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 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.
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest is a 1995 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was released on 21 November 1995 in Japan, 4 December in North America, and 14 December in Europe. It is the second installment of the Donkey Kong Country series and the sequel to Donkey Kong Country (1994).
Donkey Kong 64 is a 1999 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It is the only Donkey Kong game to feature 3D gameplay. As the gorilla Donkey Kong, the player explores themed levels to collect items and rescue his kidnapped family members from King K. Rool who seeks to destroy DK Isles. The player completes minigames and puzzles as five playable Kong characters—each with their own special abilities—to receive bananas and other collectibles. In multiplayer modes, up to four players can compete in deathmatch and last man standing games.
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 Piñata (2006), and Sea of Thieves (2018).
Timothy John Follin is an English video game music composer, cinematographer, visual effects artist and game developer, who has written tracks for a variety of titles and home gaming systems, including the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, Nintendo Entertainment System, Mega Drive, Super NES, Game Boy, Dreamcast, and PlayStation.
Graeme Norgate is a British video game music composer who has composed music for a variety of video games developed by Rare. His first project at Rare was writing music for the Game Boy game, Donkey Kong Land. He also contributed to the soundtracks of Blast Corps and GoldenEye 007. Norgate was later an employee of Free Radical Design, the company was eventually bought out by Crytek and renamed to Crytek UK; Norgate retained the position of audio director after the company's buyout. Norgate later moved to Dambuster Studios after Crytek closed down Crytek UK.
Grant Kirkhope is a Scottish composer and voice actor for video games and film. Some of his notable works include GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Perfect Dark, among many others. He has won an Ivor Novello Award for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope and a World Soundtrack Award for The King's Daughter as well as being nominated for various BAFTA, ASCAP, and IFMCA awards, He has also provided the voice for the character Donkey Kong in many of his game appearances.
The "DK Rap" is the introductory theme music for the 1999 Nintendo 64 video game Donkey Kong 64. Its lyrics were written by Rare designer George Andreas, who performed the vocals for the song, and musician Grant Kirkhope, who composed the melody. Rare staffers contributed vocals to the chorus. Its lyrics describe the five playable characters in the game, with Kirkhope's goal to juxtapose the previous iteration of Donkey Kong from Donkey Kong Country against the new one.
Banjo-Kazooie is a platform game series developed by Rare, a British company. The games feature a male bear named Banjo and his friend, a large female red bird named Kazooie, both of whom are controlled by the player. Banjo originally made his debut as a playable character in 1997 as part of the cast of Diddy Kong Racing. Throughout the various games, they are tasked with thwarting the various evil schemes of a witch named Gruntilda. The first game, Banjo-Kazooie, was released in 1998 to critical acclaim and was followed by three sequels and a spin-off racing game.
Donkey Kong is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for Nintendo. It follows the adventures of Donkey Kong, a large, powerful gorilla, and other members of the Kong family of apes. Donkey Kong games include the original arcade game trilogy by Nintendo R&D1; the Donkey Kong Country series by Rare and Retro Studios; and the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series by Nintendo Software Technology. Various studios have developed spin-offs in genres such as edutainment, puzzle, racing, and rhythm. The franchise also incorporates animation, printed media, theme parks, and merchandise.
Kenji Yamamoto is a Japanese video game musician working for Nintendo, notable for composing music in many titles of the Metroid series, mainly Super Metroid and the Metroid Prime trilogy. Yamamoto also plays a role as a music director at Nintendo, overseeing audio for several of their games. He frequently collaborates with fellow composers Minako Hamano and Masaru Tajima.
Eveline Novakovic is a British video game music composer who contributed music to Donkey Kong Country, composed most of the soundtrack for Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, and provided voice acting and sound effects for several other Rare projects. Notably, she voiced the main heroine, Joanna Dark, in the Nintendo 64 game Perfect Dark.
Project Dream was the codename of a cancelled role-playing video game (RPG), Dream: Land of Giants, that served as the basis for the 1998 game Banjo-Kazooie. Developed by Rare, it was aimed for release on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and later the Nintendo 64 (N64). The plot followed a young boy, Edson, who caused trouble with pirates. The SNES version of Dream used an isometric perspective and had a fairy tale theme. After transitioning to the N64, the project became a more complex 3D RPG that had a greater emphasis on the pirate theme. Eventually, Dream was scaled back to a linear platform game in the vein of Donkey Kong Country (1994) that starred Banjo the bear, who became the protagonist of Banjo-Kazooie.
Steve Burke is a British video game composer, sound designer and voice actor. He is mostly known for his work at the British video game developer Rare.
OverClocked ReMix, also known as OC ReMix and OCR, is a non-commercial organization dedicated to preserving and paying tribute to video game music through arranging and re-interpreting the songs, both with new technology and software and by various traditional means. The primary focus of OC ReMix is its website, ocremix.org, which freely hosts over 4,000 curated fan-made video game music arrangements, information on game music and composers, and resources for aspiring artists. In addition to the individual works, called "ReMixes", the site hosts over 70 albums of music, including both albums of arrangements centered on a particular video game, series, or theme, and albums of original compositions for video games. The OC ReMix community created the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix soundtrack for Capcom in 2008, and began publishing commercially licensed arrangement albums in 2013.
Yooka-Laylee is a 2017 platform game developed by Playtonic Games and published by Team17. It was released for Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in April 2017, Nintendo Switch in December 2017 and Amazon Luna in October 2020.
Playtonic Games Limited is a British video game developer founded in 2014. It consists in large part of former members of Rare.
Jonathan Jafari, better known online as JonTron, is an American YouTuber and comedian. He created the eponymous YouTube web series JonTron, where he reviews and parodies video games, films and other media.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a platform game developed by Playtonic Games and published by Team17 in 2019. As a spin-off to Yooka-Laylee (2017), the game was released digitally for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on October 8, 2019, followed by a version for Amazon Luna on October 20, 2020.
"Aquatic Ambience" is a musical theme composed by David Wise for the video game Donkey Kong Country (1994). It plays in the underwater levels.
