You gaze across the blue expanse, past beached clipper ships and palmy outcrops; a small grass-lined hut sits on the beach under… the massive facade of Donkey Kong, hewn from a volcano’s slope. This is what you see at the start of the the 1994 SNES mega-hit, Donkey Kong Country, and it’s exactly what you see when you land on the DK Island level of Donkey Kong Bananza’s DLC. This new full-featured, Easter-egg and nostalgia-crammed level is part of the Septembder 12, 2025 (today!) paid DLC pack (19.99 in the US) for Donkey Kong Bananza, DK Island and Emerald Rush. We’ll get to the Emerald Rush mode in a second, but more on this new level.
We haven’t seen the DK home base in Bananza outside of the side-scroller throwback challenge level called Nostalgia Country in the base game. DK Island is home to not only the DK crew – Diddy, Dixie, Cranky, and Rambi the Rhino, who can be found hanging around next to a faithful recreation of the DK treehouse and banana horde – but also a host of very Rare-era inspired features: A hollowed out volcano at the center of the island with aforementioned DK face is surrounded by beaches (A lone surfboard wedged in one sandy shore; Whither be our sweet, funkiest of Kongs?), an island shaped like the DK Bongos that actually bounces like the obscure GameCube accessory’s taught tops, a recreation of Gangplank Galleon, Squawks’s hut, and other references to DK’s 1990s polygonal past that you’ll have to discover on your own. It’s a pretty irresistible proposition for Donkey Kong fans and retro gamers in general, and I’m glad that this isn’t just a new mode like, say, Super Mario Odyssey’s DLC content (Luigi’s Balloon World, a sort of hide-and-seek-based online challenge).
But speaking of new modes, Emerald Rush is a hefty gameplay mode overlaid on DK Island and several other Layers – it’s essentially a post-game mode that changes things and challenges you across both the new DK Island and several other Layers. I was getting a little burnt out amassing Banandium Gems to progress past the final few Encores in my post-game save, and this mode shakes things up in a really nice way.
In this mode, Void Kong has returned with his sights set on Emerald, a greener version of Banandium. When you first talk to him on DK Island, he deputizes DK and Pauline as VoidCo employees, and dispatches them to amass Emerald. Emerald is basically gold from the base game, although other things can contribute to your supply – not just smashing things for easy pickups.
Within each 10-round run of Emerald Rush mini-challenges, you must plot out a path to restore your skills, your transformations, and also stackable perks you can select to get huge bonuses.“
Void’s challenges are time based, and you do them in sequential batches, sort of like the Knockout Tour in Mario Kart World: If you reach the first goal of 500 Emeralds, say, the next goal is 1000. Then 1500, and so on – all the way until the end of a 10-round run. If you miss one goal – like not making the latest placement cutoff in Knockout Tour – then the round ends.
What makes this more interesting than just going for the gold Emerald, is that you have been stripped of all of your skills and upgrades. Within each 10-round run of Emerald Rush mini-challenges, you must plot out a path to restore your skills, your transformations, and also stackable perks you can select to get huge bonuses. There are also chaotically-placed mini-challenges across the map that give you huge Emerald boosts as well.
This is a lot to take in, so let me demonstrate my thought process while executing an Emerald Rush mode run: First, I select gear from my closet to help boost treasure finds or movement, then I go for a nearby Bananza transformation (marked on the map) to restore my ability to turn into my favorite Emerald vacuum, Elephant, or Kong if that’s not available. Then I use the new limited-per-round fast-travel barrels to warp around and do mini challenges, all while selecting perk rewards that start multipliers for things like Turf Surfing, killing enemies, or finding Emerald Banandium gems. Then, when those multipliers are sorted, I double down on them – if I built up the ability to mine more emerald from enemies and surfing, I become The Kill-ver Surfer.
Now, I know the above didn’t make it any clearer to you, and that pun wasn’t very good, but what I hope to get across is that this is complicated, requires planning and thought, and is a much better way, I think, to revisit your favorite Bananza levels (and explore the new DK Island) than grinding for the last 300 Banandium Gems. It’s a lot of fun, and it kind of reminds me of the fleshed out bonus mode Bowser’s Fury that came tacked onto the Switch re-release of Super Mario 3D World.
You can unlock new gear in this mode, unlock new Layers to play the mode in, and up to seven levels of difficulty. I was failing (but confident) by level 3, so I think the deeper difficulties will stretch your skills.
Finally, there’s also a new unlockable set on DK Island. Squawks the parrot isn’t just back as scenery; at Squawks’s hut you can exchange the coins you collect while playing, Banandium Chips, for little statues to place on DK Island. These are statuettes of the Kongs, their allies like Squawks and Rambi, and their enemies that you can freely place around your island, slightly customizing it and making it feel a bit more like your home base. It’s simple, but it’s another thing crammed in this already stuffed DLC, so worth mentioning.
I had just wound down my hunt for Banandium Gems in the post game as I ran out of my favorite challenges to do and faced down some grinding, yet this DLC seems like a no-brainer reason to load up that completed save file and go ape-wild on some Emerald while also exploring the most nostalgic, crafted, and cool area (in my opinion) of Donkey Kong Bananza.
Update: In a previous version of this article we stated that DK Island + Emerald Rush was only accessible via beating the final boss. We are now aware of a second way to access the DK ISland portion of the content earlier than the endgame and have updated the article to reflect this and for the full explanation check out our wiki page on how to unlock the DK Bananza DLC here. Oh and we also reviewed DK Island + Emerald Rush here.
