Trivia / Donkey Kong Country

• Accidentally Correct Zoology: The Kremlings steal the Kongs' banana hoard because, according to the manual, they are good source of nutrition, despite crocodiles being carnivores. In real life, crocodilians actually do like to eat fruit, although it's akin to humans eating sweets.
• Bad Export for You: "Jungle Fantasy", the Japanese OST, contained seven arranged songs, all exclusive to the soundtrack. The OST was eventually released in America as "DK Jamz", though out of all the arrangements, it only contained Jungle Groove, leaving out the other six songs (two examples.)
• Dueling Works:
  • The game was released around the same time as Sega's Sonic & Knuckles, which also heavily promoted itself through a technology gimmick (the lock-on cartridge). A commercial for Donkey Kong Country famously took jabs at Sega and how the Genesis couldn't handle a similar game.
  • Also with Vectorman. Both games drew a lot of press for their use of computer graphics in their sprite work.
• Executive Meddling: Donkey Kong Jr. was initially meant to be DK's sidekick in this game. However, upon seeing his new, monkey-like design, Nintendo forced Rare to either change it to fit with his original appearance or keep the design and rename him to create an entirely new character. This ended up being a positive thing in the long run, as Rare chose the latter option, and thus Diddy Kong, one of the most popular characters in the Mario franchise, was born.
• First Appearance: Of Diddy Kong, Funky Kong, Candy Kong, the Animal Buddies featured in this game (most notably Rambi, Enguarde, and Squawks), King K. Rool, and all the enemies featured in this game (such as Kritters, Klaptraps, etc.). It's also the first appearance of the original Donkey Kong as Cranky Kong, as well as the modern Donkey Kong (who, depending on the source, is either a grown-up Donkey Kong Jr. or the latter's son).
• God Never Said That: Rumors have persisted that Shigeru Miyamoto dislikes how Donkey Kong Country turned out, and is even believed to have said that it "proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good." He has never expressed such sentiments, as the interview with Electronic Gaming that the quote supposedly came from doesn't exist, and he specifically debunked the rumors when Donkey Kong Country Returns was announced in 2010.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The Competition Cartridge version of the game only saw a very limited print run of 2,500 copies and was only given to subscribers of Nintendo Power, making it one of the rarest video games ever released. Since its ephemeral nature (it was only intended for use in a contest with other players) makes it unlikely to ever get ported, you'll either have to pay a small fortune to acquire an original cartridge, or find a bootleg rom of it online.
• Killer App: Donkey Kong Country sold ridiculously well thanks to its strong marketing campaign and 3D graphical style, ending up as the 3rd best-selling SNES game. The game was so popular that it kept the SNES relevant even as the PlayStation released in Japan right after launch.
• Manual Misprint: The tracklisting for the "DK Jamz" ended up suffering from an error due to the inclusion of "Jungle Groove", imported from the Japan-exclusive "Jungle Fantasy" release. As such, the Jungle and Map themes had their names swapped and the main theme was given the comparatively bland name of "Theme". The sound test of the Game Boy Advance version managed to fix this with "Theme" now being named "DK Theme", the Jungle theme having the title of "Simian Segue" and divided into two parts, and the Map theme baring the title of "DK Island Swing".
• Troubled Production: The Game Boy Advance version had to be recreated from the ground up. The original files were stored on floppy disks in an unusable format, so the team had to rip art assets from emulators.
• What Could Have Been:
  • One of the original pitches had Wario as the game's Big Bad. It would have involved Wario turning Mario into stone and Donkey Kong having to save the day. This was dropped due to Nintendo insisting on new villains for the game.
  • Rare wanted to include true co-op multiplayer instead of the tag-out system used in the final game, but various issues with the game's design and SNES hardware limitations prevented it from being implemented.
  • After beating the game, Cranky Kong would come out and claim that he did it himself in a single life and in less than an hour. This is actually the remnant of a gameplay mode that would have featured Cranky Kong as a Joke Character who was slow and bad to control, showing that the old simian was just all talk. The idea of Cranky Kong being a playable character would be revisited nearly 20 years later in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, which would show that he is definitely not all talk.
  • Cranky was meant to be a lot nicer during development of the first game, as seen here. According to early concept art, Cranky was originally named "Grandpa Kong" and looked like a white version of Donkey Kong with a beard. This may have influenced his characterization in some of the spinoffs such as DK: King of Swing, which made him nicer than he typically is.
  • Some animal buddies were planed, including a dolphin, an owl named Hooter that would give players information, a fox that would reveal secrets, snakes that could be used as vines, a flying pig, a mole named Miney, and a giraffe animal buddy allowing DK to climb the giraffe's neck to reach high areas.
  • The Puftup enemies in Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest were planned to appear in this game first.
  • Diddy Kong was actually originally going to be Donkey Kong Jr., but Nintendo rejected the redesign of the character, demanding either a closer design to the original or the new design be a new character entirely. Rare choose the latter option. The main difference between his DK Jr design and his Diddy Kong design is that he changed species (he gained a tail) and lost the "J" on his shirt.
  • "Diet DK", "DK Lite", "Tinky Kong" were the several names considered for Diddy Kong. They had originally settled on "Dinky Kong", but later dropped due to legal considerations.
  • "Honey Kong" and "Blondie Kong" were the other considered names for Candy Kong.
  • Concept art shows that K. Rool originally was named "Krudd". Later in development, he was named "Kommander," which is referenced during the fake credits of the final fight.
  • The Kremlings originally had a more Battletoads-esque design and were blue. This is due to the Kremlings being originally created for a different Rare project before being adapted for Donkey Kong Country.
  • The earliest known plot involved the Kremlings stealing a "Golden Banana", causing Donkey Kong and Jr. to have to get it back. The Golden Banana made it into material such as the cartoon.
• Working Title: The game was going to be called "Monkey Madness".
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: King K. Rool's final name was thought up in about five minutes.

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