Donkey Kong’s venture into the 3D platforming space was a mixed bag, to be honest. Starring five Kongs, each with their own collectibles, the game could be quite tedious at times, even by collectathon standards. Plus, it was often far too silly for its own good.  (The combination of copious amounts of burping sure to make young kids laugh paired with Candy’s more…adult features made me wonder just who the target age group was for this game!)  Even so, my duckling self loved this game back in the day, and so I decided to revisit this flawed, but still pretty entertaining, platformer from the N64 era. And because I love lists, I’m ranking all the worlds, from the most aggravating to the ones I most go bananas for!  But don’t feel left out, dear readers, because you can share your own thoughts in the comments below! 

8: Crystal Caves – I just never really enjoyed this world.  The cave is ugly and is rather annoying to navigate, what with its winding nature and the gorge in the middle with the low water level, which was inconvenient to escape from whenever I fell in.  The challenges here can also be pretty frustrating, as well, and the frequently falling rocks are a pain.  Sure, you can find and defeat the giant Kosha causing the issue pretty quickly (with a guide, though, as finding him is not exactly intuitive), but I still hate visiting this world and having rocks fall on my head every 30 seconds until I can get rid of this nuisance!

Summary: A confusing layout paired with the worst overall selection of challenges make this world a pain.

7: Angry Aztec – The second world is desert-themed and is, to be honest, a major pain to navigate, what with all the damaging quicksand.  Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop this from being a pretty fun place to visit, what with all the cool temple-like structures to visit and the energetic music.  You also rescue two of the Kongs here, our sassy girl Tiny and the goofy orangutan Lanky.  I just hate the quicksand, which made the copious backtracking even more tedious.

Summary: A perfectly decent world with two Kongs to rescue.  The hot quicksand makes navigation incredibly inconvenient, however.

6: Jungle Japes – It makes sense the game would open with a jungle-themed location where you rescue Diddy and just generally get a feel for the gameplay. This world is fairly compact and features a few tunnels branching out from a central mountainous area.  Although the brief jaunt as Rambi is pretty unsatisfying, to be honest, I did enjoy Diddy’s minecart level.  Jungle Japes is just a fun and inoffensive level.

Summary: A very basic opening world.  But it’s fun without any real flaws.

5: Hideout Helm – The final world of the game is an…interesting one.  K. Rool is getting ready to blast DK Isle off the face of the Earth, but the more blueprints you give to Snide, the more time you have to sabotage the Blast-O-Matic, with a max time of 50 minutes.  (Without any blueprints, you only have 10 minutes!)  Every Kong will need to work together to reach the main room with the blaster and then proceed to complete two minigames per Kong to deactivate these five beams of lights.  While this level is definitely stressful, and some of the minigames can be rather frustrating, I also find this to be a pretty cool, high-stakes finale to the game.

Summary: While the time limit and minigames can be stressful, this was a great, high-stakes ending world for the game.  And it was nice to finally find out what all those blueprints were for!

4: Fungi Forest – This world takes place in, well, a forest with large mushrooms.  The gimmick with this world is the ability to change between night and day.  Daytime is bright and cheerful, while nighttime features much more eerie music, alongside skeletons and bats.  Certain parts of the level become accessible, or inaccessible, depending on the time of day, which is interesting, but also adds to the backtracking issue the game already has.  Nevertheless, I had fun exploring the giant mushroom and barns, plus Chunky gets a pretty fun minecart level here, as well!

Summary: A pretty fun, varied level.  The day and night cycle is cool, but it also contributes to the backtracking issue.

3: Gloomy Galleon – I really like the theming of Gloomy Galleon, with the moody nautical music, the massive lighthouse, and the sunken ships to explore. All of that is super cool, for sure, but unfortunately, being a water level, this makes the world a bit more annoying to explore, as you’ll spend a lot of time swimming and needing to backtrack to the lighthouse section to raise and lower the water level.  Nevertheless, the atmosphere of this place is some of the best in the game, and you even get to transform into Enguarde a few times!

Summary: While the fact that this is a water level means Gloomy Galleon is inherently annoying to navigate, I really loved the atmosphere here and the ability to explore sunken ships.

2: Frantic Factory – This world is ugly.  So ugly.  But it’s also surprisingly fun.  Being a toy factory, there’s a particularly entertaining collection of games to play in order to earn the Kongs’ various golden bananas.  Sure, some of these just revolve around shooting things on a dartboard or pounding squares in order of 1-16.  But we also have a fun little race against an RC car and…a memory game with burping Kremlings popping out of barrels…  Well, it was funny when I used to be the target age group, I suppose.  The factory’s many gloomy hallways might not be the most aesthetically interesting, but at least I had a good time.  And in a video game, that’s what really matters!

Summary: An ugly aesthetic is quickly forgotten when this world has one of the best collections of challenges in the game.

1: Creepy Castle – I’m pretty biased because spooky worlds almost always end up on the top of my lists.  The main worlds of DK64 (as Hideout Helm is an unusual one) end on a high note with a towering castle, complete with a library, a ballroom, a crypt, and…the most unsatisfying museum ever.  While most of the place is just the silly kind of spooky (including Kremlings pretending to be ghosts by wearing bedsheets!), I always found the lower level with the big skull you enter to be genuinely unnerving.  The music here includes this odd groaning sound that always freaked me out as a duckling.  And it gets even creepier when you enter the skull, and the groaning gets louder, making you genuinely feel as if you’re going to encounter something truly sinister!  Spooky levels always have a good atmosphere, and Creepy Castle most certainly delivers.  Most of the challenges here are also quite fun and not overly frustrating, with the exception of not one, but two, Beaver Bother minigames.  Ugh, good thing those are optional, or else this world might have found itself much lower on the list…

Summary: Creepy Castle delivers on a fun, but spooky atmosphere.  And for the final normal world of the game, most of the challenges are surprisingly fun without being overly frustrating.