Donkey Kong Country 2 Hack Brings Contra Gameplay to SNES Classic

What if Donkey Kong Country 2 was a run and gun style game like Contra by Konami? Well, in Squitter’s Spider Quest, we get to see, firsthand, just what that amalgamation might look like.

A little backstory

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest is a 2.5D action platform title released by Nintendo for their Super Nintendo in 1995. Continuing the tradition of rendered graphics, DKC 2 was quite a sight to take in (why they did not immediately continue this style on the Nintendo 64 is beyond me).

This series is one of the few success stories of side characters, bosses, etc, striking out on their own to create new games.

Gamers would get another sequel on the SNES before the series would take on a new direction with Nintendo 64 releases. Man, I would have loved to have seen an upgraded compilation cart of these three games on the Nintendo 64. Ah well, it was not meant to be, apparently.

From helper to lead character

Making his debut, as a helper character, in Crocodile Isle of Donkey Kong Country 2, Squitter is now the lead. Making this spider character the lead has required a bit of work on the part of the hackers behind this mod.

Some levels had to be removed, others modified to fit Squitter’s abilities better. The result is a run and gun style action game using the Donkey Kong Country 2 engine and enemies. Think of it as a Contra style game now.

That is not a bad thing at all either.

Concessions had to be made

As mentioned already, there are changes that had to be made. Not only were certain areas rearranged, two levels were completely removed.

According to ROMHacking.net, Parrot Chute Panic and Chain Link Chamber were removed from this hack. Reason cited was bad camera bugs, though they mention you can still obtain the bonuses and DK coins from those levels.

All in all, not that big a loss when you consider you are getting an almost completely new experience here.