List of Donkey Kong Country pre-release and unused content

This article pertains to the beta elements of Donkey Kong Country.

Early Concepts
Donkey Kong Jr. was originally meant to be Donkey Kong's sidekick during the concept phase, but Nintendo felt that Rare's redesign was too different and mandated them to either revert to Donkey Kong Jr.'s original appearance or change the name of the character. Rare felt that the design fitted Donkey Kong Country's new aesthetic more, leading to Diddy becoming a separate character.

Several names were then considered for Diddy during Donkey Kong Country's production, including "Diet DK", "DK Lite" and "Titchy Kong". Rare had originally settled on "Dinky Kong", but the name was later dropped due to legal considerations. It would later become Kiddy Kong's Japanese name.

Early builds
The preview video, Donkey Kong Country Exposed, also contains a few elements that never made it into the final game, such as a 3-Up Balloon at Snow Barrel Blast and a nighttime version of Jungle Hijinxs. There were also a few instances where binary digits were seen underneath the lives counter, which may have been a debug menu of some sort. Also, in this build, it was possible to exceed one hundred bananas, whereas in the final game, the banana counter would reset once it reaches that number. Lastly, Donkey Kong was unable to kill the regular Krusha enemy by jumping on him. Unlike the final, Krusha will laugh after Donkey Kong does so, as he would if Diddy had done that. This also applies to Klump, hinting there might have not been character differences in the early game.

Unused Data
There are many unused sprites in this game, such as a Puftup from Donkey Kong Country 2, a jungle plant, various poses and animations for Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong (including a pushing sprite, an action not performable in the final game), and a few enemy palette swaps.

The ROM include a partial English script, which seems to be from an earlier period of developement. Differences include Cranky Kong's dialogue being much friendlier than he is in the final game and the Slippa enemy being named "Hister".

Miscellaneous
In an old Scribes page on the Rareware website, there was mention of there once being a giraffe Animal Buddy planned to appear in Donkey Kong Country; this Giraffe character was dropped for unknown reasons, though one of his mentioned abilities was that he would allow Donkey Kong to crawl up his neck and reach high items and secrets.

It is debated whether or not the plans for this giraffe buddy were actually real though, as Rare could have simply been making a joke at the expense of a fan who had made a rather odd request for a giraffe to appear in an upcoming Donkey Kong game.