Ape & Monkey Together = Awesome Game! A Year's Worth of Donkey Kong Country Returns

Coffee Beans
Donkey Kong Country Returns was released on November 21, 2010 at a MSRP of $49.99. The game was developed by Retro Studios, and published by Nintendo. It received an ESRB rating of "Everyone", with "Mild Cartoon Violence" listed as content for parents and gamers to be aware of.

How many hours have Wii owners spent hoarding bananas over the last year in Donkey Kong Country Returns? Let's take a look!

The Brew
Donkey Kong Country Returns now has 259,963 Wii owners that have reported data through the Nintendo Channel with 372 days possibly reported. The game has seen approximately 249,460 more Wii owners report data through the Nintendo Channel, compared to the number on its debut from December last year.

DKCR has almost 5 million "Total Hours" of gameplay reported in just over a year, and the game's average play-time per day/session is now 1 Hour 50 Minutes.

DKCR's "professional" review score average is now 87.79%, based on 53 reviews on GameRankings.com. The game still has 4.5 out of 5 Stars rating on Amazon.com, but now it is based on 306 customer reviews.

Caffeinated Thoughts
Mrs. Coffee and I beat Donkey Kong Country Returns together earlier this year, but we haven't really played it since. As a matter of fact, it is not currently in our game "collection", as we traded our neighbors it back in July in exchange for Kirby's Epic Yarn and Wii Sports Resort. Before we traded off Donkey Kong Country Returns though, how many hours did we put into the game?

Our 65 hours reported are nearly all of just the two of us playing through the game together, with maybe an hour or two of the total being from us playing our own files in the game.

If you have played Donkey Kong Country Returns cooperatively, you can probably relate to the frustration from the infuriatingly awesome level designs when trying to survive through a level with another player.

Somehow, Mrs. Coffee and I survived the entire game together though, and we may have to give it another run in the future. Below is a video of Mrs. Coffee and me playing through DKCR's World 5's, Level 5-K Blast and Bounce. SPOILER WARNING - If you don't want to see where at least one hidden puzzle piece is, don't watch the video; but if you want to see us attempt a level together, just click play! I play as Donkey Kong, she plays as Diddy Kong:


Donkey Kong Country Returns' first year of reported data places it behind Mario's games, but ahead of Kirby. Seeing the play-time that Mrs. Coffee and I reported, over 60 hours, compared to the average reported on the Nintendo Channel being under 20 hours, is really surprising to me. It makes me wonder if perhaps Donkey Kong Country Returns is so much of a challenge, that many of the players aren't finishing it?

I think DKCR is an excellent Wii game, and an excellent cooperative 2D side-scrolling platforming title in general. I really hope that Nintendo announces very soon Donkey Kong Country Returns is becoming a Nintendo Selects title so many more Wii owners can experience it.

If you are looking for a new Wii game for Christmas that you can play with just one other person locally, I can recommend Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Questions
Have any of you recently acquired and/or been playing through Donkey Kong Country Returns? If so, have any of you completed the game 100% cooperatively and, have you or anybody know you completed everything in the game, "Time Trials" and all?

If you don't own Donkey Kong Country Returns is it on your Christmas list, or would you purchase it almost immediately if it became a Nintendo Selects title with a MSRP of only $19.99?

If any of you are interested in Donkey Kong Country Returns, you can see prices for it and some Donkey Kong toys on Amazon.com linked below: