Despite being Nintendo’s original mascot and being one of legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto’s most iconic character creations, Donkey Kong has had a bit of a weird history of getting his own video games compared to that mustachioed plumber he’s frequently feuding with. Sometimes he’s the hero. Sometimes he’s the villain. Sometimes he’s a bongo drummer. But with Donkey Kong Bananza out now – DK’s first new starring role in over a decade and first new 3D platformer in over 25 years – it’s time to ride a rickety minecart down memory lane and look back at the big ape’s greatest games. Here are the ten best Donkey Kong games of all time.
10. Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble
While Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble (an admittedly strange name for the third game in a series) isn’t exactly a game where you play as Donkey Kong himself, it does continue to build on the momentum based platforming gameplay that kicked off with the first Donkey Kong Country. Double Trouble tags in Dixie Kong and her cousin Kiddy Kong for another adventure, bringing more collectible coins, rideable animal sidekicks, and incredibly catchy background songs along with them. New abilities like Dixie’s ponytail hover (which feels similar to Tails’ foxtail helicopter hover seen in the Sonic games) add some interesting new mechanics to the mix, and while Double Trouble doesn’t quite reach the heights of its predecessors, it’s still an excellent and occasionally tough as nails adventure on its own and one of the best looking games on the Super Nintendo.
9. Donkey Kong 64
Donkey Kong’s first (and until recently, only) foray into joystick-controlled platforming wasn’t quite as strong as when Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda’s Link made the jump from 2D games on the Super Nintendo to 3D games on the N64, but hey, those were the early days of 3D gaming and there were bound to be some growing pains. Donkey Kong 64 is often derided for its over abundance of often tedious collectibles but when levels open up and progression requirements get out of your way, it’s an absolute blast to explore.
DK 64’s main hook is allowing players to control an entire family of Kongs for the first time instead of splitting them off into duos like the Donkey Kong Country series was known for. There are a ton of levels to hop around in, secret areas to unlock, and seemingly endless things to collect, plus a bonus multiplayer mode where Kongs run around shooting each other with guns, which may seem strange until you remember Donkey Kong 64 was made by Rare, the same company known for reinventing console multiplayer shooters two years earlier with their hit game GoldenEye 007. However, ask any kid who grew up playing Donkey Kong 64 and they’ll tell you their two fondest memories have nothing to do with the gameplay itself. First, the bright banana yellow cartridge the game was released on, and second and most importantly, the DK Rap theme song, possibly the catchiest title screen music in the history of video games.
8. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat
During the GameCube era Nintendo experimented with a bunch of offbeat peripherals, but one of the strangest (and most adorable) were the DK Bongos, a large plastic pair of drums shaped like wooden barrels. The DK Bongos were most famously used for a series of rhythm games known as Donkey Konga, inviting players to smack the bongos in time with the beat to various songs. But the real star of the bongo supported GameCube game library was Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, a side scrolling platforming game that used bongo inputs to control Donkey Kong across a wide variety of stages.
By smacking the bongos individually or together, Donkey Kong can move around, interact with objects, and beat the bananas out of a ton of different enemies and bosses. And while Jungle Beat is a bit on the short side, players were encouraged to replay it to beat their high scores over and over again. Jungle Beat eventually made its way to the Nintendo Wii and Wii U with updated Wiimote motion controls so here’s hoping it gets ported to the Nintendo Switch 2 so more players can finally experience this often forgotten modern classic.
7. Donkey Kong
The first Donkey Kong game is still one of the greatest arcade games ever made, even decades later. At the time of its release in 1981, Nintendo was struggling to connect with arcade audiences and fast tracked a new game from then unknown game developer Shigeru Miyamoto. The result was the Kong Kong inspired Donkey Kong game, a unique arcade experience that showcased multiple levels, challenging platforming gameplay, and a little guy named Jumpman, now known around the world as Super Mario.
Donkey Kong was not only a massive hit for Nintendo, it also inspired two increasingly stranger arcade sequels, Donkey Kong Jr and Donkey Kong 3. It also served as the basis for the hit film King of Kong which documents the real life feud between two Donkey Kong high score world champions. For being a 40+ year old arcade game, the first Donkey Kong game ever made still holds up well today and brought the world Mario, Donkey Kong, and Pauline. Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if they let some Mario developers make a game with Donkey Kong and Pauline! Well, more on that in a bit.
6. Donkey Kong Country
It’s hard to express just how revolutionary Donkey Kong Country was when it first came to the Super Nintendo in 1994. For starters, DKC was a total reinvention of Donkey Kong, his world, and his enemies. It gave us Diddy Kong, Donkey’s acrobatic sidekick who went on to appear in tons more games, including a few of his own. It featured groundbreaking pre-rendered graphics based on scans of 3D assets and an amazing soundtrack to boot. It gave us the Kremlings and King R. Rool and a bunch of other huge bosses. And it gave us Cranky Kong, Funky Kong, and Candy Kong.
Donkey Kong Country was a massive success, spawning several sequels as well as Game Boy and Game Boy Advance ports and remakes. It’s absolutely packed with diverse environments, tricky platforming, animal sidekicks, and collectibles and the minecart levels are still tense and challenging to this day. At the time it was incredibly rare (pun intended) for Nintendo to outsource one of their most important characters to a UK-based studio instead of just making a game in house but the result was a redefining of Donkey Kong that still impacts how he’s seen today.
5. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest
What do you do with Donkey Kong after the groundbreaking Donkey Kong Country? Well, you lock him in a cage so he can be rescued by Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong, obviously. Coming out just one year after the original, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest improved on nearly everything from the first game and cemented itself as the best game in the original trilogy. The levels are tougher and more clever, the graphics are better, the soundtrack is somehow even catchier, and the two playable characters are a ton of fun to control. There are dozens and dozens of secrets and collectibles to unearth across its eight vast worlds and 52 levels and finding them allows players to ultimately display a “102%” next to their save file.
4. Donkey Kong Country Returns
After Microsoft bought Donkey Kong Country creators Rare, the Donkey Kong games series was in a bit of a strange place. But 16 years to the day since the original Donkey Kong Country was released, Donkey Kong Country… well, returned again with Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Nintendo Wii, this time being developed by Metroid Prime creator Retro Studios. Returns was less of a total overhaul for the series and more of a return to form but it still managed to bring along a ton of new features and some seriously brilliant level design.
Returns featured a totally new and distinct art direction for the series which also allowed the characters and world to be much more expressive and fun. Equally inventive were the stages and locales which were teeming with life and personality and more importantly, challenging and rewarding platforming, chaotic autoscrolling levels, and more. Donkey Kong Country Returns sold over 6.5 million copies on the Nintendo Wii and has been ported to every Nintendo handheld and console since. It’s a master class in how to bring a once dormant series back, a thing that Donkey Kong seems to have a habit of doing.
3. Donkey Kong ‘94
Similar to the original arcade game, you don’t actually play as Donkey Kong in the Game Boy’s incredible Donkey Kong ‘94 even though his name is in the title. But that’s not the only thing those games share in common. Like his first game, Donkey Kong has once again captured Pauline, leaving Mario to jump and hammer his way to her rescue. But after a clever revisit of the Donkey Kong arcade four levels, Donkey Kong ‘94 opens up ninety seven more stages full of platform puzzle challenges.
Outside of how much fun Mario is to control, one of the best parts of Donkey Kong ‘94 is how expressive and charismatic Donkey Kong is here. He’s big and hulking and tough but also funny and goofy and seeing so much personality shine through the tiny and blurry original Game Boy screen was revelatory. The game saw a ton of spiritual successors in the Mario vs Donkey Kong series and spinoffs, although none were ever quite as good as Donkey Kong ‘94. Here’s hoping it gets a remake someday, but for now it’s totally accessible through the Nintendo Switch Online Game Boy app and it absolutely still feels great to play.
2. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Like Diddy’s Kong Quest, Tropical Freeze once again took all of the solid foundation laid down in the game before it and built an even bigger and better sequel, making it the best 2D Donkey Kong game ever made. Donkey Kong’s once peaceful world has been taken over by snow themed bad guys, and as the title suggests, that means a beautiful mix of palm trees and ice everywhere, leading to some truly genius (and very tough) platforming sequences.
But if you find things a bit too tough, just try out Funky Mode, an optional difficulty decrease that allows players to play as everyone’s favorite monkey that owns an airport. Speaking of which, Tropical Freeze features more playable Kongs than any Donkey Kong game before it including Donkey, Diddy, Dixie, and at long last, Cranky Kong who just couldn’t stay retired. Tropical Freeze is the culmination of all of the best things from the best Donkey Kong Country games mixed up in one perfect frozen cocktail. Once Retro gets Metroid Prime 4 in the rear view it would be amazing to see them return to this series one more time. But luckily for us, there’s another Donkey Kong game to hold us over.
1. Donkey Kong Bananza
As it turns out, the latest Donkey Kong game is his greatest. Developed by the team behind the incredible Super Mario Odyssey, Donkey Kong Bananza gives DK a whole new bag of toys to play with and a whole new world to destroy. De-emphasizing the tight platforming that the Country series was known for, Bananza opts instead to celebrate Donkey Kong’s brute force and heavy fists, allowing him to punch holes in the earth in search of collectibles, rip out huge rocks to ride around and throw, and so much more. It also reunites him with Pauline, this time as friends and collaborators.
Bananza is also Donkey Kong’s biggest game yet. It’s absolutely packed with secret areas, unlockable costumes, and optional challenge rooms and it can easily take players dozens of hours to find it all. It’s a loving celebration of this iconic and legendary Nintendo character, hopefully paving the way for more Donkey Kong games like it for years to come. For a character that has been reinvented a ton of times since 1981, it’s amazing to see Donkey Kong return for his first 3D game since 1999 and to do so with a game that feels both totally fresh and quintessentially Nintendo.
And there you have it, the ten best Donkey Kong games of all time. Did any of the games on this list kongfuse you? Were there any other DK games we should have kongsidered? Well, go bananas and let me know in the kongments below.
