Kong & Country

Got back into the original Donkey Kong Country for the first time in 22 years...
Makes me feel old 'cause the first time I saw Donkey Kong, he was chuckin' barrels at me.

Nearly forgot how beautiful and amazing the original DKC was. Might have had almost as much fun as I did first time round...

I have no idea how the hell I managed to locate all the areas and get 101% before Internet walkthrus and videos.

I was gonna see if I could manage to complete the entire game without looking anything up. After all, I did it back in the day...

I was cruising right along and finding all of the bonus areas until stage 3-4: Vine Valley's "Orang-utan Gang". The level contains five bonus rooms, three of which are secret rooms that are broken open with the same barrel.

As a kid, I'd spend hours searching a level until I found everything. Don't have the patience for that anymore. If I get frustrated trying to find something, I'll just look it up. I've got shit to do. I'm actually kinda glad I got stuck, because it led me to stumble upon the coolest thing since sliced banana bread...

DKC Atlas
www.dkc-atlas.com/
Animated maps with animated, bananas, barrels, and backgrounds... The Donkey Kong Trilogy maps with every single bonus level and banana, meticulously mapped out using the actual textures and sprites from the game. This Kicks Atlas!

Most often, a hidden bonus area is hinted at with a KONG letter or a trail of bananas in a seemingly unreachable area... As a hint that there's SOMETHING there. But the game contains several bonus stages that are completely hidden, and seem to be found by pure accident or by intrepid explorers obsessively scouring the level. 

The only real clue we had in 1994 was if a level's name had an exclamation point added to it (!), we knew we had found everything. Had noted that some level names had exclamation points, while others did not... Saw difference between a few game save files, reasoning it must be an indication that you'd found everything in a stage.

The final bonus area hidden off screen and under the walkway of the last stage, "Platform Perils". The total count appears to be 33 percentage points earned for completing the levels... Plus 67 hidden percentage points for the hidden bonus areas for 100%. Defeating King K. Rool also counts for 1%, for a total of 101%.

I always remember DKC2 being my favorite of the trilogy, though I hadn't played much DKC since the sequels were released. Hoping to eventually re-play DKC2 in its' entirety.

 

Released in 1994 for the SNES, Donkey Kong Country is a true a classic.