Looking down the limp lineup of Game Boy Advance games for this year, it seems hard-pressed the system will last yet another year - at best Nintendo will be able to squeeze one more GBA holiday shopping season into the mix. Since 2001 Nintendo has shoveled over countless Super Nintendo ports to the system and now almost five years later it seems the company is scratching at the bottom of the well.
History has repeated itself and Donkey Kong Country 3, developed by Rare and released on the dying Super Nintendo in 1996, finds itself being tossed onto the tail end of a system's life. While the game might hold some short-term appeal, playing a couple of levels proves that DKC3 played monkey-see, monkey-do with the original titles in the series and serves up a been-there, done-that experience.
Innocently enough, DKC3 follows the franchise format and begins with something turning up missing. Donkey and Diddy Kong have mysteriously disappeared and DKC2 veteran Dixie sets out to find them. Along the way she is tossed a random (and extremely annoying) sidekick by the name of Kiddie Kong in order to battle hordes of Kremlings through a number of varying environments. While the infant Kiddie looks harmless, he serves as a throwback to the original since he controls exactly like Donkey Kong with the roll, roll jumping and greater overall power. Is he Donkey Kong's illegitimate love child? Only time will tell... We could only imagine because that would make for a much more interesting story than the "find the Kong again" scheme.
But let's put my jaded sarcasm to the side for just one second. By slightly altering the series' tried-and-true format, DKC3 has some interesting ideas going for it. However, I can't really pinpoint anything one thing the game does perfectly - well, aside from wasting even more of your time hunting down pointless extra items and "mini-games."
Of course the most frequently talked about aspect of Donkey Kong Country when it released in 1994 was its revolutionary graphics. The rendering of the graphics turned many heads and just the other day, I was talking with a friend about how impressed we were with the old Donkey Kong Country VHS promo Nintendo tossed around prior to its release. The series remains to this day one of the most visually appealing games on the Super Nintendo and its detailed characters and lush environments are not lost on the GBA's DKC3. The intricate attention to detail not only provides a great look and identity for the game, but all of the action onscreen animates extremely well. With subtle rotation effects, items can appear to actually be three-dimensional and the added Swanky's Dash (a mini-game very often compared to Sonic 2's half pipe bonus stage) pushes the GBA with great scaling effects and a quasi-3-D presentation.
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