Nintendo has a long history of cartoons in the US, but perhaps none have been more divisive (and perhaps groundbreaking) than Donkey Kong Country.
The TV series, which debuted in France just before Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie’s Kong Quest hit retail shelves in 1996, tried to capitalize on the growing trend of computer animation replacing traditional hand-drawn animation. The game that the show was based on, Donkey Kong Country, was itself a venture in cgi-turned pixel art, bringing incredible visuals to the then aging 16-bit Super Nintendo. When the game wowed the industry, Nintendo partnered up to create the show.
However, computer animation was still in its infancy. The original Toy Story film debuted the year prior to the show’s release, and everyone wanted a piece of the new visual craze. The only problem: no one actually knew how to do it. DKC suffered from that, featuring not only horribly disjointed motion capture, but primitive (no pun intended) polygons and textures. The visuals looked dated almost instantly, and could probably be recreated on the last couple of console generations in real time with ease.
The voice acting was equally horrible, and the audio quality in general was well below even late 80s shows. The plot was just as bad, creating characters our of thin air and stories that went nowhere. To top it all off, Donkey Kong somehow stood UPRIGHT like a HUMAN. I mean, what the fudge?!
Somehow, with all of this going against it, the show was popular enough to warrant two seasons in the US and a prime spot in Japan. You can find all of the episodes today shoved on discs in your local RedBox.
Watch the first few below, if you can handle the hottest of messes.
Like reliving gaming show nostalgia? Check out our entire catalog of Saturday Morning Cartoon recommendations.
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