Donkey Kong 64

Five playable characters, mountains of collectibles and one of the most ambitious collect-a-thons of its era — Donkey Kong 64 by studio Rare brought the famous gorilla into the third dimension with such generosity that players' heads were left spinning.

The heart of the game is a colossal amount of content. You control a total of five members of the Kong family — Donkey, Diddy, Tiny, Lanky and Chunky — and each has their own abilities, their own colour-coded items and their own passages that only they can handle. Exploring the sprawling worlds thus means constantly switching characters and searching for spots where each one fits.

This makes Donkey Kong 64 one of the most demanding collectible experiences of its day. Bananas, golden bananas, coins, blueprints — there is an enormous number of items here, and the game rewards thorough, systematic exploration of every corner. For fans of the genre it's a feast, though critics then and now have pointed out that the sheer volume of collecting can be almost overwhelming.

Here too Rare showed off its technical prowess — colourful, varied worlds, smooth movement and plenty of inventive minigames and boss battles. There's no shortage of the studio's characteristic humour and musical flair, which give the game its unmistakable atmosphere. The opening rap jingle, the DK Rap, also became famous, and fans still recall it with fondness (and a smile) to this day.

Donkey Kong 64 is thus at once a celebration and an extreme of the collect-a-thon genre — a game for anyone who loves getting lost in sprawling worlds and takes joy in watching their collectible counter tick steadily upward. For the patient explorer it's one of the richest titles on the whole console.

Why play it: A grand collect-a-thon with five characters and mountains of collecting — a feast for anyone who loves thorough exploration of 3D worlds.