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.