time. I’ll concede that the level could probably be improved upon with a few smaller gaps and removing the extraneous introductory Kongs platforming section, but otherwise, I think this level serves its purpose well and just takes a bit of time to get used to. Though, I do think that putting the DK coin in the end-of-level target is pretty lazy and evil considering that the coin flashes in the display for less than half a second and you'll have to replay the whole level again if you were just a hair off.

- Screech’s Sprint is probably the most significant difficulty spike present in DKC 2 in my opinion (which is saying something considering Toxic Tower is the level right before this), and as the final level before the first K Rool fight, is unfortunately a bit of a slog and probably my least favorite level in the game. The first half of the level is solid end-game platforming through the brambles and isn’t too bad, but the second half of the level is an extremely tight race as Squawks against his goth counterpart Screech, that has to be played close to perfectly if you’re not aware beforehand of the many shortcuts hidden in the brambles since second place will result in instant death. That’s not even bringing into account the KONG letters that are all present in the race segment, or the hidden DK coin (that can at least be collected in a throwaway run). Needless to say, it’s a cool concept, but there’s not much time given for the player to scale up and adapt to the sudden rush of precision required for the race or to discover all the ins and outs of the course, so if any level in the game feels like throwing away lives and banging your head against the wall, I’d wager that it would probably be this one. Also, it overrides Stickerbush Symphony with its own theme... which isn’t a bad track, but it's automatically my least favorite track in the OST because anything that takes away from the GOAT of VGM is an instant con in my book.

- Animal Antics is generally the final level tackled by most players who are going for the true final boss fight (as the final level in the Lost World), and while I hesitate to call any single level gimmicky, I suppose this is the one that comes closest to the definition. It’s a marathon that involves the usage of all five animal buddies, which already sounds like quite an exhausting affair. However, it’s exacerbated by the fact that the first two animal buddy segments (Rambi and Engarde) are pretty straightforward by this point, but the next two right after the Star Barrel in the form of Squitter and Squawks generally take up a lot more time, especially because the Squawks segment requires you to navigate yet another bramble maze while a mercurial wind current keeps blowing you left and right and forces you to alternate between fighting the wind or fighting the controls to avoid being blown astray by the wind. The final segment with Rattly is not particularly difficult, but it sure is intimidating as hell since there are no Buddy Barrels to be found there and you’ve probably already taken a hit as Squawks, turning what should be the victory lap of a marathon into a one of the most nerve-wracking level finishers, since dying here means getting sent back to the Star Barrel and having to do Squitter, Squawks, and Rattly all over again. It probably doesn’t help that Toxic Tower utilizes the animal buddy swap formula more succinctly either, with a smoother difficulty curve to boot.

Besides these three levels though, I can’t really say that the difficulty in Diddy’s Kong Quest ever felt discouraging to me. If anything, I found my second full playthrough even more fulfilling this time around; while I was still in the process of mastering the controls during my first run, I really got the chance to flesh out my understanding of the levels during my replay and spend more time adapting and figuring out how all the different moving parts and hazardous elements fit together in different ways. With so many new combinations to consider, I could honestly keep at this for days, even weeks upon end putting my skills to the test; more depth via tighter execution barriers from tougher obstacle courses with even more secrets to explore results in a higher skill ceiling after all. It’s really quite rewarding to figure out game-plans for each level and grind out the specific inputs necessary; as Gregg Mayles put it, the fluidity and momentum is still there, just a tad bit more difficult to grasp, and that makes actually achieving it all that much sweeter.

While the jump from the original Donkey Kong Country to Diddy’s Kong Quest came with mostly scores of improvements (even if most of the improvements were over features that never genuinely bothered me in the first place), there is one quality of life issue that does weigh on my mind as an obvious area of improvement. Aside from the tracked Kremcoins and optional DK coins, a third type of collectible in the form of banana coins is also present. However, just like the lives and banana count, the banana coin count is reset whenever the system is turned off since it’s not tracked, which becomes a bit obnoxious because banana coins are mandatory whenever requesting services from the other Kongs, from asking Cranky for hints and Funky for flights to other worlds, to even saving the game itself. It’s at least slightly mitigated since banana coins are plentiful within levels and are respawned every time you revisit, and the first time visiting Wrinkly and Funky for saving and flights respectively in each area will always be free. Nevertheless, I concede that this is a bit of a barrier for newer players who feel the need to save more often or for players who don’t have as much time on their hands to commit to longer sessions to build up lives and banana coin stocks, and Rare did seem to learn from this since paying to save is limited to just Diddy’s Kong Quest in the original trilogy.

All in all, I’m not sure if I have any far-reaching takeaways to present here or if there were really any lessons to be learned in the first place, but I’m glad I finally found the time and the opportunity to come back to really flesh out my understanding of a title that once frustrated the hell out of me as a kid. Sure, I could join the never-ending debate of which title has the greater legacy or “aged better,” but at the end of the day, I don’t think I necessary prefer Diddy’s Kong Quest over the original Donkey Kong Country or vice versa; I simply think that they’re different appeals for different moods. If I want to feel good about myself and just dash through levels in my comfort zone, I’ll pick up the original and spend a couple of hours speedrunning Blackout Basement or Loopy Lights. However, if I want make my hands sweat a bit more and really put my execution to the test, then DKC 2 will be my weapon of choice and I’ll get to feel overwhelmed while the woozy arpeggios of Forest Interlude roll over me once more. Whichever one I pick, I think I’d have a pretty damn good day.

As it stands, I’m not quite ready to put Donkey Kong Country 2 on a pedestal as my favorite 2D momentum-based platformer of all time. That said, I’ll call it an “honorable draw” as Gregg Mayles stated five years ago, and it’s about time that I started being more open with myself regarding my appreciation for what Diddy’s Kong Quest brought to the table. Hopefully, all this musing about will encourage some more to do the same. Thanks for reading, everyone.

Hey you! Like Donkey Kong Country? The first game was a little bit archaic for my taste. But when Nintendo released Donkey Kong Country 2 in 95 I think the series really came into its own, commercially and artistically. The whole game has really challenging platforming, and an angelic ost that really gives the game a big boost. It's been compared to Super Mario World, but I think DKC2 has more satisfying platforming. I think this game is Rare's undisputed masterpiece. A game so good that most people don't even think about the level design. But they should! It's not just a game about monkeys, It's a personal statement about the developers themselves.

Well, I didn't commit any crimes to play this one, but it's pretty good!

Not that Diddy's Kong Quest isn't worth breaking into any homes for, but I didn't play this one back in the day, so I don't quite have the same level of freakish reverence for it. In fact, I don't think I knew anyone who had a copy. This released in late 1995, and while it sold quite well, everyone on my block was a bit pre-occupied with the PlayStation, which released only a few months prior. We were all piling into one kid's house to play Destruction Derby and suck down secondhand smoke, we didn't have to time for any Kong's quest.

It's a shame, though, because I'm sure I would've loved this just as much as the original had I played it in 95. After all, it is largely the same game with a few tweaks and refinements. I did not bother at all in my review for Donkey Kong Country to talk about how these games play, and that's mostly because I assume everyone here has touched one at least once. And if you haven't... the hell are you doing? Reach out and touch Kong.

This game substantially improves on just about all the foundations laid out by DKC1, but it's also a motherfuck of a lot harder, especially the nightmarish final few stages. While the level design is notably better and less plain than the previous game, it can really get,,just, so frustrating. Haven't caught myself yelling at a game in a long time up until now.

In spite of the frustration though, this was an all-around blast and a far more rewarding experience. Pretty much every aspect of the final product is just astonishing, and to me it all indicates a hell of a well-deserved reputation.

I could talk about the OST as well, but it speaks for itself. Absolutely one of the greatest game soundtracks of all time, and a wonderful helping of ethereal bliss. Seriously, give this game a go.

donkey kong country 2 has some of the best aerial control of any platformer of the era, and it's weird that such a seemingly minute piece of the game would be its defining feature for me, but more than anything else this time around i appreciated that about it. a firm improvement over its predecessor with more intent behind the level design and articulated platforming concepts, diddy's kong quest is the one of its trilogy i'd full agree on the "classic" status it's garnered. i'm admittedly not as hot on the original as some are and 3's... definitely not for me, but 2 strikes a perfect balance with its comfortable difficulty and general flow.

the visual design is a lot more realized and dynamic, and an even more incredible soundtrack provides a deeply relaxing and memorable experience throughout the adventure. the game loses me sometimes with some of its lesser gimmick levels and some of the really vertically-inclined levels that feel like trial and error as opposed to genuine fresh test of the skills, but make no mistake; donkey kong country 2 is a FINE title with a lot to offer. though you hardly needed me to tell you that.

Alright, I've always said that DKC1 is better, but I was wrong. This game is on the same level or even better in some ways.

The music is insanely good just as 1, love it.

The platforming is pretty much the exact same as 1, except Dixie has some new abilities so that's pretty fun. Plus the ability to lift up and throw the second Kong is cool.

Level design is really good though towards the end there's some pretty bullshit enemy placements and some leap of faith jumps, but it's not enough to ruin anything. The only level in this game I'd genuinely say is bad is Toxic Tower, everything else is good. Seriously Toxic Tower just blows.

There's way more secrets in this one, but honestly I can't be bothered to find them all, neat to have them though.

The boss fights in this game are awesome and a major step up from the first game, really enjoyed all of them.

This game also has much more diverse biomes than DKC1, and has more animals to use, which is always welcome, though tbh I didn't like the spider.

This game is more of DKC1 yet it expands on it in many ways and makes its own thing, and while I still prefer DKC1, which one is better could go either way. Both masterpieces in my opinion. Play them!

MASTERPIECE

Não tem muito o que falar, só pegaram tudo o que tinha no primeiro jogo (de bom e ruim) e melhoraram de uma forma que beira a perfeição. Fases criativas e desafiadoras, que te prendem no jogo, por não serem repetitivas, além da utilização dos "mascotes" (novos e antigos) foram ampliados e aprimorados, o "conteúdo extra" que incluem os bônus e as moedas DK te trazem uma recompensa muito maior por você fazer os 102%, os chefes que pra mim eram um ponto baixo no primeiro jogo ficaram sensacionais, com um balanceamento entre qual personagem você irá usar junto com a utilização do cenário a seu favor e, é claro, a trilha sonora que é perfeita. A remoção do Donkey Kong com a adição da Dixie pode ser a única coisa criticável do jogo a meu ver, mas gosto muito da forma como ela foi utilizada não só como balanceamento mas também pra acessar áreas extras ou então chegar em barris bônus com mais facilidade.

Enfim, jogo sensacional , muito divertido, extremamente rejogável e com certeza marcou muito quem jogou isso na infância.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (or Diddy Kong’s Quest, as I and many other illiterate 8 year olds knew it) was a game that held a powerful lustre for me as a kid. As a rascal raised on Diddy Kong Racing and attitudinal promotional artwork from Nintendo Official Magazine, I found that Diddy Kong projected untold levels of Cool that could be matched only by the almighty-90s Bart Simpson himself. Something about a baseball cap with Nintendo written on it was just so insanely Cool to me. My undeveloped baby brain could barely handle it! And he wore the cap backwards! And played the guitar while wearing his cap backwards! Oh, I wanted to be Diddy Kong so badly.

Despite being a prime child of the SNES era, I never owned a SNES. When my brother and I asked for a SNES for my birthday, my dad got us a NES by way of an honest money-saving mistake - he didn’t know the NES and the SNES were two entirely separate and incompatible computer game machines, which was a totally forgivable thing to believe in 1996. This was a long time ago, back in the days when “the Nintendo” really was just “the Nintendo” to almost everyone on the planet. Diddy Kong remained eternally out of reach.

Our friend up the road’s big brother did have a SNES though, and sometimes he let us all play it when he wasn’t calling us f#cking r#tards for not knowing about the 1-1 shortcut to Birdo in Super Mario Bros 2. He’d never let us play the good games, though - for some sadistic unknown big brother reason, we were always stuck with the Mickey Mouse platformers and Clayfighter and Mortal Kombat on the Super Game Boy. Diddy Kong’s Quest remained on the high shelves with the sticky magazines and the empty bottles of Jack Daniels that Big Brother had found in the bushes at the park, and I never plucked up the courage to take the cartridge down and replace Rocky Rodent with a game that Nintendo Official Magazine had once declared to be Certified: Awesome. All this ritual and ceremony for a video game about a monkey who played the guitar with his hat on the wrong way round only gave it more power. Diddy Kong’s Quest took up way more than 4MB of space in my soft little brain.

A few years later, I got on the internet. While scouring video game message boards in a vain attempt to find out when Super Mario 128 was coming to the Nintendo Dolphin, I found out about emulators and ROMs. A few weeks later, after workshopping a convincing story to tell the FBI when they raided my house for illegally downloading a video game, I got my first emulator and ROM - ZSNES, and my very own copy of donkey_kong_country_2_diddy_kongs_quest.zip. I played it for a couple of minutes, but was too afraid of a life spent in jail to really appreciate the momentousness of the occasion. A few days later, while looking for Bloody Roar: Primal Rage cheat codes, I discovered you could look up pictures of naked ladies on the internet. And I forgot about Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest.

A few years later, after many Youtube-watching 12 year olds harassed @NintendoAmerica about it every day on Twitter, Nintendo released Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest on the Nintendo Switch Online service, and a man in his thirties decided to play it for the first time. Properly, mind you. Without save states, or that really awkward rewind function - the one that’s not as useful as the rewind function that the man remembered using on ZSNES while drenched in guilt-ridden sweat during an illegal gaming session some decades prior.

Turns out that playing games properly is a fucking stupid idea. This game is a really fucking annoying piece of shit and I hate it. Diddy Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong Quest came out on the Nintendo Switch a year ago, and I’ve only just beaten it today. After much SHITting and FUCKing about how brutally unfair it is, I crawled the stupid backwards-capped guitar-playing prick Diddy Kong to a measly 40%ish completion stat. Fuck you and your game, Diddy Kong. Never meet your heroes, because you’ll only get your dick crushed by falling platforms.

It may be an annoying piece of shit, but it’s also a beautiful work of art. Beautiful in ways I probably wouldn’t have appreciated had I got it for my 9th birthday or snuck it into someone else’s SNES or tried to play it on a Compaq Presario 95’s keyboard. Elegant rotosprite work comes together with the best music that the SNES chip and David Wise were capable of to create a really unique dream-ape gamefeel. I don’t need to say much more than that about the game’s presentation - presumably most people on here have read that one Onion article that’s all like “Man Tasked With Making Score for a Monkey Riding a Swordfish Underwater Creates Transcendent Piece of Music” or whatever. Just don’t play it past the first few worlds if you want to preserve the crystalline beauty of the memory of your past. Some games are better played on your mind’s eye than a SNES.

Diddy Kong is the best 2D platformer character to control from a base level. While other characters like Zero or Alucard have multiple extension options that mingle with their enemies in fascinating ways, Diddy is just pure fundamental controls, looking to perfectly preserve momentum. And if you charge forward with him, every single level in DKC2 not focused on swimming or an animal buddy can be adeptly handled with him weaving through stages in a beautiful, seamless chimpy charge. The way that DKC2 organizes its levels to play with this, placing enemies that Diddy juuust has time to either avoid or use to extend a cartwheel, is absolutely immaculate. On that merit alone, the game is superb and deserves play.

But DKC2 isn't satisfied with this. If Diddy's technical ceiling is too high, Dixie exists to help ease you in and find new ways to abuse levels. Every high ground now becomes a new vantage point to blaze through levels from, and her obvious strengths are well taken into consideration. Teaming up is required to plunder every secret, making maintaining both kongs paramount in a way that DKC1 simply never achieved, and DKC3 perhaps was a bit too overzealous to toy with. Animal Buddies are given their own unique sections, and each one combines a level of absolute freedom with a new level of trepedation, having either very obvious horizontal or vertical strengths with great weakness in the other deparment in the case of Rambi, Enguarde, and Rattly, or having incredible versatility but being terribly pressured up close in the case of Squawks and Squitter. AND there's the incredible amount of character work and writing and world design to make everything feel so vibrant and lived in and funny and the bosses don't suck anymore!

DKC2 is the golden standard I judge all other 2D platformers on. It's scary at first, it rewards you for mastery pretty quickly, it makes you feel in control of your own destiny at all times, only challenging you to maintain it in the roughest of circumstances. Is it flawless? Nah, Glimmer's Galleon ain't the best and camera tracking on Squitter specifically wasn't given the most elegant solution. But it's a lot damn closer than anything else in its genre has gotten, and also I really like it!

so i finally beat a 2d platformer....

ill get this out of the way first. i have dexterity problems that significantly hinder my ability to play 2d games well. how it affects 2d games but not high intensity movement shooters is beyond me, but the fact is 2d platformers take a lot out of me, i dont have exact numbers but id wager beating this took me anywhere from 25-30 hours. there's also the consideration this genre has never really appealed to me, the whole "jump a lot on platforms" just never really scratched the same itches as other genres i love.

that being said, i have a lot to say about this game. there were times i was in a blind rage, calling the game dogshit and wanting to slam my controller against the wall. there were times i beat those levels and felt a triumphant victory, knowing how much i struggled with them. i think its best if i give an anecdote.

there’s this absolute fucking ass of a level called slime climb, it was incredibly hard and probably took me 2 or 3 hours to get down, the fucking bullshit piranha as well as the time trial aspect of it with the water flooding the screen constantly. complete bull, fucking awful. i finally beat it, triumphant, i hummed the little diddy dance song as he brought out his boom box as i finally did it after so fucking long. the level select screen pops back up... the level afterwards was called bramble blast. i’ve heard this name before, of course it wasn’t stickerbrush symphony, because well, it’s not named that. but i’ve definitely heard this name before. maybe it was another super famous song i heard from smash or something. curious, i click in.

my mouth literally was hung agape, i wasn't expecting the song or level that's most associated with the game, it was such a pleasant surprise. the fact that after such an intensive level there was this, a level comprised of barely any movement or platforming, more like a puzzle. that combined with the song thats super relaxing and already associated with relief because of the internet checkpoint stuff that went on a few years ago. it just felt like such a huge reward for beating that insanely difficult level before it. a friend thinks the song is in the top 3 vgm ever, and i can certainly see why. but either way, the game is littered with moments like these, insane challenges that make you question the point of this suffering, only to give you such a triumphant feeling of victory. throughout my time playing it, learning patterns and stuff, i even feel like my dexterity improved a bit, judging from the ease and elegance i could beat these levels with. there were multiple times throughout this playthrough i considered a 10, i was just having so much fun.

but the game isnt only comprised of the feedback loop of tough level/triumph. this game is exhausting. this game is frustrating. on many occassions, the game is complete bullshit. for instance, the honeycomb levels. idk if it was my controller, or snes9x, or the game itself, but i felt as though my movement was slowed considerably. the jumps i was supposed to do on the honey didnt even register at points, even though i did the correct input of "jump away, quickly return". my momentum literally returned to zero and i just fell down. i dont know what it was about those levels, but i never had any other problem like that in the game. it was so infuriating doing these levels that i caved and save stated the one with the bee chase. at the end of the day, it doesnt really matter how triumphant it feels to finally beat some of these levels. it's so tiring to do the same jumps over and over again, practicing over and over again, reloading save states just so that i can do it in one go with enough practice.

i kept asking myself, is that really worth it? the levels just keep getting harder and harder, the length and time it takes keeps getting longer and longer. the more i played this game, the more the honeymoon phase of it wore off, the more frustrated i became. by the time i got to the levels with forest interlude, i just wanted to be done. sure, there was a satisfaction i got in doing the fortress levels, especially the last one, but just as equally so there was a frustration i got with the k rool fight, or god forbid the race level before it. i did the trick where the race doesnt even start for that level, because i was just so done at that point. all the joy was sapped from this playthrough, the more i played the more i just wanted to get the review out and see the looks on my friends faces when they realized i did another secret game. it became a chore. i bullshitted the k rool fight because for the life of me i just wanted to play turbo overkill, or metal gear 1 and 2, or finish metroid 2 months late... anything but this.

and so, im kinda at an impasse. i love this game, i love the soundtrack, i love how silly (and also ugly) everything looks, i love the triumph i feel after hours of doing a stage. but i hate this game, i hate those hours in between beating the levels, i hate how long it takes me, i hate the repetitions i need to do, i hate feeling like i could play anything else, i hate that i feel like im bound to this game, forever trying to achieve the next high i get off beating a level.

i dont know what i think about this game. i dont even know if i can rate it. i mean, i like it, and ill probably think back to the triumphs rather than the frustrations. but i dont know, man. im so mixed. i could give it a 1 , i could give it a 6, a 10. i had fun p-ranking ultrakill, i had fun getting the aces on neon white. i have fun with the immense challenge turbo overkill has. sure, i get frustrated, but it's different. i might have to redo some sections for hours, like in dkc2. but i was having a blast through the process. i didnt care that ornstein and smough took me 2 weeks, it was awesome learning that. but here, there's something disgusting i feel, loading the save state, trying again and again, it's different here, and i cant explain why.

will i ever beat another 2d platformer? probably, at the very least the other 4 in this series. but i dont know, i could also just never touch this genre again. i dont know, and that really fucking sucks.

can you believe it guys? p3r, less than a week away! im so happy with this information.

The original Donkey Kong Country is an enjoyable SNES 2D platformer but its gameplay wasn’t anything too unique. Luckily, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest improves on nearly every aspect of the 1st entry to create a truly special experience.

When I played DKC1, I rarely ever chose Donkey Kong due to Diddy having a massive advantage in agility. In DKC2, the characters Diddy and Dixie are given much more distinctive abilities and are well balanced between speed and gliding. I really appreciate the team-up throws in the sequel as well. It’s a risk throwing around the equivalent of your healthbar, but the possibilities for shortcuts and hitting distant enemies make it worth learning how to nail the move. Even the level endings have been enhanced. Instead of simply walking off screen, the barrel strength tester offers one more trial in timing.

About halfway through DKC2’s world, the difficulty increase became one of the most apparent changes. The game has a huge amount of variety in level design, especially when you throw in all the new animal buddies. For every new game mechanic like balloons, wind, or honey, there’s always a gradual learning curve to familiarize the player. However, every level continuously combines the challenges with previous threats in a way that always keeps you prepared yet in suspense for what’s to come. With the addition of the DK and Kremcoins, the player needs to be especially attentive to notice the hidden areas and bonus barrels as well if they want to get 102%. Aside from some unclear hitboxes as a result of the pre-rendered graphics on a 2D plane, everything here is a perfect challenge.

Of course, I have to give a shoutout to David Wise’s soundtrack for this game. The songs here go beyond just setting the ambiance for the levels and overworld, and are incredible to listen to in any setting. Stickerbush Symphony and Snow Bound Land are some of my favorite themes from any game, and the credits music made me want to start playing the game all over again. Even if someone hasn’t touched the first entry or even a platformer in general, I’d recommend Diddy’s Kong Quest to anyone looking for a game that exemplifies satisfaction in skill and creativity.

Part of the Glitchwave Top 100 Project (#88/100)

Honest to god, Donkey Kong Country 2 is what I, personally, consider to be the peak of platforming.

The terrific level design, the animal buddies (and how they're implemented this time around), the godly soundtrack (God Bless David Wise!!!), the gameplay, etc.

There's so much here that makes it amazing, and it's a game everybody should pick up and play.

Basically the original, but better


Donkey Kong Country 2 is a marvelous game, the first game I’d already said got pretty close to perfect, and this one also almost reached it, it’s a phenomenal game.
It’s a tiny bit longer than the last game which made it even better, the graphics obviously look about the same but there’s very subtle changes and, I mean, it still is gorgeous no matter what.
The gameplay is also better here, it’s much faster thanks to the obviously more light weightedness of Diddy and Dixie compared to Donkey Kong, aside from the speed it’s still the same good ass platforming, but this time with better level design.
Of course, the best thing here again is the soundtrack, HUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, shit man it’s so good, it flows with the last game beautifully, it’s incredible man.
Also I will say, the original was already pretty difficult, but, GOD DAMN, this game is fucking tough.


Overall it’s another incredible DK platformer, nothin much else to say beyond that.
Now onto DKC 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble.

this game asks a lot of you, both mentally and physically, but pushing through to at least the standard ending is pretty rewarding. not every level or boss is a winner, having to use a currency to save is just unnecessarily punishing, the lives and checkpoint systems feel almost cruel if you aren't playing on something that allows you to use save states, but i think what does work REALLY works. don't feel bad for using save states your first playthrough (or even just in general lol), it's a game that honestly gets better the more you play it

Depois da experiência incrível que tive no primeiro jogo da franquia cheguei com a expectativa lá em cima ☝️

E não esperava que fosse ser superada logo no início. A adição da Dixie foi um grande acerto melhorando muito a jogabilidade e a forma de explorar o jogo!

As fases continuam desafiadoras e do meio pro final elas vão escalando na dificuldade até fazer você sentir vontade de arremessar o controle na parede, muitas vezes tive vontade de quebrar o 3DS ao meio aqui haha, mas ao mesmo tempo superá-las dá uma satisfação enorme

Visualmente o jogo se mantém lindo e a trilha sonora absurda (obrigado por tudo David Wise😭🙏)

Se tiver oportunidade, jogue mas se prepare pra passar raiva 🤣

DKC2 is one of the all time greatest 2D platformers, a cornerstone of the SNES library and a must play for anyone who likes the genre.

It is also a step down in every way possible from the first game.

Both of these things can be true, and they are.

I have some insanely conflicting feelings about this game. There are some amazing aspects to this game but at the same time has issues that are so prevalent that it's preventing me from fully enjoying it. I both love and fucking can't stand this game at times. The more I played it the more it burned me out.

I only just started playing this game like a week ago, and as a first timer, this game was fuckin' painful to get though and I'll explain why.

But just to be fair, I'll start with the great things about this game.

{ The Very Noticably Good }

The soundtrack is fuckin' orgasmic for the ears. This game has some of the best music I've ever heard in a Super Nintendo game. I could listen to this music for hours. The SNES is an absolute powerhouse in terms of sound. There is something about this era of video game music that is just timeless.

There isn't a single track I dislike in this game. I also love how almost every stage has a different track. And there is also a different song that plays whenever you die, depending on the stage you're playing on. There is so much variety. Once I got to Krazy Kremland I started humming the music as I was playing, it was so goddamn addictive. The music makes up half of these older games.

This is also one of the best looking games on the system. I find it hard to believe that they even managed to make a game look this fantastic on a 4-6 MB cartridge.

This game is so good graphically that it could pass as a mid era PS1 game. All of the character sprites remind me of the old Mortal Kombat games where all of the sprites are just digitized actors. The animations are excellent and the backdrops look absolutely amazing, and so rich in detail. This is one of those games that should be in an art museum, it's that beautiful.

The controls also work fine. They do the job and are quite responsive. Moving around and platforming is very swift and I feel like I'm in control at all times. There doesn't feel like there is a moment where I get screwed over because of the controls, no, there are other reasons why.

{ The Very Noticably Bad }

The biggest reason why it's so difficult for me to fully enjoy this game is two words:

SCREEN. CRUNCH.

The camera is so zoomed in that it's insanely difficult to know what is coming up ahead, so many times I end up running right into enemies like a complete dumbass. This game is just not meant to be rushed through. And yet there are many, many moments through the game where you HAVE to rush and go fast. The only way to know what is coming up ahead is if you have played the stage over, and over, and over again, dying repeatedly in the process.

The mine cart levels are just painful. Because many jumps require pixel perfect accuracy and you only have a fraction of a second to react. Dying in these levels are just very easy. Trial and error and resetting your save file is the only way to get good at these levels.

Because if you run out of lives, it's not like other games where you just restart the level from the beginning, no, you have to reload your save file and just hope to God that you don't run out of lives on your pilgrimage to the next save area.

I like difficult games. Hell, I've pretty much mastered the first 7 Mega Man games, and those games are known for being hard. But the devs of this game went way too far with this. The difficulty in this game is legendary.

The first two Worlds aren't that bad, but once you get to Krazy Kremland, the difficulty spikes up so hard that it feels like a completely different development team designed these levels.

Enemies and obstacles that you can't see coming until it's too late, only one checkpoint per level and it's at the halfway mark, unkillable enemies spammed repeatedly throughout the level like those goddamn hornets, having to know how to jump higher off of enemies, and other things like having to know all the controls for each of the Animal Buddies.

If you're playing this game for the first time, like, emulating it like I did, I hope you looked up the instruction manual and looked at all the controls in this game. Because this is one of those games where you're not told any of the controls. You just gotta figure out everything yourself and know all the mechanics of each of the Animal Buddies.

Like pushing A and Up or Down to fly higher or lower much faster with Squawks, and, holding A before you land on an enemy to go three times higher as Rattly the Rattlesnake, and, pushing A and then pushing A again to make platforms with Squitter the Spider, and that you can push Down and A to make platforms below you, and that you can jump and push L + R to make an instant platform higher above.

These are things that you have to know in order to make getting through each stage so much easier. There are obstacles in the later stages where you need to have this prior knowledge to get past them.

The enemy placements in a lot of these levels are just atrocious. Some stages just relentlessly spam enemies at you and I feel like many of my deaths are just out of my control because of again, the scrunched up camera and not knowing that I need to know specific controls to get through certain obstacles.

And getting a Game Over can just be the absolute worst feeling ever because you gotta do all of that progress all over again, bosses and all.

And speaking of bosses, Jesus fucking Christ, the bosses in this game are just brutal. Again, the first couple bosses are not hard. But once you get to Krazy Kremland, the bosses are so unforgiving that it's straight up sadistic.

The Hornet King boss was the absolute worst. I can't tell you how many times I died on that guy because he flies around the stage and you have to shoot him with Squawk's eggs, but there are two major problems.

1: You can only damage the boss by hitting the stinger, yes, the fucking STINGER

And 2: The eggs travel at an arc, making hitting the damn thing even harder than it needs to be

Not to mention you have to hit him EIGHT times and each time you hit him he flies faster and faster. And you only get two hits to do this, you don't get any more DK barrels.

This boss drove me fucking mad. I must have died at least 30 times on this fight. It got to the point that I had to force myself to use Save States, because I was not putting up with another 20+ minutes of progress just to get back to where I got a Game Over.

Then there is the boss fight where you fight the ghost of the Pirate Vulture from the first World.

It's simple enough but what makes it so brutal is the fact you have to climb up ropes while dodging falling eggs, and you only get like, a fraction of a second to react and get out of the way. Again, I've died around 20 times on this shit alone. And again, you only get two hits. No DK barrels throughout.

The most successful way was to just go as fast as I could and hope to God I don't get hit, and just abuse the invincibility frames whenever I had the chance. Either way, I ended up using Save States.

In fact this game pretty much forced me to use them whenever I felt like I needed to. And that sucks. I shouldn't have to do that shit.

A game shouldn't have to force the player to use cheat codes or Save States in order to make progress, but without Save States, I doubt that I could have even finished this game. This game was so brutal that I can't tell if that's by design or lack thereof.

The camera really does plague a large portion of the stages and bosses in this game.

I find it hard to believe that this game was marketed towards children in the 90s and it is this difficult. Imagine being a kid in the 90s and you jumped into this game or the first Donkey Kong Country game completely blind and you didn't have Save States.

I know that you can get a handful of extra lives from the game show stages but even then, it's not enough.

You would think that after the first Donkey Kong Country game that there would have been some more regard towards children, hell even as an adult these games are insane. This is definitely one of the toughest platformers I've played in a very long time. And I've played Rayman 1, Mega Man 9, Mega Man X3, Mega Man X6, Super Meat Boy, Celeste, Cuphead, etc.

But at least with those games, if you die you just start from a checkpoint and they're frequent enough to be acceptable, and if you get a Game Over you just start the stage over. Well, except Rayman 1. I never finished that game either.

And then there are the Lost Levels. They're the hardest levels in the game, obviously, but they just put front and center all of the issues that I have with this game. There is so much precision involved that it feels like I get lucky if I even manage to beat them.

{ Final Thoughts }

This game is better than the first DKC game there is no doubt about that. That game is even more difficult than DKC2, so I can only imagine the insane amount of rage that game must have caused back then.

But even then, rarely have I played a game like this that has made me just want to drop the controller and call it a day. I play games to have a fun, not to have an excuse to break a fuckin' monitor. I understand if you like or even love this game, all the power to you.

But for a first timers, I don't see how you can enjoy this game that much without the use of Save States or an Extra Life code. Maybe it would have grown on me the more I played it, but after beating the game, I haven't really looked back at it, and that is not really a good sign.

The music is orgasmic, the graphics are stunning for a SNES game, the sound effects are great, and the controls work good for what they are.

But the awful camera, the bad enemy placements, the lack of checkpoints, bosses being hit sponges meanwhile you only have two hits yourself to get it done in one go, and having to restart from your last save upon getting a Game Over can make the game just infuriating to play without the use of Save States.

The difficulty spiking once you get to Krazy Kremland is so severe that I imagine kids back then had to just drop the game because they couldn't finish it.

Overall I just feel very mixed about this game.

6/10

Donkey Kong Country turned out to be one of my favorite games on the SNES, and while I was excited to check out its first sequel, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be on the same level as its predecessor. Now that I’ve actually beaten it, though, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest took everything that made Donkey Kong Country good and made it even better. The levels are even more atmospheric and well designed than they were in the first game, and David Wise’s score is twice as terrific as the first one. Not only that, but giving Dixie Kong an advantage over Diddy Kong rather than just being a walking shield was a great idea, and it also led to some incredible levels designed around her hover ability.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest is also far more difficult than its predecessor, which was a hard game on its own, and although I found myself losing a lot more lives throughout this game, I also found myself having a lot more fun. Donkey Kong Country was challenging, but fair, and while that still kind of applies to Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, I saw the game as the perfect balance between a fair challenge and a rage inducer, and that balance was what kept me going, in a way.

Although I still need to play more games on the SNES, especially more story driven ones, I have no problem calling Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest my favorite SNES game, and although I’m still very excited to play Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble!, I’m not sure if it can get any better than this.