Donkey Kong Bananza: DK Island & Emerald Rush Impressions – Cute, isn’t it!

I REALLY like Donkey Kong Bananza as my review shows, so when the announcement came down the vine that we were getting DLC and it included DK Island, I was excited! The announcement trailer also showcased some of the original music from Grant Kirkhope from Donkey Kong 64. So what does this post-game DLC DK Island & Emerald Rush really have for us? Let’s ride the railcar down the track and find out. 

Let’s start here: this DLC is short. Very short. Almost too short? You have DK Island, which has a lot of nostalgia built in for long-time DK fans with everything from DK’s home to Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky being around, to bongos made into an island. It has a few bonus missions that don’t take more than a minute or so each. Well, that’s about it! DK Island is a fun hour of running around going, “I remember, that’s cute!” and moving on to the next thing to do. 

Emerald Rush isn’t something that got me excited after finding out the premise. Essentially, after the events of the main game, Spoilers Ahead,  Void Co. is back but without any of their minions. So the CEO/President of Void Co., Void Kong, recruits DK and Pauline to collect Emeralds, which is reskinned gold on the map, so he can continue making money. Sadly, you don’t have much choice and you work with him and destroy DK Island (for the time being) collecting emeralds for him. You get some cute items for beating these collectathon timed events, but they’re not difficult to beat at all.

Break emerald towers to collect emeralds, find powerups to collect more emeralds, beat bad guys who spawn to collect more emeralds, you gather what I’m saying? This is extremely repetitive as after you beat the Emerald Rush on DK Island, you gain access to do Emerald Rush on every other level from the main game. If you do these enough, moments with Void Kong pop up, but even those moments don't take too much time.

Smaller additions are the inclusion of statues you can use the Banandium Chips to get and some extra areas across DK Island you can move the Kong family available to take pictures with them. 

While this isn’t not fun, it’s just limited fun. For $19.99 I would recommend this to DK fans who want the nostalgia of going through Gangplank Galleon, minecart tracks, and other DK locations or those wanting to test just how many emeralds they can collect for Void Co.