Donkey Kong Barrel Blast has gone through many working titles, such as "DK Bongo Blast" (when it was going to be a Nintendo GameCube title), "Donkey Jet", and "Donkey Kong Jet".
The difficulty mode "Rookie" was renamed to "Beginner" for the European version.
The game was received very poorly upon release, that it has been considered one of the worst games of all time, due to flimsy controls, a lack of online mode, and for Bongo Controls being left out, despite that GameCube controllers are fully compatible with the Wii for backward compatibility. Due to sub-par expectations, Nintendo ended their contract with developer Paon whom previously developed DK: King of Swing and DK: Jungle Climber.