Latest news with #DonkeyKongCountry
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Donkey Kong Bananza review: a smashingly good time
It's been a while since we've had a decent Donkey Kong game. Or any Donkey Kong game, in fact. The big ape has been absent from our consoles ever since 2014's Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (not counting the Mario vs Donkey Kong games, which paint him as an out and out wrong'un). We've not had a new 3D DK game for around two decades – ever since Donkey Kong 64. That was a bad game. Good news: its successor is not. This is the first Nintendo Switch 2 game to come out since the console launched in June (not counting Mario Kart World) and it's a joyous hoot. The premise is simple. DK and his monkey friends are working deep in the Banandium mines, collecting (duh) massive crystal bananas that can be eaten for power-ups. But trouble strikes when a gang of evil apes comes knocking. They want to keep all the bananas for themselves, and so DK sets out on a quest to hunt him down and claim them back. A large chunk of the fun is down to the extraordinary freedom that the gameplay provides, courtesy of those massive handy fists that Donkey Kong has. Almost everything in every level can be smashed – and indeed, the game encourages you to do just that, via a series of meticulously created levels that span everything from lagoons to rolling hilltops. Pummelling through stone (or dirt, or metal, or pretty much anything) in pursuit of sweet loot, carving massive twisting passageways for yourself, is a pastime that never gets old. This is good, because there ends up being a lot of things to smash, and kudos to the team for finding new ways to keep it fresh. Most of the loot is gold (which can be used in turn to fuel DK's power-ups, but is so plentiful that it kind of loses its value as the game goes on), but there are bananas, too, hiding underneath layers of substrata, as well as fossils that can be cashed in for wardrobe upgrades. And in addition to the bosses to defeat, there's also another surprise in the form of companion Pauline. The same Pauline that DK kidnapped back in the arcade games? Why yes, but here she's a 13-year-old girl who has a magical singing voice – though she's shy about voicing it in public. The pair make a good team. DK can't speak, naturally, so Pauline fills in, offering little quips and interacting with the world beyond offering a thumbs-up (Donkey Kong's reply to most requests for help, it turns out). As the pair bash their way through villain after villain, we also get to see new power-ups, which evolve to cope with the changing environment (from lagoons to rolling fields) – as well as a rudimentary skill tree that gives Donkey Kong extra hearts and more power. All of this goes to make it into an unusual type of 3D platformer. It's a forgiving game: the bosses aren't too tricky to defeat, while the plentiful resources make acquiring better abilities easy. Plus, there aren't really platforms per se – but who's quibbling, when the end result is this fun. The developers clearly enjoyed themselves making this – the ape is back, and it's a smashing good time. Donkey Kong Bananza is coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17
Stuff.tv
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Stuff.tv
How Donkey Kong went from arcade brawler to Banana royalty
Nintendo is home to some of the most iconic and beloved characters to have graced a games console, but its first ever mascot, Donkey Kong, is long overdue some proper respect. That may seem a tricky proposition when the gorilla was originally designed as oafish and dumb, but he's come a long way since debuting more than 40 years ago. He's gone from titular antagonist to beat at the arcade, to a playable platforming hero in his own right from the SNES onwards. And while he's had fewer headline outings than Mario, every time he's come back it's always with an inspired reinvention. With the release of Donkey Kong Bananza, the biggest exclusive for the Nintendo Switch 2 to date, it's a good time to look back at the key games that have defined and transformed this lovable ape over the years. Donkey Kong (1981) Looking back now, it's amazing to think 1891's Donkey Kong was originally meant to simply salvage thousands of unsold cabinets for failed Space Invaders clone Radar Scope. Nintendo then tried to license Popeye the sailor man to star in it. What we ended up with was a platformer all about climbing ladders and jumping over barrels, as you attempted to reach the top of a construction site to rescue Pauline from the great ape. The game was an enormous success, becoming the highest-grossing arcade game in the US that year, and was responsible for giving Nintendo its first major foothold in the West – long before the NES would make it a dominant force. Not bad for a game that marked the debut for a plucky young designer called Shigeru Miyamoto. It was of course also the game that introduced the world to Mario, although here the dungaree-wearing hero was simply known as Jumpman. Donkey Kong (1994) Besides home ports of the arcade original, the Donkey Kong franchise actually went dormant for a while after Donkey Kong 3 took things down the shooter route and replaced Mario with an 'exterminator' called Stanley. The Game Boy revival, better referred to as Donkey Kong '94, was more of a puzzle platformer, with over 100 levels for Mario to rescue Pauline from DK across. The gameplay would later inspire spiritual successor Mario vs Donkey Kong on the Game Boy Advance, which was eventually remastered for the original Nintendo Switch. It's also significant for being the game that gave Donkey Kong the signature red necktie sporting his initials, and redesigned Pauline as a long-haired brunette in a red dress. Donkey Kong Country (1994) A far more significant Donkey Kong revival arrived later that year, not from Nintendo but the British studio Rare. Donkey Kong Country reinvented the ape as a playable platforming protagonist who, with his nephew Diddy Kong, sets out to recover stolen bananas from the evil King and his Kremlings. A much trickier platformer than the contemporary Mario games, here you're relying on skill rather than power-ups. It's especially fiendish if you want to nab all the collectibles. What set it apart for many was its groundbreaking pre-rendered 3D models, keeping the ageing 16-bit SNES relevant as the real 3D gaming revolution was beginning elsewhere. David Wise's charming score is meanwhile as catchy and memorable as Koji Kondo's finest for Mario and Zelda. Donkey Kong 64 (1999) The Nintendo 64 was the de facto home of the 3D platformer, having gone stratospheric courtesy of the revolutionary Super Mario 64. It was only a matter of time as to when DK would make his proper 3D debut there. On paper, Donkey Kong 64 sounds like a winner: you get to play an ensemble of Kongs – DK, Diddy, Tiny, Lanky, and Chunky – with different abilities, and developer Rare had already proven its 3D chops with Banjo Kazooie. Unfortunately, while a hit at the time, DK64 is largely looked back on as a tedious slog of a collectathon. The whopping 3,831 total collectibles earned it an entry in the Guiness World Records. It's perhaps no surprise that subsequent DK games have opted to revert to side-scrolling platforming. But hey, at least it gave us the DK Rap. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (2004) Jungle Beat is a niche GameCube release that sees you controlling DK with a pair of bongo drums, which were originally designed by Namco for its rhythm game spin-off Donkey Konga. But it's still an important part of DK's history. This was the first major game in the franchise to be developed by Nintendo in-house after Rare had been sold to Microsoft. It controversially ditched a lot of the elements from Donkey Kong Country (that series wouldn't be revived until 2010 by Retro Studios) including its characters and challenging platforming, though just getting your head around its quirky control system is already challenging enough. A curio for sure, but it's better remembered as the debut of the Nintendo division that would go onto make Super Mario Galaxy. Donkey Kong Bananza (2025) More than a quarter of a century later, DK has finally been given another 3D outing. And who better to right the wrongs of DK64 than the team behind Switch 1 masterpiece Super Mario Odyssey? Bananza is still a 3D platformer but it's less reliant on Country's twitch platforming and more on DK's brawn. You can literally smash up terrain to dig up secrets or carve your own path. There's still plenty to collect, in the form of Banandium Gems – think of them as edible crystal bananas that are much like Odyssey's Power Moons. What separates this from being a mere collectathon is the absolute delight of causing chaos as you explore each layer of this world in your journey towards the planet core. It's not just sheer monkey mayhem, either, as you can also transform into other animals with other powers, like a speedy zebra or a flying ostrich (I know, ostrich don't fly in real life, but let's not interrogate that too deeply). We've already seen the big guy's redesign both in the Super Mario Bros. movie and Mario Kart World, but it's in Bananza where you really appreciate just how expressive his silly face is. Bananza also pays tribute to the great ape's history, so there's not just cameos from the DKC family; it's also got a few secret side-scrolling sequences, Jungle Beat's ability collect to nearby items with a clap, and the DK Rap playing when you have a rest. The biggest reinvention though comes with Pauline, no longer a damsel but a pint-sized tween with a big singing voice that powers DK's transformations. The pair's relationship is surely a nod to Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope, alongside a story with emotional and musical cues that wouldn't feel out of place in a Disney movie. This gorilla's never had a bigger outing and a bigger heart.
Metro
03-07-2025
- Business
- Metro
Over 6,000 people have lost their jobs at Xbox in less than two years
The full cost of Microsoft's most recent round of layoffs is becoming clear, as Rare loses one of its most experienced developers. The sweeping job cuts at Microsoft might not have been a surprise but a day after it happened, we still have little in terms of confirmed details. Although the company in general has laid off around 9,100 people worldwide there's no official confirmation of how many roles have gone at Xbox (although we do know that Xbox figurehead Phil Spencer is not leaving). All Microsoft has said, in a comment to Game File, is that less than half of the company's overall layoffs were at Xbox. That would seem to put the figure at around 4,000 – as Microsoft's gaming division bears the brunt of the job cuts. What makes that figure even worse is that Microsoft already laid off 650 Xbox staff in September last year and 1,900 a few months before that. That puts the total number of job losses at over 6,000 people. It was always guaranteed that there would be layoffs as a result of the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and Bethesda before that, with the business average being around 5 to 20% of the workforce, as companies look to cut costs and remove people with similar roles. Activision Blizzard had around 13,000 employees as of 2022 – which would equal 2,600 job cuts at the maximum of 20% – so what's going on here is far more than just eliminating duplicate roles. Microsoft's games business is being downsized and reconfigured, although it's unclear exactly what their goals are now or what Xbox is going to look like when all the dust has settled. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The upcoming new generation of hardware, which Microsoft has already started hinting at plans for, will complicate things further, while many suspect that this week's new round of layoffs will lead to an increasing reliance on AI tools. In recent years, Microsoft has been pushing AI throughout its business and CEO Satya Nadella is known to be a keen advocate of the technology, even if it's still unclear exactly how it will be used for gaming. It's not certain that Microsoft will ever go into detail about what has happened this week, and who exactly has been laid off, which means at the moment most of the information is entirely unofficial. More Trending Nevertheless, VGC reports that veteran Rare developer Gregg Mayles has left the company, in part because he was director of the now cancelled Everwild. Mayles has been at the company since the late 80s, and worked on Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata, and Sea Of Thieves. Many other staff have reportedly left at the same time, leaving few from Rare's heyday in the 80s and 90s. Microsoft also cancelled the reboot of Perfect Dark, as part of the layoffs, but although the original was a Rare game the reboot was being made in the US by The Initiative – which has now been shuttered completely. ZeniMax Online Studios, the makers of The Elder Scrolls Online, have not been shut down but a new, unannounced project, that's been in development since 2018, has. This has led to Matt Firor stepping down as head of the studio. More details will surely come out in the coming days and weeks but after contacting Microsoft they stated they have nothing to share beyond this brief statement: 'We continue to implement organisational and workforce changes that are necessary to position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace.' Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Games Inbox: Has Xbox become irrelevant this generation? MORE: Soon you'll be able to pay for DLC and microtransactions in instalments MORE: The 10 best summer video games to play if you're missing the heatwave
Indian Express
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Microsoft cancels three 3 games as layoffs impact Xbox team and its gaming studios
Microsoft, on Wednesday, July 2, announced that it is laying off approximately 9,000 employees, which is around 4 per cent of its global workforce. Many of these layoffs are also impacting the company's Xbox division as well as other gaming studios, leading to some upcoming games being cancelled. In January 2024, Microsoft's gaming division had about 20,000 employees. While the tech giant hasn't clarified how many people were impacted in the Xbox division, the cuts seem to be widespread and significant and happen to be the fourth major layoff in the last 18 months. As part of the recent layoffs, at least three upcoming video games have been cancelled. In an internal email published by Variety and later confirmed by Microsoft, Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, said, 'We have made the decision to stop development of Perfect Dark and Everwild as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio. As part of this, we are closing one of our studios, The Initiative.' The Initiative was working on a reboot of the classic FPS series – Perfect Dark. The upcoming sci-fi espionage title has been under development since the studio opened back in 2018. Another title that is now cancelled is Everwild, a game that was under development for more than a decade by Sea of Thieves maker Rare. Founded in 1985 and acquired by Microsoft in 2002, Rare is known for games like Battletoads, Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007, Kinect Sports, Kameo and Banjo-Kazooie. Zenimax Online Studios, the developer of the popular massive multiplayer online game Elder Scrolls Online, is also impacted by the layoffs. As a result, the studio is also doing away with its upcoming MMORPG game codenamed Blackbird. According to Engadget, citing 'a developer with knowledge of the situation', at least five employees at Halo Studios have been fired as part of the latest layoffs. The gaming studio currently has somewhere between 200 to 300 employees and is working on multiple games, including the next major Halo instalment. Forza Horizon developer Turn 10 Studios also reportedly laid off more than 70 people. Stockholm-based gaming studio King, which Microsoft purchased back in 2023 as part of its Activision Blizzard acquisition, is reportedly cutting 10 per cent of its staff. Known for making Candy Crush, a report by Bloomberg citing people familiar with the plans suggests that the recent round of layoffs impacted around 200 jobs. Some layoffs are also taking place at Raven Software, a studio known for making hit titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Singularity, Quake 4 and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
Engadget
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Everwild has reportedly been cancelled amid Xbox layoffs
In today's gaming world, a decade of development can sometimes amount to nothing. Parent company Microsoft has reportedly cancelled Rare's long-in-development project Everwild . The news comes amid broader layoffs across Microsoft's Xbox division. Rare employees will likely be part of the Xbox layoffs, according to Video Games Chronicle . VGC and Bloomberg 's Jason Schreier were the first to report the game's cancellation. (Schreier added that an MMORPG project from Zenimax, codenamed "Blackbird," was also scrapped.) Rare officially announced Everwild in 2019. But the game had been in development since around 2014. Its trailer finally arrived five years ago, hinting at a lush and magical atmosphere. However, the footage offered no hints about gameplay. That may have been intentional. Its development reportedly suffered from a lack of clear direction. It was even said to have survived a "restart from scratch" in 2021 when Gregg Mayles took over direction. (He's known for titles like Donkey Kong Country , Banjo-Kazooie , Viva Piñata and Sea of Thieves .) Xbox explained the lack of official updates by saying it was waiting until it had "something cool to show." As recently as February, the game seemed to be on track. Microsoft's Phil Spencer said, "It's nice to see the team with Everwild and the progress that they're making." Words, words, words… That brings us to today, with the coda of an all-too-familiar story. Developers lose jobs. Gamers miss out on the chance to play something that had countless resources poured into it. And the gaming industry tightens its belt even further. How much tighter can it get?
