That One Level / Donkey Kong

Admittedly, Donkey Kong games have never been too generous regarding difficulty, but these levels take the banana cake.

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Donkey Kong Country

• Mine Cart Carnage (2-2) is the game's first Difficulty Spike, with a hard-to-master mechanic introduced, as well as many tight jumps and fast-moving enemies that are easy to miss and will likely cost you a few lives. A hidden skip exists that lets the entire level be bypassed in seconds, but finding it can be a problem, and the one last Krash at the end might have other ideas. Its harder successor later on, Mine Cart Madness (5-5), does not pull any punches either.
• Stop & Go Station (2-4). Rock Krocs cannot be killed, move insanely fast in a constant back-and-forth motion, and you can only get past them by changing the lights from green (GO) to red (STOP). These switches never last long even at the beginning of the level, but by the end of it, they switch back on literally the same second you turn them off. And the end of the level is a gauntlet of at least half a dozen Rock Krocs and switch barrels, maybe closer to 8-9. You are almost guaranteed to lose one of your Kongs before you finally dive into the exit. Luckily, Rock Krocs only appear in this level. And this is in the second world of the game. Fortunately, there's a way to skip almost the entire level, but it might be harder to find than you think.
• Snow Barrel Blast (4-1) combines poor visibility with barrel-shooting sequences requiring perfect timing, and a single miss resulting in instant death. Like Carnival Night Zone Act 2 in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, this level had its own entry on the Automated Help Line — and a shortcut which allowed most of the difficult sections to be easily skipped. Going for 100% Completion? Good luck.
• Oil Drum Alley (5-1) has a part where you need to time jumps on a lot of tires and flaming oil drums. It doesn't help that the flames change their pattern of ignition halfway through the level. And if you're going for 100% Completion, there's an excellent chance you're going to miss one of the bonus rooms in the level, as the sadistic designers hid one inside another bonus room, which is the only time this happens in all of DKC.
• There's a reason that Blackout Basement (5-6) earned both its title as a Trope Namer and a notorious reputation among players. Mainly because the lights constantly flicker on and off, and if they're off you can't see anything except your playable characters and items scattered around. Not the enemies, not the platforms above the bottomless pit, next to nothing.
• Tanked Up Trouble (6-1). This level requires you to grab pretty hard-to-reach fuel tanks before the platform you're riding on collapses. Missing even one can result in death (if the Zingers don't kill you first!), and the further the level goes on, the farther apart and less replenishing the fuel tanks become.
• Loopy Lights (6-4). Take the limited visibility of Blackout Basement (though it doesn't render the level completely pitch-black, but still extremely dim), combine it with the switch barrel gimmick from Stop & Go Station, and you already have a frustrating level. Now throw in annoyingly-placed Klaptraps that jump whenever you jump and are infuriatingly good at catching you off-guard.
• Platform Perils (6-5) is just long and brutal, complete with impregnable Krushas that can only be killed via barrel toss, and constant chains of collapsing platforms. Thankfully, it is the very last regular level in the game before the boss of the world, followed by the Final Boss, King K. Rool.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

• Glimmer's Galleon (3-2). Seemingly long stage, entirely underwater with no Enguarde (which means no way to attack enemies) save for the very end, and very dark save for your animal buddy Glimmer providing a cone of light, which, in the original SNES cartridge version, makes the screen flash entirely white whenever you turn to face the other direction and so does he.
• Slime Climb (3-5). You must avoid falling into the rising water, and not because of the water being damaging. Rather, it's because of Snapjaw homing onto your Kong's movements. If you fall into the water and he catches you, kiss one of your Kongs goodbye because he will lunge and attack. In addition, in Donkey Kong Land 2, because they couldn't implement Snapjaw, the water does instantly damage you.
• Bramble Blast (3-6). It's a very confusing maze of thorns (that hurt the Kongs if they touch them), shooting barrels that might catch you in an endless loop, and Zingers for good measure. The DK Coin is also in an obscure place. If it's any consolation, this level marks the first instance of Stickerbush Symphony, a widely beloved song within the franchise.
• Bramble Scramble (4-3). Between the massive number of invincible Zingers and other obstacles rushing at you while you flop around riding Squawks, it's just pure insanity. The invincible Red Zingers are gone in DKL2, but the level still manages to throw you off with how long it is and it's still a maze. With the lesser screen visibility, it makes it almost as hard as it was in the SNES/GBA version.
• Haunted Hall (5-2). The level has you riding for your life away from Kackle, a large skeletal Kremling that serves as an Advancing Wall of Doom. The only way to ward him away is to fervently collect Plus Barrels to constantly increase the time left before he attacks and avoid Minus Barrels that decrease the time, effectively combining two infamous levels from the first game: Mine Cart Carnage and Tanked Up Trouble. Perfect precision is practically necessary, as missing a single Plus Barrel or collecting a single Minus Barrel can be fatal.
• Web Woods (5-5) also qualifies. In addition to having to rely on Squitter's webs to defeat/avoid enemies while traversing most of the Bottomless Pit-laden level (a potentially frustrating feat in itself), the fact that the level's DK Coin is only available from the end-of-level roulette is capable of causing untold exasperation in itself: it's only shown for a brief moment^note to be more specific, about one fifteenth of a second, and your timing being even slightly off in hitting the target results in completely missing it and having to start the entire level over if you want to attempt to go back and get it.
• Castle Crush (6-3) definitely deserves a mention for how irritatingly quick it is. You need to have cat-like reflexes if you want to make it through this level without either getting struck by enemies or getting squashed by the tower's Malevolent Architecture, even moreso if you're going for all the items.
• To elaborate on Toxic Tower (6-6), it's another Rise to the Challenge level where poison water chases you at all times and you have to escape whilst taking the forms of the different Animal Buddies. The first part has you playing as Rattly the Snake, doing jumps that will probably kill you if you miss them. The second part has you flying away as Squawks the Parrot, shooting Zingers that block your way and navigating through a dungeon labyrinth. The bonus area requires using Squitter to shoot web platforms up a long curving bramble-lined passageway to get the Kremkoin, and you don't have a lot of time to do it in. If the webs are not a skill you have thoroughly mastered by now, you're going to be in for some major headaches trying to get that magical 102% completion.
• Screech's Sprint (7-1). It's another one of the dreaded bramble levels, but this time, its main gimmick is that as Squawks, you must win a race against Screech, his Evil Counterpart, to the end of a large maze of Zinger-infested brambles. Not only is Screech just as quick and nimble as Squawks, but he can just fly through Zingers that Squawks has to kill or avoid, and the race itself is life or death - if he gets to the finish line before you, you're history, forcing the player to quickly figure out the course whilst staying alive. All of this makes for a very fittingly challenging and tense final level before the Final Boss fight against Kaptain K. Rool.

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!

• Riverside Race (2-2) is — as its name suggests — a race against the clock while an invincible swarm of bees are hounding you throughout the vast majority of the level unless you're underwater making backtracking a huge pain in the ass (and in order to get one of the Banana Birds, you have to speedrun it to beat Brash the Bear's time).
• Fish Food Frenzy (3-5) is a major pain of a level. Throughout, a Nibbla follows your every move. He'll protect you by eating the fish in your way, but if he eats too many Lurchins (spiked enemies) in a row, which usually means two, he'll turn on your Kongs instead. Even if he doesn't attack you right away then, you probably won't be able to get to a fish before he does. And the level is crawling with Lurchins. He'll also take a bite out of your Kongs if he goes too long without eating a regular fish, which is difficult because they're less common than the Lurchins, and getting him close enough to one without touching the fish yourself can be quite a pain; Lurchins, on the other hand, he'll eat even if he's not particularly close to.
• Demolition Drain-Pipe (4-2) and Tearaway Toboggan (5-2) (and Surf's Up in the GBA remake) are both annoying due to the wonky controls of the sled the Kongs ride in and loads of hazards that can easily make you lose one of them.
• Ripsaw Rage (4-3), the tree-styled level where a giant saw rises up to kill you and you have to out-climb it, featuring numerous sections where you have to move horizontally while the saw constantly moves up. More frustrating than hard.
• Low-G Labyrinth (4-5). The level's main gimmick is, obviously, low gravity. Dodging the onslaught of Buzzes is very tough considering you move slower than usual, and the moving ones aren't slowed down one bit. Then you have to navigate the place with Quawks, and that gets... tricky.
• Barrel Drop Bounce (5-3) definitely deserves a mention. Basically, the level has barrels falling from a waterfall way too fast for the player to keep up with without near-perfect timing. Needless to say, you're might end up spending hours on this frustrating level.
• Kong-Fused Cliffs (6-2) is even worse. This time, it's a burning rope with Buzzes and other crap coming down from above that are nigh-impossible to anticipate. There are quite a few DK Barrels along the way as well, but they only negate the frustration by so much.
• Lightning Look-Out (7-3). If you find constantly running from deadly and extremely annoying lightning bolts that not only track where you are but anticipate where you will be to be fun, then you will have a masochistic blast with this level. It's even worse the first time you play it because the lightning strike warnings look like nothing more than background effects. The worst part is the pool of water with floating barrels and three Buzzes in the middle: even if you're quick enough to get in and out of the water before lightning strikes (if it touches the water anywhere while you're in it, you take a hit) you won't be quick enough to dodge it if it comes down on top of the barrel you're now standing on. Whether or not it does is purely random. And just to mock you, it blocks your way to the next save point!
• Koindozer Klamber (7-4) contains pink versions of Koin, an enemy which you get one of the Plot Coupons from. The only problem? You have to land exactly on top of them - if you land any other direction on them other than the top, their Hitbox Dissonance will bump you off a ledge to your doom. Dixie's gliding ability makes this a bit easier, but if you lose her, you'd better be good with Kiddy!
• Poisonous Pipeline (7-5), to an insane degree considering the fact that it's a very long swimming level with tons of enemies in it. If that wasn't enough, while you're submerged, the controls are reversed, and the incredibly tough bonus stages with reversed controls only further the headache. It probably didn't help that if you were jumping out of the water (to get the DK Coin, the level goal, etc.), your controls would quickly transition from reversed to normal, resulting in the Kong plunging back into the water instead of landing onto the platform. It's no wonder that this is the last level before the K. Rool boss fight.
• Ripcurl Reef in the GBA version. Echoing the Brutal Bonus Level Animal Antics from the previous game, this level has you swimming underwater rather than being in the air with Squawks, and instead of brambles, you have lots of palette-swapped Lurchins to get around. The current here does not change directions constantly as the wind does in Animal Antics, which is a double-edged sword: you don't have to worry about keeping track of which way you're being blown, but on the other hand, you don't have a consistent pattern to keep track of. Unless you've memorized the level, you have no way of knowing whether the current will be blowing left, right, or not at all.
• Speaking of the GBA version, it actually added a number of minigames that weren't in the original. Now, these could practically be here as a whole (or at least under Scrappy Mechanic), because all of them are annoying, and you need to complete them to get 103% and the secret ending, but Funky's fourth challenge deserves special mention. It's a racing minigame where you must use the Turbo Ski to beat four Kremlings on a 3-lap race around a river. Getting into first place isn't that hard, but you also have to avoid hitting the Kremlings or any of the walls, because taking too many hits causes you to fail automatically, even if you were a mile ahead of the pack. And the vehicle's controls are iffy at best, especially at full speed, which isn't much of an issue when using it on the world map but becomes very noticeable when not being quite accurate enough with your steering has actual negative consequences.

Donkey Kong Land series

• Sky High Caper. If you didn't already hate Track Attack enough, this one will make you break your Game Boy in half. It's somewhat like Tanked Up Trouble in Country ...except, imagine being stuck on an incredibly slow moving platform that is barely any wider than your player character, AND the controls are incredibly slippery and imprecise, AND the platform rotates ninety degrees clockwise every time you jump on it. Then, throw in random Hogwashes that force you to jump off the platform and risk plummeting to your doom, and make the level ungodly long, and you have one of the most annoying levels to ever grace the series. And the worst part? It's only in the third world! (of four)
• Also in DKL2, it makes a level late in the game more frustrating - Clapper's Cavern. In a ridiculous example of damaging water, the water you just swam in Arctic Abyss, now hurts you for no apparent reason. Like in the Super NES version, you have to use Clapper to freeze the water to traverse over the icy waters, and master the slide to avoid getting hit by Zingers.

Donkey Kong 64

• Frantic Factory. Not only is it a very long and difficult level in its own right, it also has That One Boss, unevenly difficult minigames (this is the first appearance of the dreaded Beaver Bother bonus game), and the original Donkey Kong arcade game. The trouble is, this version of the classic arcade game practically embodies Nintendo Hard; you only have one life to complete all four levels (though you get one extra life if your score hits 10,000), barrels come from everywhere, and you can't skip the cutscenes. Oh, and that's not the worst part. When you beat it, you get a Golden Banana, but then in comes Squawks who challenges you to play the game again for a unique prize. And the worst part isn't that when you go for that prize, you have to beat it on Level 2 difficulty; the worst part is that the prize in question, the Nintendo Coin, is crucial to opening the way to the final boss, meaning that you have to beat the game twice. This has caused many to give up and/or declare Donkey Kong 64 to be the hardest N64 game, even if they've gotten everything else necessary for the final boss.
• Fungi Forest is perhaps the most annoying level in the game, even if not necessarily the hardest. It all comes down to the day/night gimmick that restricts the player from entering certain areas unless it's the appropriate period, which can only be changed near the level's entrance. This only serves to add another layer of complex backtracking to a game that already suffers quite a lot from it, no thanks to the Tag Barrel being a Scrappy Mechanic of its own.
• On the surface, Crystal Caves seems merely annoying at worst. Its dense dark-brown and cyan color palette makes it rather irksome to navigate, and unless you manage to find a secret area and kill a certain mook, from the second you enter the main cavern, you'll be bombarded with falling stalactites constantly. It is also harder than the other levels to get enough bananas for the boss (including Creepy Castle, the following level which requires the most bananas but makes them much easier to get). What really makes it qualify, however, are a few of its challenge rooms, which are easily some of the hardest in the game:
  • The Beetle race in the ice castle (which is the second Beetle race in the game) is a flat-out nasty thing. You have to do the entire thing with Lanky doing his Orangstand Sprint, which doesn't help on the hairpin turns and narrow walkways that the Beetle himself has no trouble running. The fact that you'll get nothing if you don't collect a minimum number of coins again, even if you win, makes it even worse.
  • While the igloo and cabin Golden Bananas involving all the Kongs can all be difficult, it's Donkey Kong's Golden Banana in the igloo that's truly heinous. The Golden Banana sits in the middle of the room, and is guarded by a spiral-shaped maze of ice. The shard-covered walls of this maze deal absurd amounts of damage if DK touches it; namely one whole melon, a third of your maximum health, per hit! This maze is difficult enough to navigate, especially considering how much damage the maze's walls do, but then it moves. It rotates clockwise, pauses, then rotates counterclockwise, pauses again, and then repeats. It's possible to make the maze not move, which is the only easy way to get this Golden Banana without extreme frustration.
  • While not nearly as bad as Donkey Kong's rotating death maze, Diddy's cabin room is particularly frustrating, being a timed Multi-Mook Melee atop several platforms that are too high to jump up to directly, forcing you to fly up there with the rocket barrel. The catch? You get all of fifty seconds, each platform is occupied by at least one enemy (with the middle having four on it) and more than half of the enemies in the room cannot be killed unless you lob orange grenades at them from another platform, including the aforementioned four barrel mooks on the center platform. Thus, you have to hope that one of your grenades manages to kill two of them at once if you hope to succeed. Fell off the platform by accident? You may as well just make a beeline for the door, as Kracshot Kroc will have his sights set on you under a 10-second timer should you run out of time and fail.
• Creepy Castle is a nightmare (no pun intended) for 100% Completion, as even just the outside segment is by far the biggest level in the game, with an absurd number of caves, catacombs, and rooms to check out, making it extremely easy to get lost or miss something. It also houses not one, but two racing minigames (a rematch between Tiny and a car character first seen in Frantic Factory's own racing game, and a difficult minecart ride for Donkey Kong that differs from the others in that it's divided in two phases; and once again there's a requirement of DK coins to claim true victory). On top of all that, this level has the hardest version of the Beaver Bother minigame, and you need to complete it twice.

Donkey Kong Country Returns

• 2-7, Tidal Terror, is widely agreed to be the first level of the game that will really give players trouble. The main gimmick in this level are the massive tsunamis that come from the background every couple seconds. The walls you can hide behind are rarely ever adequate, either being small, weak, or need to be pulled out of the ground. Oh, and if you want 100%? You need to even faster because the waves will wash away anything on screen if not picked up in time, meaning that if you accidently go too far and have a puzzle piece or KONG letter on screen that you can't reach because the wave was too close, you either have to die or restart the level in order to get it to respawn.
• Crowded Cavern, 4-5. It's a rocket barrel level filled to the brim with literal Goddamned Bats. Most of the time is spent dodging bats and various rocks, and one hit and you're dead. The end is the worst, as you have to dodge a giant bat's sound wave weapons that it'll aim at you horizontally; sometimes he'll even try to anticipate where you'll be. And if you don't move out of the way at the end? You have to do the giant bat's area again!
• 5-8, Muncher Marathon. A level with an Advancing Wall Of Baby Spiders constantly after you throughout the level, only one checkpoint (and by the time you reach it, the level is practically over; the rest is easy), lots of places to make mistakes and get behind, collectibles that are easy to find but range from mildly tricky to nearly impossible to get and still make it through...it may be one of the shortest levels in the game (the "Marathon" in the level's name refers to your constant running while keeping the Added Alliterative Appeal, not the length) but it's definitely one of the most annoying.
• Gear Getaway (7-4). It's another rocket barrel level that forces you to maneuver around an array of machinery with exact precision. Checkpoints are also inconveniently placed before the most difficult flying segments, assuring that you will drop a ludicrous amount of lives before finally getting to the end.
• 8-2, Hot Rocket. Volcanic rock slabs that crack and move inward or just drop off entirely, fireballs coming in from the left side, fiery dragon-like creatures going in circles with little room to maneuver around, and only one checkpoint. Trying to get all the collectibles? Have fun with that puzzle piece which requires you to grab an entire line of bananas while skimming the surface of the lava. It might be easier to just say that all of the rocket barrel levels, at least the first or second time through the game, belong in this category.
• 8-3, Roasting Rails. By itself, it's your usual mine cart shenanigans, which you're probably used to by this point. However, the level is infamous for being home to a very frustrating puzzle piece: There's one point where you jump to a particular mine cart, and the second you land in it, you have to immediately jump out into another mine cart above you. The two tracks are placed so that your timing has to be absolutely spot-on or you won't make it. If you don't know about this one in advance, you'll always jump too late. And if you do know about it in advance, you'll almost certainly jump too soon.

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

• 4-4 (Irate Eight). How do you turn an incredibly long level that has Rise to the Challenge segments with little room for error from difficult to heinous? Put it all underwater.
• 5-4 (Panicky Paddles) is one of those where just playing through the level is challenging but pretty reasonable, but getting all the collectibles is a huge exercise in patience. The level has a secret exit that requires Dixie to get into, and the G also requires Dixie unless you're really good at roll-jumping. The problem? The level is one of the longest in the game, the secret exit and G are at the very end of the level, and the only buddy barrel you get in the entire level is near the beginning. If you lose Dixie to a poorly-timed jump over spikes or that obnoxious underwater segment right after the last checkpoint (while we're at it, the N is in this section and is no picnic to get either), you're doing the entire long level over from the beginning. And considering getting both exits already requires playing through almost the entire level twice, it can easily overstay its welcome.
• 6-4 (Blurry Flurry). All the levels in the sixth world are icy versions of the previous worlds of Donkey Kong Country Returns, so you'd probably expect the one based on the Cave world to be a Rocket Barrel level. And you'd be correct. The level is full of suddenly-appearing obstacles, sharp turns in corridors only slightly larger than the Rocket Barrel, puzzle pieces that require collecting bananas on a twisting trail during said obstacles (it's all one-way, by the way), and is capped with a trial-and-error segment in a giant rolling snowball. Your one relief is that the Rocket Barrel has two hit points this time.