Screenshots from VG Museum

Year released: 1994 (Super NES)

Number of Players: 1-2

King K. Rool has stolen all of Donkey Kong's precious bananas! Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong set out to get them back.

Graphics: Everything is rendered and looks wonderful. You'll get to enjoy landscapes from the jungle to abandoned mines, while most of your enemies will be reptillian. However, being rendered so nicely makes for collision detection that looks to be off. I can't explain it, but the rendered graphics don't cause problems in gameplay.

Play control: Left and right on the control pad to move left and right, B to jump, press Y to perform a side attack (barrel roll for Donkey and cartwheel for Diddy) hold Y to run (or to hold a barrel; let go to throw a barrel), and A to switch between Kongs (if you have both) or hop off of the animal friend you are currently on.
With that said, Diddy is more nimble than Donkey.

Sound: Lush music tracks that fit the environment. Sound effects are minor voice clips, several along the line of "ouch!"

Challenge: Get to the end of the stage while not falling in bottomless pits nor getting hurt by enemies. Most of the time, you can jump on an enemy to destroy it. However, Diddy's weak weight makes it harder for him to attempt this on certain enemies. Donkey Kong, however, can take out almost every enemy by jumping on it.

Gameplay: Standard hop-n-bop fun. However, Donkey Kong Country is not content with just a hop-n-bop engine. Barrels almost always clue you in to a secret entrance--barrels open up doors to bonus rooms. (This gets somewhat tedious.) That is, when you aren't being shot out of a barrel. The game has tons of barrels that act as cannons.
Also, there are four different animals to take on different views to the hop-n-bop experience. Not only this, but there are several stages that offer gimmicks. On top of the standard swimming with etenral air stages, there's mine cart stages, stages of racing away from huge rocks that are about to crush you, and other funnesses.

Bottom line: Fun but short. Only 40 stages?

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