As the gorilla Donkey Kong, the player explores themed levels to collect items and rescue his kidnapped family members from King K. Rool who seeks to destroy DK Isles.

Donkey Kong 64 received acclaim and was Nintendo's top seller during the 1999 holiday season; it ultimately sold 5.27 million copies worldwide.

Retrospective reviews of Donkey Kong 64 were mixed; critics considered it emblematic of the tedium in Rare's "collectathon" adventure platformers.

[5][6] The game follows a traditional storyline for the series: King K. Rool and his reptilian Kremlings invade the idyllic DK Isle and kidnap Donkey Kong's friends, planning to power up their Blast-O-Matic weapon and destroy the island.

As in other Rare games, the player often encounters an impasse such as an indestructible object or out-of-reach area, and must acquire a new ability with which to eventually backtrack and resolve it.

Playable versions of the original Donkey Kong (1981) and Jetpac (1983) are hidden within the game, and playing through them is required to finish the story.

[24] Though the real-time graphics prevented Rare from reproducing the level of detail seen in the Donkey Kong Country series, they allowed for more expressive characters.

"[22] The strong emphasis on collectibles was a design choice made at the request of Rare co-founder Tim Stamper to distinguish Donkey Kong 64 from Banjo-Kazooie.

Rare attempted to differentiate Donkey Kong 64 from Banjo-Kazooie through its variety of playable characters, cinematic set-pieces, and bombastic boss battles.

[22] A removed feature, "Stop 'N' Swop", allowed data to be transferred from Banjo-Kazooie to Donkey Kong 64 to unlock in-game bonuses.

[26][27] Specifically, Nintendo 64 models produced after Banjo-Kazooie's release reduced the amount of time the console retained flash memory, making Stop 'N' Swop nearly impossible to activate as intended.

[5] The Expansion Pak was previously used to power optional higher-resolution graphics, but in the case of Donkey Kong 64, it was marketed as improving the frame rate and rendering of objects at a distance.

[29] Chris Marlow, who was working on Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001) at the time, claimed that Rare could not resolve a bug that occurred without the Expansion Pak and thus they were forced, at great expense, to bundle the game with the memory upgrade.

[37] Rare announced Donkey Kong 64 with a single screenshot on its website[1] and coverage in the January 1999 issue of Nintendo Power.

[41][42] Donkey Kong 64's sizable US$22 million marketing campaign doubled the typical budget for a major Nintendo release.

The campaign included a 60-second commercial played at over 10,000 movie theaters during the holiday season, and additional advertisements via billboards, print, and radio.

[2] A promotional "The Beast Is Back" tour brought a truck outfitted with Nintendo games across the United States,[43] and a separate sweepstakes between the series and Dr Pepper was advertised in supermarkets.

[58] As a bestseller, Donkey Kong 64 joined Nintendo's "Player's Choice" game selection, where high sales continued through the next holiday season.

[9] IGN described Donkey Kong 64 as the biggest and most ambitious Nintendo 64 game as of its release, but very similar to Banjo-Kazooie in its platforming and puzzle design.

[10] This had become a trend in Rare's games, and Donkey Kong 64 followed the "predictable formula" of making players collect multiple sets of items and in full for a special ending.

[5] The Cincinnati Enquirer applauded the minigames as a "welcome diversion [which] add to the fun of an already massive adventure", and which are so good they would have worked as their own released games on previous-generation consoles.

[53] GameSpot, however, considered parts of Donkey Kong 64's gameplay "cerebral", requiring the consideration of several simultaneous tasks to solve later puzzles.

[5] Already familiar with concepts borrowed from Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Banjo-Kazooie, critics considered the player's tasks less innovative or interesting to decipher.

[52] Even with the RAM expansion for graphics, Donkey Kong 64's visuals were only found marginally—if at all—better than that of its contemporary games, such as the previous year's Banjo-Kazooie.

[11][5][6][53] IGN avowed that Donkey Kong 64 was not as pretty as Banjo-Kazooie, especially in its water and backgrounds, though it still ranked among the console's prettiest games because the setting is barren and nondescript at first, and only later introduces lighting effects and richer textures.

Nonetheless, he said "its mastering of elements that have been done to death may be just the spark needed" to evolve the genre in games released in later years, celebrating its gameplay as addictive and some of the best on the Nintendo 64.

[55] Though hyped fans would be disappointed, IGN said that Donkey Kong 64 remains an excellent and expansive platformer with an overwhelming amount of things to do.

[6] GameFan, on the other hand, was most disappointed by how it "truly offers nothing new" and compared its monotony and repetition with the 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut: "a big bloated project with not enough brilliant moments to justify the numbness ... [of] sitting through the whole thing", it "fails to live up to the Rare name".

[7] Rare's 3D platformers became notorious for their emphasis on collecting items, and Kotaku remembered Donkey Kong 64 as "the worst offender" with hundreds of color-coded bananas.

[68] The indie developer behind A Hat in Time, a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, blamed Donkey Kong 64 for the "collect-a-thon platform adventurer" genre's decline in popularity.