Five Fun Facts: Donkey Kong Country

Donkey Kong Country is more than just eye candy. Its a pretty good platformer, and Rare’s take on Nintendo’s classic Donkey Kong character has stuck to this day. Here are five interesting facts you may not know about Donkey Kong Country for the Super Nintendo.

1. Donkey Kong Country is one of the first mainstream video games to use pre rendered 3D graphics. Rare also used it on the earlier 1992 title Killer Instinct, though it wasn’t as advanced at the time. To achieve this, Rare and Nintendo had to invest in specialized graphics equipment that was also used to render some of the VFX heavy Hollywood films at the time, like Terminator and The Mask. The equipment generated so much heat that Rare’s tiny office at the time was like a 100 degree sauna for most of development.

2. This is the game where we first saw the 3D design of the character Donkey Kong that we still recognize today. Miyamoto actually drew the original sketch for this design himself. Rare took the red tie from the 1994’s Game Boy version of Donkey Kong. Nintendo games still credited Rare for the use of their Donkey Kong model until Rare was purchased by Microsoft.

3. Cranky Kong is the original Donkey Kong who appeared in the 1980s Donkey Kong games. The current Donkey Kong is actually Cranky’s grandson… and Donkey Kong Jr. (who doesn’t appear in this game) his dad?

4. Diddy Kong was originally going to be Donkey Kong Jr. Nintendo thought Rare’s design was too different from previous designs to be the same character, so they demanded that Rare change the design, or make him a different character altogether. Before they decided on Diddy Kong they threw around some really bad ideas from names, including Dinkey Kong, Diet DK, and DK Lite.

5. There was a 40 episode CGI TV series that came out in 1996, two years after the game. It was also called Donkey Kong Country. It was received well in Japan and France, but it hardly aired at all in America. It played for a while in Canada, though, probably because it was produced there.

BONUS FACT: Universal Pictures once tried to sue Nintendo over the similarities between Donkey Kong and King Kong. Nintendo end up winning though, because it was proved King Kong is now part of the public domain, and no longer Universals intellectual property.