 Development accelerated in early 2010 , and the project was " beginning to cohere as a game " around the time of E3 . Donkey Kong Country Returns was officially announced at Nintendo 's press conference held on June 15 , with four playable levels available on the show floor . Although the game was set for release later that year , the team still had 70 levels to create or refine . Around the end of development , Tanabe had lower back pain and needed to take a week off . During that time , assistant producer Risa Tabata took over his duties , and Tanabe decided to keep her in charge for the rest of production . The music , which was inspired by David Wise and Eveline Fischer 's score for the Super NES games in the series , was co @-@ written by Kenji Yamamoto , who had worked on the Prime trilogy . Yamamoto wrote songs to fit the mood of certain levels , and some songs were rewritten if their matching levels were heavily redesigned . Takashi Nagasako voiced both Donkey Kong and Cranky Kong , while Katsumi Suzuki voiced Diddy Kong . 
