Walkthrough Wednesday: Donkey Kong Country Returns Hints, Tips and Cheats

Donkey Kong Country returns is a pure reflex test in the tradition of classic 8- and 16-bit platforms, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help with finding collectibles and racking up extra lives.

A brief primer on how collectibles work in DKCR: Each level has the letters K-O-N-G scattered throughout. Collect every level’s letters in a given world, and you’ll get a secret stage. Beat that stage, and you’ll get an orb. Get all the orbs and beat the game, and you’ll unlock the Golden Temple. Get through the Golden Temple, and you’ll unlock Mirror Mode, a harder difficulty setting that excludes Diddy Kong and reverses every level in the game. Separate from this whole racket are Puzzle Pieces, which unlock music and artwork.

Got it? Now, on to the good stuff.

This text walkthrough at GameFaqs will help you get through the game while pointing out K-O-N-G letters and puzzle pieces along the way. If you do better with video, check out GameXplain’s Donkey Kong Country playlist. It’s a work in progress, but each video talks you through every collectible in a given level.

As for cheats, the folks at Ripten point to a few good ones: For infinite coins, go to level 2-2, and just before the checkpoint pig, you’ll see two squid turrets. Use DK’s jetpack to bounce between the two turrets, and you can get coins forever. For extra lives, begin playing one of your game saves with a low battery charge on your Wii remote. Cranky Kong will appear with a warning, and will give you three lives — sometimes five — to help out. And don’t forget about all-important Roll Recovery, a tactic that SNES veterans will recall. When rolling off a ledge, you can actually jump mid-air at the last second, which is useful for grabbing K-O-N-G letters that hang.

I’d say that “It’s on like [Unnamed Ape Video Game Character],” but that phrase is apparently trademarked now.