Nintendo has announced that Rare’s Donkey Kong 64 — which, until last year’s Donkey Kong Bananza, was the only fully 3D Donkey Kong platformer — is coming to the Nintendo 64 collection in Nintendo Classics next week. The 1999 game will be added on Wednesday, June 3, for Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers.
Although it was mostly well received at the time, Donkey Kong 64 has a complicated reputation today. Rare’s 2D Donkey Kong platformers, starting with Donkey Kong Country, were considered masterpieces of platforming challenge. But Donkey Kong 64 doubled down hard on the approach to 3D platforming the studio had taken in Banjo-Kazooie, emphasizing a vast and bewildering quantity of collectibles.
Some critics found this design approach to be needless padding, and have even argued that it contributed to the decline of 3D platformers. In 2018, Polygon ranked Donkey Kong 64 as the 18th best Donkey Kong game of all time (out of 23).
And then there’s “DK Rap.” This cringey theme song, composed by Grant Kirkhope, has been called one of the worst rap tracks of all time — although it has now passed into an ironically affectionate “so bad it’s good” territory, and is arguably more famous than the game it came from.
Donkey Kong 64 isn’t Rare’s finest hour. It’s not even the studio’s best 3D platformer for the N64. But it’s a significant piece of Nintendo history all the same, and great to finally have it in the Nintendo Classics collection.
