Donkey Kong 64

Donkey Kong, the player-controlled character, runs towards an enemy in the game's jungle-themed world

Donkey Kong 64 is a 3D platforming adventure game in which the player, as Donkey Kong and his friends, explores an island and collects items to progress through minigames and puzzles.[5][6] The game follows a traditional storyline for the series: King K. Rool and his reptilian Kremlings invade the idyllic DK Isle and kidnap Donkey Kong's friends, planning to power up their Blast-O-Matic weapon and destroy the island.[5][7] After a tutorial, the player embarks as Donkey Kong to rescue the others from their kidnappers and stop K. Rool's plan.[6] While exploring the in-game world and completing puzzle minigames, the player collects two types of bananas: normal bananas, which are colored differently for each Kong character, award the player with banana medals and can be traded for access to each world's boss fight; and golden bananas, a certain number of which are required to unlock each new in-game world.[7] The game features a total of 3,821 collectibles, though only 281 are required to complete it.[8]

Most of the game's puzzles are simple and involve rearranging items, manipulating switches and tiles, or matching items as in the game Concentration. Minigames include races, minecart rides, and barrels that shoot the characters as projectiles. There are five such golden banana-rewarding objectives for each of five playable characters across seven themed worlds—200 goals in total, in addition to a connecting overworld.[6][9] Unlike in prior Donkey Kong games, the objectives can be completed in any order.[10][7] The player can fast travel between sections of the level with designated warp pads and can swap between characters in designated swap barrels.[3][11] The player also collects banana coins, which can be spent to unlock new weapons and abilities, and other collectibles such as weapon ammunition and blueprint puzzle pieces. As in other games by the developer, the player often encounters an impossible situation (e.g., an indestructible object or out-of-reach area) and must eventually backtrack to resolve the impasse after acquiring a new ability.[6]

Donkey Kong's kidnapped friends become playable characters after the player rescues them.[12] Each of the five characters begin with basic abilities and can purchase additional, unique abilities from Cranky Kong as the game progresses, which are necessary to solve certain puzzles. For example, Donkey Kong can operate levers, Chunky Kong can lift rocks, Tiny Kong can crawl through holes, Diddy Kong can fly, and Lanky Kong can float. The characters are also unique in the projectiles they shoot and the musical instruments they play. For example, some doors can be opened only with Donkey Kong's coconut projectiles and others can be opened only with Diddy Kong's guitar. There are more special abilities than face buttons on the controller, so button combinations are needed to trigger some abilities. Combinations also trigger special modes, including alternative camera angles, a sniper mode, and a snapshot mode which unlocks more in-game secrets. Playable versions of the original Donkey Kong (1981) and Jetpac (1983) are hidden within the game, and playing through them is required to finish the story.[6] The player-character can also transform into animals, such as Rambi the Rhino and Enguarde the Swordfish, who recur from earlier series games.[13] Optional hardware support includes a widescreen mode[5] and Rumble Pak compatibility.[14]

Donkey Kong 64 features a separate multiplayer mode with six[15] minigames for two to four players.[5] Monkey Smash is an open arena, deathmatch-style minigame in which up to four players find ammo and use their respective projectile weapons from the single-player game to damage other players before losing all their own lives. Battle Arena is a king-of-the-hill minigame in which players use weapons and explosives to knock each other off the edge of a platform.[6] Each mode has several sub-types in which players can compete based on time or score.[14]

Following its success with the Donkey Kong Country games in the mid-1990s, developer Rare built its next Donkey Kong game on its predecessors' gameplay but not as a direct sequel.[16] Rare's Gregg Mayles led the effort to create Donkey Kong 64.[17] Development began in 1997—shortly after the completion of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! (1996)[18]—for release on the Nintendo 64's disk drive add-on.[19][20] It was transitioned for release on the base console after the add-on was delayed and eventually canceled.[21] A team of 16 people worked on the title over the course of three years, and an additional eight members assisted in its later stages.[2][18] Many developers transitioned from Rare's Banjo team, which had worked on Banjo-Kazooie (1998) and Banjo-Tooie (2000).[22] Donkey Kong 64 was built atop the Banjo game engine.[17]

Rare conceived and originally designed Donkey Kong 64 as a traditional, linear platform game similar to the Donkey Kong Country games. The Nintendo 64 was still new, and at the time Rare did not have a common game engine. The linear version was developed for around 18 months, before being scrapped in favor of what would be the released product. While 3D graphics prevented Rare from reproducing the detailed pre-rendered graphics of the Donkey Kong Country series, they allowed the company to make characters more expressive.[18] Producing satisfactory character models proved to be a challenge; lead artist Mark Stevenson noted that "[b]eing able to see this character from any angle, you'd make an animation, put it in the game, and you'd think it looked good side-on, but awful from every other angle!"[8] Stevenson also noted that as 3D video games were in their infancy, the Donkey Kong 64 models were always going to look worse than the pre-rendered Donkey Kong Country ones.[23] The models from the Country games were used as reference points, but their use was otherwise limited.[23]

The strong emphasis on collectibles was a design choice made at the request of Rare co-founder Tim Stamper to distinguish Donkey Kong 64 from Banjo-Kazooie. According to director George Andres, "I'd always go back to him and say 'Here's some' and he'd go 'No, more things'."[8] Retrospectively, Andres commented that he should have reined himself in, pointing out that he would have, among other things, liked to unify the color-coded banana system. Rare also attempted to differentiate Donkey Kong 64 from Banjo-Kazooie through its variety of playable characters, cinematic set-pieces, and bombastic boss battles. According to Andres, Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto was appalled when he saw Donkey Kong shoot a realistic shotgun used as a placeholder during a prerelease demonstration, and quickly sketched the coconut gun used in the final game.[8] A scrapped feature, "Stop 'N' Swop", would have allowed data to be transferred from Banjo-Kazooie to Donkey Kong 64 to unlock in-game bonuses.[24]

Donkey Kong 64 was the first game to require the Nintendo 64's Expansion Pak (pictured), a memory upgrade

Donkey Kong 64 was the first of two games[25] to require the Nintendo 64's Expansion Pak, a console memory upgrade that shipped with the game.[5] The upgrade was previously used to power optional, higher-resolution display, but in the case of Donkey Kong 64, it was marketed as improving the game's frame rate and rendering of objects at a distance.[26] According to Rare programmer Chris Marlow, the company could not resolve a bug that occurred without the Expansion Pak and thus they were forced, at great expense, to bundle the game with the memory upgrade.[27] However, Stevenson called Marlow's story a "myth" and said that the decision to use the Expansion Pak was made early on in development. While such a bug did exist towards the end of development, according to Stevenson, "the Expansion Pak wasn't introduced to deal with this and wasn’t the solution to the problem."[23] Nintendo said that the choice to bundle, rather than selling the accessory separately, would avoid consumer confusion.[28]

Donkey Kong 64 composer Grant Kirkhope

Grant Kirkhope composed the game's soundtrack, bringing it closer to the tradition of Banjo-Kazooie than to that of David Wise's Donkey Kong Country soundtracks.[29] However, Kirkhope has commented he tried to retain the darker, atmospheric tone that Wise brought to Donkey Kong Country, and included a remix of Wise's "Jungle Japes".[8] Originally, Donkey Kong Country 3 composer Eveline Fischer was going to handle Donkey Kong 64; Kirkhope became involved after he was asked for assistance. Kirkhope also provided Donkey Kong's voice in-game.[30] The "DK Rap", which introduces the Kong character abilities at its outset, was conceived and written by George Andreas, scored and recorded by Kirkhope, and performed by Andreas and Chris Sutherland.[1][31] It was intended to be a lighthearted joke despite being interpreted as a "serious" songwriting attempt at the game's launch.[8][1][32] Nintendo of America ran a "DK Rap" contest in which fans record their own version of the rap to win prizes including a trip to the company's Redmond headquarters.[33]

Rare announced Donkey Kong 64 with a single screenshot on its website[3] and coverage in the January 1999 issue of Nintendo Power.[34] Electronic Gaming Monthly wrote that the title was playable by the 1997 Electronic Entertainment Expo,[2] though IGN said that it debuted at the 1999 event.[35] The game also demoed at Nintendo's 1999 Spaceworld.[36] Donkey Kong 64 was expected to be a bestseller, as the console's "crowning achievement" in graphics and sound.[37][38]

The game was bundled with a special edition Nintendo 64 in translucent "jungle green"

Donkey Kong 64's sizable US$22 million marketing campaign doubled the typical budget for a major Nintendo release. The campaign included a 60-second commercial played at over 10,000 movie theaters during the holiday season, and additional advertisements shown on billboards, in print, and over radio.[2] A promotional "The Beast Is Back" tour brought a truck outfitted with Nintendo games across the United States,[39] and a separate sweepstakes between the series and Dr. Pepper soda advertised in supermarkets. Nintendo sought to sell four million copies of the game (1.5 million more than for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time), including a million of the translucent green Nintendo 64 bundles.[2][40] Polled retailers expected Donkey Kong 64 to be the top console game sold during the 1999 holiday season.[41] The title had little holiday season competition from Nintendo, who had moved its other releases including Mario Party 2, Perfect Dark, and Pokémon Stadium into the next year.[13][2]

Rare and Nintendo released the game in North America in November 1999,[2][13] and a worldwide release followed the next month.[3][42] Accompanying the game's launch, Nintendo offered a special bundle of the game and console, including a banana-colored game cartridge, its required Expansion Pak, and a transparent green "Jolly Rancher-style" Nintendo 64 console.[2][3][14]

In April 2015, Donkey Kong 64 was digitally rereleased as one of the first Nintendo 64 titles added to Nintendo's Wii U Virtual Console catalog.[43][44] This was the game's first rerelease, as it had not appeared on the Wii Virtual Console.[45][46] It is unknown why the game was never released on the Wii Virtual Console,[46] though Nintendo World Report speculated that it may have been related to the fact that it contains both the original arcade Donkey Kong (which was already available on the Virtual Console) and Jetpac (which Nintendo does not hold the rights to) as playable bonuses.[47]

Donkey Kong 64 received critical acclaim ("universal acclaim", according to video game review aggregator Metacritic).[48] It was the Nintendo 64's top seller during the 1999 holiday season and Nintendo's chief defense against competitor Sega's introduction of its Dreamcast console.[54] As a bestseller, Donkey Kong 64 joined Nintendo's "Player's Choice" game selection, where it continued to sell well through the next year's holiday season.[55] By 2004, Donkey Kong 64 had sold over 2.3 million units in North America.[56] It won the 1999 E3 Game Critics award for Best Platform Game,[17] and several annual awards from Nintendo Power, including best overall game of 1999.[52][53] It was additionally nominated for "Game of the Year" and "Console Game of the Year" during the 3rd Annual AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards (now known as the D.I.C.E. Awards).[57] GamePro named it an "Editor's Choice".[11] IGN described Donkey Kong 64 as the biggest and most ambitious title on the Nintendo 64 as of its release, but very similar to Banjo-Kazooie in its platforming and puzzle design.[6] Similarities between the two games and their themes was a common refrain among reviewers.[3][12]

Reviewers criticized or had little praise for the game's emphasis on collecting items and backtracking[25][59]—"an interactive egg hunt".[12] This had become a trend in the developer's games, and Donkey Kong 64 followed the "predictable formula" of making players collect multiple sets of items and in full for a special ending.[50] Next Generation also saw the developer creating a habit of backtracking in their games.[12] GameSpot was more diplomatic: those who liked collecting items would be titillated by its replay value, and those who did not would be frustrated by its chores.[5] The puzzles and minigames are fun the first time through, according to EGM, but they quickly become worn when replayed with increasingly tighter time restrictions.[50] GameSpot, however, considered parts of Donkey Kong 64's gameplay "cerebral", requiring the player to consider several simultaneous tasks to solve later puzzles.[5] Already familiar with the game's concepts borrowed from Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Banjo-Kazooie, reviewers considered the player's tasks less innovative or interesting to decipher.[13][6] In retrospective reviews, Nintendo Life described the chore of collecting objects "excessive" and repetitive. They suggested that backtracking, for instance, could be reduced by letting the player switch between characters at any time.[7][29]

Reviewers noted the game's size and length.[3][6][15][11][12][29] With an estimated 30 hours in basic gameplay,[2][3][7] IGN called it Rare's War and Peace.[6] "Big" is an understatement, wrote GameFan, "the adventure found within is mastodonic".[51] Reviewers became frequently lost or distracted in its world.[13][50] Reviewers highlighted the ingenuity of the boss battles, particularly the final battle against K. Rool,[3][50] although the story's ending disappointed EGM.[50] Reviewers found little entertainment in the multiplayer mode but praised the gameplay variety between the five characters.[5][6] The controls also frustrated reviewers, between slow movement speed and camera angle issues.[13][3][5][15][50] For example, characters who become unresponsive to control during their attack animations are vulnerable to encroaching enemies.[50] Edge wrote that the lack of camera improvements over Banjo-Kazooie was inexcusable.[49]

Despite its expanded memory resources, reviewers felt that Donkey Kong 64's visuals were only marginally—if at all—better than that of its contemporary games, such as the previous year's Banjo-Kazooie.[13][5][6][50] In fact, IGN avowed that Donkey Kong 64 was not as pretty as Banjo-Kazooie, especially in its water and backgrounds, though it still ranked among the console's prettiest games. The setting is barren and nondescript at first, and only later introduces lighting effects and richer textures. IGN hoped for more from Rare, and while its reviewer praised the game's particle effects (e.g., in the desert wind), he considered its dynamic lighting overused.[6] N64 Magazine said the enhanced effects were most often used for decoration, though they also played some role in puzzles based on illuminating paths.[3] Reviewers noted graphical difficulties even with the extra memory, such as frame rate slowdowns and distant features not appearing in any detail, though overall they considered the added graphical flourishes commendable.[5][6] GameSpot also saw a lack of variety in the game's environment.[5]

The characters have Rare's emblematic humor, and reviewers praised their individual personalities.[13][29][51] Several reviewers noted the degree to which the character personalities showed in their animations.[6][11][51] IGN considered Donkey Kong 64's characters less baffling than those of other Rare titles, and sometimes funny.[6] GameFan found that the addition of the three new playable characters to the series offered little personality that would be missed.[51]

While IGN felt that the game's music was less clever than Banjo-Kazooie's, Kirkhope's soundtrack still delivered a variety of moods[6] and fit the setting.[7] Aural clues in the surround sound and the quality of the underwater effects impressed GameSpot.[5] Reviewers criticized the opening "DK Rap"[25] as "embarrassing"[3] and among the worst music to feature in a game.[6] GamePro, however, thought it was humorous albeit lowbrow.[11] Eight years later, Nintendo Life said the song was "loved by some, loathed by others", similar to the game itself.[29]

Reviewers concluded that Donkey Kong 64 lacked the revolutionary potential of Donkey Kong Country but was of a sufficient high quality to sell well during the holiday season.[5][6][50] "The 3D platform genre doesn't evolve with Donkey Kong 64," AllGame wrote.[13] While hyped fans would be disappointed, IGN felt that Donkey Kong 64 remains an excellent and expansive platformer with an overwhelming amount of things to do.[6] GameFan, on the other hand, was most disappointed by how the game "truly offers nothing new" and compared its monotony and repetition with the film Eyes Wide Shut: "a big bloated project with not enough brilliant moments to justify the numbness ... [of] sitting through the whole thing", it "fails to live up to the Rare name".[51] Donkey Kong 64's 3D platforming was commonplace by the time of its release and, according to GameSpot, would have fared better as a Nintendo 64 launch title.[5] With its competition considered, Daily Radar wrote that Donkey Kong 64 was simply the best 3D platform game on the console.[58] Edge qualified this thought: Donkey Kong 64 was the closest any third-party developer had come to outdoing Nintendo's mastery of game structure, but its gameplay was derivative and unimaginative compared to the freedom and flexibility of Nintendo's Super Mario 64. Nevertheless, the 3D Donkey Kong was "a fine effort ... in its own right".[49]

Rare's 3D platformers became notorious for their emphasis on collecting items, and Kotaku remembered Donkey Kong 64 as "the worst offender" with hundreds of color-coded bananas.[22] Other retrospective reviewers agreed.[60][61][62] "As ... Super Mario 64 breathed life into the 3D platforming genre", Electronic Gaming Monthly wrote, "Donkey Kong 64 sucked it all out" and solidified Rare's reputation for making "collect-a-thon" games.[63] The indie developer behind A Hat in Time, a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, blamed Donkey Kong 64 for the "collect-a-thon platform adventurer" genre's decline in popularity.[64][65]

Retro Gamer and Game Informer both remembered the game's reception as "mixed",[17][66] in consideration of its similarities with Banjo-Kazooie and lack of genre-pushing changes.[17] Despite decent reviews, Donkey Kong 64 and Rare's subsequent Nintendo 64 releases did not meet the extolment of the company's preceding games, and lackluster sales led to a staff exodus that culminated with the company's acquisition by Microsoft in 2002.[67] The Nintendo 64 was approaching the end of its lifecycle, Electronic Gaming Monthly noted at the game's launch, as gamers turned their sights to the Sega Dreamcast and Sony PlayStation 2.[2] IGN later named Donkey Kong 64 as worthy of being remade for Nintendo's 3DS handheld console.[68]

While the "DK Rap" is still remembered for its negative reception,[4] it saw an upswing in popularity over a decade after Donkey Kong 64's release[1] as an internet meme. Sutherland believes the upswing happened because those who played the game as children had realized the song was meant to be taken as a joke, not a serious songwriting attempt.[8] Similarly, Kirkhope commented that "it's a bit like Abba, the way they’ve kind of come back into fashion over the years."[1] Renditions of the "DK Rap" appeared in Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001) and Donkey Konga (2003).[69] In 2017, Kirkhope composed a similar rap for Yooka-Laylee, a platform game made in homage to Rare's oeuvre.[70]

• Donkey Kong 64 at the Super Mario Wiki
• Donkey Kong 64 at the Internet Archive