OOOOOOOOOHHH BANANA! if you have been on the internet you may have heard that line. It’s time to look at the game it came from and into another gold standard from Rare during the N64 years.

Donkey Kong 64 is the second of Rare’s 3 great Collectathons (was Conker a collectathon? I haven’t played it – if it comes onto the player I will have a shot) The first being Banjo Kazooie and the last being Banjo Tooie. This game is set between those games production wise. Lessons learned in one are used to improve the experience. But it is also the 4th in the Donkey Kong line of games since the First Country on the SNES… and will be the last to use the Kremlins for some time, quite a long time in fact – it’s why people kept asking for them back when the modern returns games appeared.

Well the reason I bring our crocodile enemies up is right away when you start the game they are front and centre. King K.rool is commanding a mechanical floating island armed with a powerful weapon that will destroy Donkey Kong’s Jungle Island. Fortunately for our hero they can’t fire it just yet, so steal all DKs golden bananas and kidnap his friends to keep him distracted (his words) while they get it back up and running. FYI this weapon is the one he uses as his final smash in Smash Ultimate.

You start out as DK who finds this out by a parrot and after a few mini games for training you are out into the main hub area, though everything is blocked off except this small island attached to K’rools.  In here is K’lumsy who is a giant but friendly Kremling and will be how you open up new levels, every level has a boss you can fight and defeating him gives you one of the keys to open K’lumsy’s cage who will happily dance causing damage and opening up the next world.

There are 5 playable Kongs this time, though only DK and Diddy are returning, instead of Dixey and Kiddy we get Tiny and Chunky who are siblings to those two, and finally we get the oddball Lanky Kong (who appears to be a cross between an orangutan and gibbon) But you don’t get access to them at the start. The first level has Diddy, second has Lanky and Tiny, third has Chunky. Each Kong has a number of items only they can collect. 100 bananas 5 golden bananas one of which is acquired by getting their blueprint to the big weapon and turning it in, and a number of banana coins for handing in to npcs for various upgrades like guns, new moves and musical instruments. Now remember each Kong has all those 5 characters which is why this game is considered a bit bloated to 100 percent, before we get to the banana fairies.

Anyway there are 7 levels plus the hub area all with collectibles to find so I do understand people’s exasperation on trying to 100% the game… well its 101% as they call it in game as getting all the banana fairies ups it that additional 1% similar to what the banana birds from Country 3 did. Though unlike that game you still get the ending without all those fairies, you just get a nice bonus at the end. But back when playing it on the 64 I didn’t feel this was too much to ask, it felt like a big game back then and each world felt different with its own theme. There’s not really any backtracking outside of one instance of needing a power up for Lanky you get in a later level so outside of coming back to the first 2 levels once you have all the Kongs, you can complete all but one level in one go without having to come back later (except as said for the 5 level which needs a Lanky power up from level 6)

The Kongs all control rather well, though like many games playing on the 64 player on my Switch/Switch 2 I do feel the issues of going from c buttons to a second analogue stick (activating the music attack so often). Think the one proper issue not caused by controller differences was if you try to use DK in the battle rounds since his moving regular attack throws him forward… and on that arena, often off the arena.

Music wise I often found it feeling a bit more like more Banjo Kazooie music at times, and while those are good sound tracks, it doesn’t feel like what they should be for a Donkey Kong game, not the bosses though their themes felt good for this.

The one true black mark on this game, and one everyone who encounters it will remember, far worse than 100% this game. Beaver Bother! I have struck the existence of this mini game (which you beat for golden bananas) from my brain but the moment I saw it.. it all came flooding back to me. You control a crocodile and have a bunch of beavers scaring them into a hole… and it doesn’t work. It often feels like there’s an invisible wall between the beavers and the hole and despite being directly behind them using the scare button, they instead walk around the hole. Made worse, it’s on a timer and the number you need to get in the hole is far too high. I ended up losing an hour’s progress at one point because of this horrible challenge.

Sadly that one challenge is so bad it does prevent me from giving a perfect score, which is a shame  as the rest took the colectathon elements of Banjo and without being a sequel improved on them. Yes, switching between Kongs can seem frustrating but their different abilities and challenges made the levels feel bigger and let me play with them rather than just find the one character and keep using them.

If you have recently completed Bananza, or working your way through the Donkey Kong games, or just want a fun 3d platformer… or just like fun games, this is definitely one to play just… look up ways to help cope with those one or two little golden bananas that everyone hates and a bunch of them are all those bloody beavers.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮