Genre: Platformer
Year: 1996
Developed by: Rare
Published by: Nintendo
Platforms: SNES, Game Boy Advance
#127
Feeling Like: Gimme the gimmicks
There is no bad Donkey Kong Country.
It’s been a spell since we saw Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze on the 500. They were both great in their own right, but neither held a candle to the original trilogy on the Super Nintendo. I know many would disagree, but nostalgia is a powerful tool when looking back. There isn’t a single DKC that I didn’t revere. I played the hell out of all three, all three! – enough to completely complete each of them. That’s every secret, every Donkey Kong Coin collected, every secret world discovered, every boss beaten. I never do that, but I did it for DK, Diddy, Dixie, Kiddy, Cranky, Candy and Funky.
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble is generally considered the weakest of the trilogy, but it’s darn close to being as good as the other two. While the novelty of the graphics may have worn off and the N64 had launched a few months earlier, I still couldn’t help but stay close to my Super Nintendo and get every minute I could holding that perfect, dog-bone grey controller with purple tones in my hands.
There’s a reason my Backloggery looks like this.
It’s a comfort, watching YouTube recaps. There’s Dixie, the hair swinging, pink hat-wearing heroine with her buddy Kiddy Kong, Donkey’s stand-in since he’s kidnapped in this one…or something? I don’t remember. Either way, Dixie can hover, Kiddy can roll and bounce on water and a group of friendly bears need some assistance.
Or something.
The star of the show is the world itself – instead of being stuck on a linear path, there’s a game-within-a-game that involves collecting Bear coins, getting items for the Bears, getting various upgrades to your watercraft and hunting for secrets to a much greater depth compared to Donkey Kong Country 1 or 2.
But the stages themselves are fantastic. Rare knew that it would have to step up this time and pillage the barrel for ideas, as they’d already concocted 92 stages in the previous two games. Where do you go from there? By having a gimmick in nearly every stage. It’s rare that you just run to the right and avoid enemies; sometimes you’ll be a spider, dodging a reticle that constantly follows you around. Other times you’ll be avoiding a saw that’s making its way through the trees you’re swinging through. An elephant scared of mice, but only when they’re in the light. An underwater sewer, where your directional controls are reversed. A riverside race. Lightning that strikes, so you can’t stay in the water long. Rats that powerup doors. A snowball fight with a snowman.
It is truly staggering. There isn’t a single part of the game where I felt like I’d done it before. If anything, it was if Rare came up with 48 mini-games and expanded them to full levels. And with Donkey Kong Coins scattered throughout, K-O-N-G letters and secrets galore, replaying the levels was a gleeful requirement. The soundtrack isn’t quite as punchy as it could have been, but every tune is cheerful, or exciting, or suitably creepy.
It may also be the only instance (along with 2) in a game where I actually enjoyed playing as a spider. Squitter is a cool guy, I don’t know if it’s the cartoony eyes or the fact that he has four pairs of sneakers, but I was never creeped out like I am with virtually every other instance of arachnids. Another notch in DKC 3’s belt.
It’s also home to the hardest level in the entire trilogy – Rocket Rush.
It’s a simple premise, but extraordinarily difficult. Most of the stage takes place with you inside a barrel. A rocket barrel, if you will. You can’t move up and down on your own accord, you’re either sinking or rising and even the slightest touch to the right or left will move you perilously close to dangers. Since your fuel is limited, even a few bumps against the cliffs may result in eventual death. I probably died on this single level more than the rest of the game combined. Finally making it to the top platform felt as good as anything I’ve ever experienced playing a video game.
It makes sense that a different team made Donkey Kong Country 3; it has a very different feel. Instead of a jungle, or the ocean, you’re essentially in Rare’s version of Canada. Mines are replaced with sawmills, Rambi the Rhino is replaced with Ellie the Elephant and the collectibles required to see the true ending are….banana birds. As odd as the first two Donkey Kong Countries are, this is by far the strangest.
The variety of gameplay kept me coming back and I think I played this one more than any other Donkey Kong Country game as a result. The fresh take on enemies and platforming are just about as expertly put together as Super Mario World. The mix of 2d and faux-3d was brilliant, along with perfect synergy of horizontal and vertical challenges. The boss design leaves a lot to be desired, and I got a little tired of Koin guarding the Donkey Kong Coins, but this is a treasure that some may have missed due to it coming out late in the Super Nintendo’s lifecycle. A shame.
The 500 