Really really expands things from the first game. The music is especially wonderful, weirdly haunting and beautiful for a game about cartoon monkeys rescuing their bananas. From pirate ships to volcanos to mine shafts and giant honeycombs and bramble mazes, there's a cool mood and vibe here, mixed with perfectly challenging gameplay and a ton of secrets.

A game that is not only mechanically satisfying to play but also boasts one of the most atmospheric and interesting aesthetics of any game in its era. Compared to the first game, the level design has far more variety and utilizes more gimmicks. While sometimes the gimmicks were a big "bleh" such as the bird focused levels, most of them were fun to play while also being fairly challenging. Dixie was a lot more fun to control than DK, which is ironic given the title of the series.

I was stuck on the lava level where you were suppose to ride the balloons over the lava pitfalls for a solid month after I got this for my birthday. When I actually stood still on the balloon and it moved I felt like the biggest retard. Improves on the original in every way. I hate the parrot levels.

This is supposed to be the best of the three, but it's my least favourite. Some of it's quite fun, but there are a few too many places where I get bogged down having to make millisecond-perfect jumps. I know some people love that kind of thing but not for me.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the first, which isn't necessarily down to it being worse per se, just that the novelty was no longer there.

Nah. You jump and run.

Even better than the first game. You are now Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong. Dixie Glides through the air so her jumping ability is a lot better. Side scrolling so jumping in these games is one of the most important aspects. Like the first one it has a save file.

Golden standard of 2D platforming much?

Improved gameplay and the best soundtrack of the 16-bit era (maybe of all time) takes DKC2 into the realm of being favorably compared with the king of platformers: Mario.

It's the best of the trilogy for many reasons. Mostly, I think for those of us that played it as kids, it's the best because the original was hard as fuck but we could still beat it. This one? This motherfucker? Somehow the difficulty had been amped up but we didn't think Rare was being unfair. Rather, this was the prize for beating Donkey Kong. The next stage. Also, Stickerbush Symphony is top 5 game tracks of all time. ALL TIME.