Giant Donkey Kong (SSB)

Giant Donkey Kong (, Giant Donkey Kong), stylised as Giant DK in 1P Game, is an unplayable character in Super Smash Bros. and is only playable via hacking. He is a clone of, keeping all of his moves and animations, though differing significantly in physics and having a larger appearance. He uses the same voice clips as Donkey Kong.

He can be played as with the Gameshark code 800A4B3B 001A or via accessing debug mode. If Giant Donkey Kong wins a game in VS Mode, without additional modifications, the game will crash, due to him lacking a victory animation.

Attributes
Giant Donkey Kong has most of the traits that make succeed: He has an excellent grab game, large hitboxes, a fantastic, multiple meteor smashes, and a strong "get off me" tool in Spinning Kong. Naturally, this also means he can combo from Hand Slap and utilise the infinite throw trap. Giant Donkey Kong's improved reach does provide new opportunities in some areas, such as a forward throw combo into forward tilt, as well as increasing the reach of his grounded attacks to the point that he can edgeguard opponents without committing off-stage. In fact, his down aerial meteor smashes are made more efficient, being able to hit the ledge from a short hop incredibly easily, and even hit through platforms. Conversely, his ledge game is also improved, with his ledge attack often going through opponents and his rolls putting him roughly to centre-stage. Thus, it is much more difficult to keep Giant Donkey Kong at the ledge.

However, Giant Donkey Kong is, functionally, Donkey Kong with a significantly larger model and a worse jumpsquat; 8 frames compared to 6. While he possesses minor knockback-based armor, it isn't nearly enough to save him from combo starters like 's, as he lacks the handicap used in 1P Game when he's played in VS Mode. Additionally, paradoxically he is actually lighter than regular Donkey Kong, likely to compensate for the knockback handicap from 1P Game, making him easier to KO horizontally than regular Donkey Kong, though his higher fall speed improves his vertical survivability to an extent. The fact that he can be grabbed unlike other giant characters in later games means many characters can chain grab him. His larger size also causes his hitboxes to not quite match his size — just being regular Donkey Kong's attached to larger bones — causing moves like his own grab to straight up miss up-close. Furthermore, this large frame makes Giant Donkey Kong's combos far more unorthodox, causing him to hit the ground earlier than one would expect, for example. Giant Donkey Kong's new weaknesses also tend to compound regular Donkey Kong's existing problems: His size makes him extremely easy to hit, which makes approaching a nightmare, not to mention his otherwise linear approach tools. Ergo, Giant Donkey Kong is arguably an outright downgrade from the original.

Differences from
Giant Donkey Kong is effectively just a larger Donkey Kong, with differing physics to ensure they befit his size.

Moveset
For all intents and purposes, Giant Donkey Kong's attacks are the same as Donkey Kong's, down to the hitboxes, though their positioning will differ due to the larger model they are attached to. For visualizations on Giant Donkey Kong's hitboxes, which are the same as Donkey Kong's, click here.

Crowd cheer
Giant Donkey Kong will use Donkey Kong's crowd cheers.

In competitive play
Due to being a boss character only playable through hacking, Giant Donkey Kong has been banned in tournaments since Smash 64's inception. However, arguments have been made to legalise Giant Donkey Kong due to his attributes arguably making him worse than the regular Donkey Kong, as well as mods like 19XXTE and Smash Remix making him much easier to access, which sometimes see use over the original game for their quality of life enhancements. Notably, they fix the results screen for unplayable characters like Giant Donkey Kong, making tournaments run more smoothly; in the past, this was problematic due to requiring resets, and thus reloading the chests to make him playable, delaying tournament sets. Due to his changes arguably making him worse than the regular character, it's argued that the metagame impact of Giant Donkey Kong's unbanning would be minimal, making the ban irrational. Due to a lack of novelty resulting from the very traits that make the argument, though, Giant Donkey Kong has seen very little competitive experimentation, and thus, few campaign for an unban.

In 1P Game
In 1P Game, Giant Donkey Kong is fought as a boss on Kongo Jungle, where he has a handicap that allows him to sustain up to around 300% before being possible to launch, while having buffed knockback himself. The player is given two CPU allies to assist them in the fight.

Alternate costumes
Giant Donkey Kong has a set of unused costumes which are never seen in 1P Game, but are regardless available via hacking. They are identical to Donkey Kong's.