Tag: Donkey Kong - Page 8
Anniversary Donkey Kong is Now 35 Years Old
When Mr. Video rescued Pauline
We suspect that Shigeru Miyamoto and some veteran colleagues in Nintendo will be raising a glass this weekend in honour of Donkey Kong, as the arcade arrived in Japan on 9th July 1981 - 35 years ago. It was its impact in North America when it landed at the end of that month, however, which proved particularly vital to...
News The Donkey Kong High Score Has Been Topped Again
How high can you get?
Donkey Kong has long since been a popular game for aspiring world record holders to challenge in hopes of being the "King of Kong". Mario and Donkey Kong's inaugural debut may seem to be a simple enough game, but competitors have been battling for years over the crown, continuously pushing the limits of what was thought to be...
Video Try Not To Go Bananas At This Unreal Engine 4 Recreation Of Donkey Kong 64's Opening Stage
Unfinished monkey business
The power of Epic's Unreal Engine is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it allows talented fledgling artists to create amazing sequences which are arguably on par with the efforts of professional developers, but on the other it teases viewers with tantalising glimpses of projects which are unlikely to actually...
Live Jump Into the Donkey Kong and 2D Mario Block of Awesome Games Done Quick
Wahoo!
Awesome Games Done Quick is picking up momentum, with all of its participants, attendees and viewers now well into a solid week of gaming. We're been hosting some blocks from the broadcast that feature familiar and fondly regarded games on Nintendo hardware, just in case you're not on top of the schedule. This time around we have the Donkey...
News Wes Copeland Takes Donkey Kong World Record From Robbie Lakeman For The Second Time In A Year
"I just hope Robbie at least lets me sleep on it"
Long-time followers of Nintendo Life will know that we've tried to keep abreast of the battle for the Donkey Kong high score record for many years now. The obsession began with the excellent movie King of Kong, which focused on the efforts of underdog Steve Wiebe to topple the then-champ Billy...
News Donkey Kong Champ Billy Mitchell Loses Legal Battle Against Regular Show Parody
"GBF appears as a non-human creature, a giant floating head with no body"
Famed games player Billy Mitchell has lost his legal battle against his depiction in the Cartoon Network's The Regular Show. The character - known as GBF (Garrett Bobby Ferguson or Giant Bearded Face) - is a floating head with arms who is revealed to be an alien who cheats at...
Video The Story of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot... in Donkey Kong 64
Remember, remember
The Fifth of November, Guy Fawkes' Night, Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night, or whatever you want to call it is a celebration in the United Kingdom and certain other countries centred around a historical event known as the Gunpowder Plot. Many people know it because of the excellent comic and subsequent film adaptation V for...
Weirdness This 1983 Short Movie Combines Horror With Donkey Kong
Can you find the Treasure of the Haunted House?
Long-time readers of the site will be familiar with the work of Tyler Esposito - not only have we covered his excellent videos in the past, he's also contributed to Nintendo Life with an amusing look at one of the most bizarre NES games ever made. He also runs the excellent YouTube channel iretrogamer...
Review Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (Wii U eShop / DS)
A toy story
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis is the Nintendo DS sequel to the original GBA classic and a new recruit to the ever-growing Wii U Virtual Console library. Rather than being more of the same platforming puzzle action, Nintendo chose to focus this entire game around what is but a small percentage of the previous game - the...
Review Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Wii U eShop / GBA)
Prophesizing the amiiboom
Mario vs. Donkey Kong is interesting in that it's the only game in the Mario vs DK franchise (to date) that actually allows the player to control Mario; indeed this was originally planned to be a sequel to 1994's Donkey Kong on Game Boy, so arguably those two have more in common than the other games in the series. Mario vs...
News Rare's Gregg Mayles Reveals It Was Miyamoto Who Suggested Donkey Kong Should Sport Neckwear
Rare staffer reveals the pre-history of Donkey Kong Country
Gregg Mayles is one of Rare's longest-serving employees and can list some of the firm's most famous titles on his impressive CV. He's currently hard at work on the studio's next offering, Sea of Thieves, but has taken the time to post some interesting info relating to the SNES classic...
Video Iron Maiden's New Music Video Pays Tribute To Donkey Kong, Of All Things
A heavy trip through gaming history
Legendary British heavy metal band Iron Maiden are preparing to release their first single in half a decade and have put together a video game-inspired music video to mark the occasion. Speed of Light's official video sees the band's iconic mascot Eddie getting sucked into an arcade machine which then forces him...
Review DK: Jungle Climber (Wii U eShop / DS)
Aping the King of Swing
What do you get when you throw away an established series' playbook and try for something new? You get DK: Jungle Climber. Unlike previous entries in the venerable Donkey Kong franchise, DK: Jungle Climber takes a fresh look at the series by focusing on swinging and timing more than precise platforming. The problem? It gets...
Video Here's a Brief, and Entertaining, History of Donkey Kong
Iconic and diverse
We don't yet know what's next for Donkey Kong and his many relations, but we can certainly celebrate the mascot's diverse history to date. From transforming the fortunes of Nintendo's video game business with the self-titled arcade cabinet, to dazzling in the Rare and then recent Retro Studios days, with plenty of games in...
News Reggie Explains Why Donkey Kong And Bowser Were Chosen For Skylanders SuperChargers
As well as how the Activision partnership came to be
If you caught E3 earlier this week, you'd know that Nintendo has teamed up with Activision to create two new amiibo for the latest instalment to the Skylanders series: Skylanders SuperChargers. However, the announcement left some scratching their heads as to why Nintendo decided to use Donkey...
A surprise from E3 2015 you may not have expected
In case you missed it, this year Bethesda Softworks hosted its very own E3 press conference for the first time ever. As expected, the company teased the new DOOM, Dishonored 2 and their most cherished creation, Fallout 4. During one of the many Fallout 4 segments, the company revealed the latest...
News Former Rare Devs Playtonic Want Donkey Kong Country Villain K. Rool In Super Smash Bros.
"Let's get another of our artists' beautiful children into the fight"
Nintendo has opened up voting to see which characters its fans want to see in Super Smash Bros., and this has predictably led to some rather outlandish recommendations. UK studio Playtonic - made up of former Rare developers - has thrown its hat into the ring by suggesting fans...
Video New Pixels Movie Trailer Passes One Million Views in Less Than a Day
"It's just a barrel, how bad can it hurt?"
Pixels is set to be a comedy blockbuster this Summer, and has naturally got fans of gaming - particularly those with a fondness for retro - rather excited. With a big-hitting cast - albeit including the marmite-esque Adam Sandler - it'll be heavily publicised by Sony Pictures as the film to see in a few...
Video Nintendo Star Makes Brief Cameo Appearance in Pixels Movie Teaser
The one that started it all...
Nintendo has recently shared a very short teaser for Sony's upcoming Pixels movie across its social networking accounts, and have asked the audience as to which big N icon they could spot. Looking across all the comments, many seem to think it's Pac-Man due to his obvious appearance towards the end of the snippet...
Preview Puzzling Our Way through Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars
Tips go in the jar, mate
Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars is just a few days away for North American fans, and those in Europe will only have to wait a little bit longer to get their hands on it. With the release date rapidly approaching, we've put together a short video to show you what you can expect to see in the game when it hits the 3DS and...
News Complete First Season Of Donkey Kong Country TV Series Coming To DVD This May
"I'M GONNA BE A STAR!!!"
Did you know that our dear old ape Donkey Kong has a nigh-on angelic singing voice? Anyone who watched the absolutely bizarre television series from the 90's will know all about it, and now the non-believers will finally get a chance to hear it for themselves in full. Yes, in an announcement that will either delight,...
News Nintendo España Appears to Confirm Super Mario amiibo for Rosalina, Donkey Kong and Wario
Picking up on previous speculation in Japan
Update: Nintendo España has, unsurprisingly, now informed Nintenderos that this press release was in error; we've also received a similar message after enquiring on this with Nintendo UK. As suggested below there have been instances like this out of Nintendo's Spanish divisions in the recent past, so...
Video Donkey Kong Country Returns...To Wii U
It's on like Donkey Kong. Again.
The second Wii re-release has arrived on the European eShop, and it's a doozy. Are you ready for Donkey Kong Country Returns? As we have come to expect from Retro Studios, they knocked it out of the park with a game that apes (pun intended) the original SNES trilogies' gameplay, but is it worth revisiting on Wii U?...
Review DK: King of Swing (Wii U eShop / GBA)
Shouldering the effort
Between 1999's Donkey Kong 64 and 2010's Donkey Kong Country Returns, Nintendo's great ape served a cool-off period of sorts when it came to straight-up platforming adventures. He had no huge releases to his name, but that didn't mean he was on the backburner entirely. The 2000s were a time to utilise Donkey Kong as a...
News Donkey Kong Land Rated And Ready For North American 3DS Virtual Console Release
Monkey business
After a successful 3DS Virtual Console début in both Japan and Europe earlier this year, the 1995 Game Boy title Donkey Kong Land is finally on its way to North America. Evidence of the anticipated re-release has appeared via the ESRB. Released a year after the success of the Super Nintendo original, Donkey Kong Land has the Kongs...
News Actor Is Suing Nintendo After Suffering Heart Problems In A Sweltering Donkey Kong Suit
Legal teams are going bananas
When actor Parker Mills stepped into a Donkey Kong costume to promote the launch of Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D at the Los Angeles Zoo last year, he most likely assumed the job would be a piece of cake — after all, what's better than being the mighty Kong for a day, right? However, Mills ended up earning more than...
Anniversary 20 Years Ago Today, Rare Resurrected The Donkey Kong Brand
Donkey Kong Country is now two decades old
Donkey Kong is Nintendo's first major star, having made his début in the arcade game that effectively turned the company into the global monster it is today. However, when Mario decided to become Super on the NES and take his place as Nintendo's number one mascot, DK was bumped down the pecking order and...
Review Donkey Kong Land III (3DS eShop / GB)
Marvellous Monkeys
In 1997 the fifth generation of video games was well underway (even Europe and Oceania had the N64 by then), but the trusty Game Boy was still the place to go for portable gaming joy. Having successfully brought monkey platforming action to the handheld twice already, Rare produced a third game — the imaginatively titled Donkey...
Review Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (Wii U eShop / SNES)
The ape escape
Rare managed to do something incredible with Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong-Quest; it took the well refined gameplay and style of the first Donkey Kong Country game and made it even better. This second entry in the series features gameplay almost identical to its predecessor’s, but this time everything’s been streamlined...
Video Did You Know Gaming Tackles Donkey Kong Once Again
The Rare years
Rare's Donkey Kong titles have recently been making their way onto the Wii U eShop in Europe — and hopefully will do so soon in North America — making it a good time to look back on the franchise. Whether that timing was part of its consideration or not, we do have Did You Know Gaming returning to the DK IP in its latest video...
Review Donkey Kong Country (Wii U eShop / SNES)
Hasn't aged a day
Back in 1994, before 3D games had taken off, a little UK-based games developer called Rare decided that if it couldn’t have good looking 3D models in a game, it'd have to get creative. Donkey Kong Country used a pioneering new technique for the time that took images of pre-rendered three dimensional models and turned these...
Review Donkey Kong Land 2 (3DS eShop / GB)
Diddy's 8-Bit Quest
The success of Donkey Kong Country inevitably saw a sequel released. Likewise when Donkey Kong Land proved a similar platforming experience was possible on the Game Boy, it was a no-brainer that Rare would release a second handheld adventure. This time Donkey Kong has gone and gotten himself captured, and so it's up to Diddy and...
News New Music and Voice Samples Discovered in the Donkey Kong Arcade
A few decades on, there's still more to find
The Donkey Kong arcade was a key turning point for Nintendo as a company, as it brought Shigeru Miyamoto to the fore and helped to demonstrate to Hiroshi Yamauchi and his management that the video game business could be lucrative for the company. It's so iconic that a small band of gamers still compete...
Review Donkey Kong Land (3DS eShop / GB)
Mobile monkey magic
Donkey Kong Country was a fun and popular platformer for the SNES, but not everyone thought it was great. Some people (possibly Mega Drive / Genesis owners) said the game was in fact quite poor and any fans were deluded fools drawn to it for reasons other than gameplay – or, as Cranky Kong says, “put a few fancy graphics and...
Review Donkey Kong: Original Edition (3DS eShop / NES)
Whole once again
The legendary arcade title Donkey Kong is slightly infamous for receiving a rather botched NES conversion. Lacking several screens, animations and even an entire stage, it wasn't exactly one of Nintendo's finer porting jobs, especially when other home versions by different companies did manage to include all of the original content...
News You Need To See This Amazing Hand-Sculpted Donkey Kong GBA SP Case Mod
Good luck trying to play a game on it, though
If you follow the hardware modding community then the name Vadu Amka will be instantly familiar to you. A seasoned pro when it comes to taking existing systems and making them even more attractive, Amka has recently released another new creation: a Game Boy Advance SP which is based on the model used in...
Weirdness Modder Recreates Donkey Kong Country In Doom Engine
Scary in a different way!
Rare’s Donkey Kong Country was a huge feat in itself when it was released on the Super Nintendo in 1994. Now imagine recreating the iconic jungle-based platformer within an entirely different game engine from around the same era. Enter Doom, and insert the reminder here of just how crazy modders of the classic...
News Robbie Lakeman Sets A New Donkey Kong World Record To Dethrone Hank Chien
We have a new King of Kong
When Hank Chien set a new world record on Donkey Kong back in 2011 — and then went on to break his own score another two times — many believed he could never be beaten. Chien's battle with Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe — the duo immortalised in the movie
Review Donkey Kong Jr. Math (Wii U eShop / NES)
Summin' it
In among the Excitebikes, Super Mario Bros., and Ice Climbers of the NES’s North American launch sat Donkey Kong Jr. Math, an edutainment title seemingly designed so that hopeful tots could point to it on the shelf and Trojan-horse Nintendo’s new Duck Hunt-playing powerhouse into the family home, parents unsuspecting, under the guise...
News Coleco Mini Arcades Set to Sit Proudly On Shelves Once Again
Fingers crossed for the Donkey Kong version
Just recently we shared the news that Coleco wants to bring back its version of Donkey Kong, with the planned ColecoVision Flashback in the works and the company hoping to re-release the version of the DK arcade title that graced the original console. When we say 'company', it's worth observing that the...
News Coleco Wants to Bring Back Their Version of Donkey Kong
Might also be interested in ColecoVision on Virtual Console
Who's up for a quick history lesson? While Donkey Kong is purely Nintendo's furry, banana-breathed baby, the company originally granted Coleco rights to produce console and tabletop versions of the hit arcade game. Coleco bundled Donkey Kong with their new ColecoVision in 1982, then ported...
News Donkey Kong, Pac-Man And Q*Bert Cast Alongside Game Of Thrones Star Peter Dinklage In Pixels
Based on the web short of the same name
Remember Pixels? It was a short film made by Patrick Jean back in 2010, and showed New York city being invaded by characters from famous retro games. The short is being turned into a fully-fledged movie helmed by Home Alone and Harry Potter director Chris Columbus and starring Peter Dinklage (Game of...
News Patch Fixes Bug in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Thaws out a progress-stopping problem
Nintendo has made a software update available for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze today that fixes a game-halting glitch in World 3. According to update notes, the patch will solve an issue some players have faced when completing level 3-3, Frantic Fields and finding no path has opened to the next level,...
News Game Boy Classic Donkey Kong Land Is Coming To The Japanese 3DS Virtual Console
You'll go bananas about this news
Fans of the naked ape wearing only a tie will be pleased to hear the 1995 Game Boy title Donkey Kong Land is being released in Japan on the 3DS Virtual Console early next month. Released a year after the success of the Super Nintendo original, Donkey Kong Land has the Kongs recapturing their banana hoard when...
Video DK Breaks The Ice in These Short Tropical Freeze Animations
For your viewing pleasure
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze has been out for a few weeks now and — as we reported earlier this week — it’s selling quite a few copies as well as assisting Wii U sales. Everyone’s favourite gaming ape is certainly playing his part, seemingly winning the hearts of many that play it. If you can’t seem to...
Weirdness The Makers Of TV Show Resurrection Clearly Want Nintendo On Smartphones
Donkey Kong on your mobile?
The series premiere of ABC's Resurrection went out on Sunday — in North America, at least — and the show's glaring similarity to the hit French TV series Les Revenants wasn't the only eye-opening thing about it. In one scene, a character is seen playing a game on his Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone which happens to...
News Nintendo Canada Unpeels The Making Of Its Tropical Freeze Contest
4835 bananas are frozen in total, breaking DK's heart
To help celebrate the launch of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, you may have heard of Nintendo Canada's pretty extravagant contest, Banana Mania. With everything having wrapped up last month, we're all now able to get a peek behind the scenes and see exactly how it was done. A video
News Senran Kagura Bursts Into The UK Top 40 While Donkey Kong Country Hangs A Little Higher Up
Racy subject matter helps niche fighter gain some sales
Senran Kagura Burst isn't your typical 3DS title — it features large-chested anime girls rather than rotund Italian plumbers — but it has gained quite a bit of attention ahead of its European release. We've seen saucy (and
Month Of Kong What Donkey Kong Country Means To Me
Dave Letcavage on growing up with Kong as company
We know what you're going to say. Our Month of Kong celebration should have ended with the close of February, and we're now two days into March. However, in very much the same way that Nintendo refuses to be tied down by conventional calendars when it comes to plotting The Year of Luigi, we're...
Month Of Kong Whatever Happened To Donkey Kong Racing?
Former Rare man Lee Musgrave talks about a lost GameCube smash hit
E3 2001 was a joyous occasion for Nintendo fans. The GameCube was nearing its release in Japan and North America and Nintendo had a lot to say and show about it. Super Smash Bros. Melee, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Luigi’s Mansion were just some of the games...
