For Fans of Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze gets classified as a great platformer. It is actually something rarer: a perfect one. Retro Studios built levels that teach by doing, reward memorization without demanding it, and deliver a final world (Secret Seclusion) that rivals anything Nintendo has ever shipped. David Wise returned to score it, and the result is some of the best music ever composed for a video game. The fact that it sold modestly on Wii U before finding its audience on Switch says more about the console than the game.

Very few sequels improve on their predecessor in every measurable way. Donkey Kong Country 2 is one of them. Kremkroc Industries is gone, replaced by the Kremling Krew's pirate aesthetic, a darker atmosphere, and a difficulty curve that respects the player without turning cruel. Dixie Kong's helicopter spin added real mechanical depth. And the music: Stickerbrush Symphony alone earned David Wise a place in gaming history. The game sold over five million copies and still lands consistently on all-time-best lists.

Most King Kong films spend too long getting to the island. Kong: Skull Island drops the audience straight into 1973, onto a jungle that feels genuinely hostile, and surrounds it with a cast that earns its time on screen. The decision to make Kong enormous from the first frame rather than a slow reveal was exactly right. For DK fans who love the franchise's sense of Kong as an ecosystem anchor, not just a boss, this is the film adaptation of that feeling.

If Donkey Kong Country hooked you on the feeling of a platformer that trusts your hands, Rayman Legends is the closest thing another studio has come to replicating it. The musical levels, where stages are choreographed to classic rock tracks and a Mariachi cover of Eye of the Tiger, are as joyful as anything in gaming. Ubisoft Montpellier built something that could sit on a shelf next to Tropical Freeze without embarrassment.