Donkey Kong Country is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is a reboot of Nintendo's Donkey Kong franchise and follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they set out to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings. The single-player traverses 40 side-scrolling levels as they jump between platforms and avoid obstacles. They collect items, ride minecarts and animals, defeat enemies and bosses, and find secret bonus stages. In multiplayer modes, two players work cooperatively or race each other.
Rare founders Tim and Chris Stamper (right to left) in 2015
Rare used SGI Challenge workstations (pictured) to produce Donkey Kong Country's pre-rendered visuals.
Donkey Kong Country was released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (pictured) when it was beginning to face competition from next-generation hardware.
Apocryphal rumours spread that the Donkey Kong creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, (pictured in 2015) disliked Donkey Kong Country.
Rare Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Twycross, Leicestershire. Rare's games span the platform, first-person shooter, action-adventure, fighting, and racing genres. Its most popular games include the Battletoads, Donkey Kong, and Banjo-Kazooie series, as well as games like GoldenEye 007 (1997), Perfect Dark (2000), Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001), Viva PiƱata (2006), and Sea of Thieves (2018).
Headquarters in Twycross
Rare focused on Kinect from 2009 to 2014.