Donkey Kong Country(JP) (also called DKC or Super Donkey Kong in Japan) is a game in the Donkey Kong series, and is the first Donkey Kong game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994 that is developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. It is also the first game in the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy. The Donkey Kong Country game managed to be a huge success to the Nintendo industry and was game of the year when it was first released. Donkey Kong Country also had a certificate of Player's Choice on the box cover a year later. It is the first game to feature Donkey Kong's current design and have him reformed from being no longer a villain. Donkey Kong Country was followed by two sequels: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! in 1995 and 1996.
The game is considered by many Donkey Kong fans as one of the best games in the series, and would later spawn many sequels by Rare. Once Rare left Nintendo, Nintendo gave the rights of Donkey Kong to Paon, a second party developer who has so far currently made DK: King of Swing, DK: Jungle Climber, and Donkey Kong Barrel Blast.
It was the first Donkey Kong game to feature Donkey Kong as a playable character. Donkey Kong Country was the second best-selling SNES game (second only to Super Mario World) and the first to use 3D pre-rendered graphics on a SNES game. Some magazines even said that it could compete against the newest PSX games.
Later in 2000, there was a remake for Donkey Kong Country on the Game Boy Color and later in 2003, a remake was made for the Game Boy Advance. In late 2006/early 2007, Donkey Kong Country was released on the Wii's Virtual Console. On November 25, 2012, for reasons unknown, Donkey Kong Country and both its sequels were delisted from the Wii's Virtual Console worldwide except in South Korea, but on October 30, 2014, the games were relisted only in Europe and Australia. Around the same time, the games were released on the Wii U's Virtual Console in Europe and Australia, in Japan on November 26, 2014, and in the United States and Canada on February 26, 2015. For handhelds, Donkey Kong Country was ported exclusively over to the New Nintendo 3DS's Virtual Console in March 2016. It is one of the 21 games included on the SNES Classic Edition and was made avaliable on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online application for the Nintendo Switch on July 15, 2020.
