RetroGaming

Those are (I assume) the actual 3D models they used to make Donkey Kong Country, but of course they rendered them because the game itself was 2D. That trick looked pretty impressive for the time, kinda "I can't believe it's not 3D".

If you want a much later, much less impressive result of such a technique, look at Fire Emblem : Shadow Dragon on the DS. They clearly did unit art with rendered 3D animated models, slightly retouched. They mostly look dirty and, in a very uncanny valley way, the animations look weird, too fluid.