Most Difficult Donkey Kong Games To 100% Complete

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home March 8, 2025 7 Views 10 Min Read
Most Difficult Donkey Kong Games To 100% Complete



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Summary

  • Donkey Kong games are known for their brutal difficulty, surpassing even Mario games.
  • Donkey Kong 64 has a high number of collectibles, setting a Guinness World Record.
  • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is the hardest in the series, featuring unforgiving gameplay.

Nintendo’s biggest platformer series has to be Mario, but right behind it is Donkey Kong. While starting off within the Mario series in 1981, DK spun off into its own series with a large cast of unique characters. Many prefer these platformers over the Mario games, but what can’t be disputed is the difficulty.

Three Images Of Donkey Kong Riding A Rocket Barrel In Hot Rocket, DK And Diddy Kong On The Game Over Screen, And DK And Diddy Kong Jumping On A Giant Banana In Golden Temple In Donkey Kong Country Returns HD.

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Especially in the 2D Donkey Kong games, the difficulty of some of these levels is obscene, and if you want to reach 100 percent, you’ll need to be one of the game’s best players. Nothing says this better than beating every level without taking damage.

6

Donkey Kong Arcade

Way Harder Than You’d Think

Many younger gamers will not see the brutal difficulty of the original Donkey Kong coming. They’ll probably think it’s like Pac-Man, where the game slowly eases you into it and gets brutal later. Donkey Kong starts savage from the get-go. The barrels and obstacles coming at you are very unpredictable when you’re brand new to the game, leading to a ton of deaths.

In certain versions of the arcade game, you don’t even play all four levels in a row. You’ll need to do three entire loops to play them all for game completion, leading to the second-hardest Nintendo arcade game behind Super Punch-Out!! Even the standard version takes a wild amount of practice to beat without getting a game over, and it would really suck if you had to do that to beat any other Donkey Kong game.

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Donkey Kong 64

A Guinness World Record Holder

Not only is Donkey Kong 64 an absolute pain to 100 percent, but many haven’t beaten the game at all due to the fact that you’ll have to beat the DK arcade game to unlock the final boss. That’s wild, and the sheer amount of collectibles isn’t any easier. As DK64 was a collectathon platformer in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie, you know there’s going to be a ton, but nobody could have expected the final amount.

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There are 3,821 total collectables in DK64, a Guinness World Record for the most collectables in a platformer game. 100 percent completion in this game is just not fun with how long it takes, especially because you’ll have to swap characters constantly to pick up character-specific collectables.

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Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

The Ultimate 2D Platformer On The SNES

While Donkey Kong Country 2 has to be one of the best games on the SNES, it’s also one of the hardest. This game makes Super Mario World look like a joke in comparison. First off, you have a bunch of collectables to 100 percent the game, including 40 DK Coins and 75 Kremkoins.

There’s actually a secret way you can get all 75 Kremkoins in the first level, but the game just has to have its cake and eat it, too, because doing it that way doesn’t count toward your completion stat. Thanks, Rare! You’ll need all 75 to access the Lost World, which contains the hardest levels DKC2 has to offer. The Squawks section of Animal Antics, in particular, is notorious for its brutal difficulty with how tight the space is.

3

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble

Harder Than The First, But Not As Hard As The Second

The reason why Donkey Kong Country 1 isn’t that difficult to 100 percent is because beating the game and finding all the bonus rooms is all you have to do. Donkey Kong Country 3, while not as difficult as DKC2, still has a bunch of requirements that make it harder than the original. You now have three collectables this time: Bonus Coins, DK Coins, and Banana Birds.

Box art to Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, DK stealing Mini Marios from Mario vs. Donkey Kong, and box art for the original Donkey Kong Country

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The Banana Birds are the most well-hidden; you’ll likely need a guide to find them all. The Lost World returns, though it’s named Krematoa in DKC3, and the levels here are challenging but not nearly as bad as the prior instalment. Still, DKC3 requires significantly more work for 100 percent completion than DKC1.

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Donkey Kong Country Returns

The Series’ Difficulty Returns With A Vengeance

If you thought the Rare Donkey Kong Country games were bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. Retro Studios not only brought DKC back in a phenomenal way but made it harder than ever, especially to 100 percent. There are eight main worlds, and each has a temple level to play after getting all the Kong Letters. These start off pretty easy, but they get ridiculously hard once you reach the World 4 temple level.

You’ll need perfect timing to beat these levels; items also help. After completing all temple levels, you’ll unlock World 9, and after beating that, you unlock Mirror mode. In this mode, all levels are flipped, Diddy’s absent, you have only one hit, and no items can be used. Beating every level in Mirror mode is for the absolute best DK players.

1

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

The Hardest Donkey Kong Yet

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze works very similarly to Returns, but Retro Studios made it even harder. You only have six main worlds this time, which sounds easier, but to compensate, the difficulty ramps up much sooner. Even within the World 2 temple level, you’ll have to start doing perfect bounces on enemies to reach the end.

The bosses are also significantly harder, with each having multiple phases, compared to Returns, which only had phases for the final boss. The cherry on top that makes this the hardest DK game is the revamped Mirror mode, now called Hard mode. The same rules apply here, except now you don’t even get checkpoints. You’ll have to complete every level in its entirety without getting hit, which is for the hardest of the hardcore out there.

Donkey Kong and his friends swing across the icy landscape in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

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