GameSpy Review of Donkey Kong Country 3

In just about every medium, a classic will always be a classic. Casablanca, Romeo and Juliet, and Sgt. Pepper's have stood the test of time and remain as popular as ever. The one major exception to the rule is video games. Even the best ones often prove to have all the shelf life of a Chinese buffet in a bad part of town. As technology improves and gamers come to demand more bells and whistles from their software, games that seemed to be the peak of interactive perfection only a few years ago wind up upstaged by their own sequels or the next big release.

That's what makes the re-release of Donkey Kong Country 3 such an anomaly. Sure, it was one of the best games money could buy for the Super Nintendo back in 1996, but who would have thought that it would hold up so well when so many of its contemporaries look awkward and outdated by comparison? Granted, a great deal has changed in game development over the past nine years, and few developers put the same effort into creating 2D games that they did when Bill Clinton was gunning for a second term, but DKC3 still stands as one of the finest examples of old-school platform gaming ever.

But before we get to gushing about the good stuff, let's list a very few caveats: first, Rare has never been accused of developing games that you can just blow through in an afternoon without breaking a sweat. The number of controllers that have been thrown in frustration as a result of their games must number in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. Despite its all-ages content, very young gamers might have a tough time getting through some of DKC3's more challenging bits. Parents of easily frustrated children who plan on taking their GBAs on long family trips might want to pass on this one, or at least make sure they've got a backup game ready to go if the shrieking threatens to shatter the car windows.

Second, anal retentive retro purists seeking only to relive the mid-90's in pixel-perfect detail will get plenty of message-board fodder out of this one. Most of DKC3's levels have very minor tweaks, as a result of reformatting the game for the GBA. The most obvious change is that the soundtrack has been rewritten to better accommodate the GBA's audio hardware, and many of the background music tracks are completely new compositions. Of course, these same purists lambasted the DKC2 GBA re-release for featuring stripped-down versions of the original tunes, so it's really a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation for Nintendo and Rare.

Third, Donkey Kong himself isn't a playable character. Sorry if that disappoints anyone. And the fact that you have to go to those ridiculous extremes to find three criticisms of the game only underscores how solid a title it is. More Fun Than A Barrel of … Well, You Know

There's a basic plot to Donkey Kong Country 3, but it mainly serves as a framework to hang some excellent gameplay off of. The long and short of it is, Donkey and Diddy Kong have gone missing, and Dixie and Kiddy Kong go looking for them. Kiddy is the brawn and Dixie is the brains (and presumably the beauty, if you're Marky Mark in the Planet of the Apes remake). A quick press of the L button switches them between being leader and follower. Each has their own special attacks and abilities, and they can piggyback on each other's shoulders to execute new techniques. Dixie can bowl Kiddy at enemies or throw him into the air to smash through weakened floors, while Kiddy can chuck the much smaller Dixie up to reach out of the way areas.

Their quest takes them across nine sprawling areas in the Northern Kremisphere, each of which is divided up into several levels. The levels themselves are nice bite-sized chunks of 5-10 minutes each, perfect for a quick gaming fix, and the gameplay is so varied between the levels that you can easily play for an hour or two without it feeling repetitive. At the start of the game, there are very few locations you can visit, but as you complete quests and earn additional equipment, you unlock new areas. In addition to the main quest, there are also dozens of side-quests and mini-games, from locating certain objects for other characters to finding several sets of collectable items hidden in each level. There's a lot of game here. A counter on the pause menu shows the percentage of the game that you've completed, but just like in the original, you can push that percentage up over 100 if you do absolutely everything there is to do in the game.

The original SNES version was huge, and the GBA version is even bigger. In addition to containing every last bit of the original game, the GBA version has an additional area, Pacifica. It also has a new two-player mode, which sounds great on paper but is so much of a disappointment that it's not even mentioned as a feature on the back of the box. Basically, it's the exact same game as the single-player version, except the game pauses every time you switch between Dixie and Kiddy. The idea is that you can then hand the GBA over to your friend until they switch characters again or they lose a life. If this could have been accomplished with true two-system multiplayer, it might have been worth it, but as it is, it just seems ill conceived and slapped together.

But that's a very minor quibble with what is undeniably an outstanding single-player game. If Donkey Kong Country 3 was released today as an original title, it would redefine 2D platform gaming. DKC3 comes highly recommended for younger gamers who missed out on the heady days of 16-bit gaming, as well as old-school gamers who may have forgotten just how good it got.

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