The Brilliance of Donkey Kong Country Part 3: The Divisive Finale

Rare were on top of the world in 1996. Not only had they found success with the first 2 Donkey Kong Country games, but they also found success in arcades with the Killer Instinct series of fighting games. The pre rendered style had made Rare a household name, but times were changing and Rare were changing with them.

With the Sony PlayStation having its western debut in 1995 and the Nintendo 64 finally getting released in late 1996, early 1997 in Europe, the fifth generation of consoles had begun in earnest. And with it came the rise of 3D gaming. This was a major moment in gaming history, and Rare wanted in on it. Thus, many of their top developers moved away from developing for the SNES and started developing games for the Nintendo 64.

But Rare weren’t quite done with the SNES just yet. It would take time before their N64 output would release, so they decided to release one final game for the aging system and cap off the Donkey Kong Country trilogy at the same time. While many of the developers of the first 2 Donkey Kong Country’s went on to work on new projects for the new system, a new team was set up to develop one last hurrah for the 16-bit system.

And so we have Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble. Released in late 1996, it was another commercial and critical success, though nowhere near as much as the first 2 games. In terms of sales, it sold over 3 million sales. Nowhere near as good as previous releases, but considering the time of release, still an impressive figure.

Critically it was also well received though many found it a step down from its predecessor. As for the fan reactions, this is where it gets messy. Donkey Kong Country 3 is the most divisive game in the Country series, or at least of the original trilogy. Some consider it the best and most refined game in the series, while some consider it the absolute worst.

So what do I think about it? Well, it’s complicated. Donkey Kong Country 3 is a game near and dear to me. It was the one I played the most as a kid, mostly on the GBA. See I didn’t own a Super Nintendo, I had a Mega-Drive, so I missed out on a lot of SNES classics growing up. But I did own a Game Boy Advance and played the hell out of it, and some of my favourite games to play on it were the ports of Donkey Kong Country 1-3.

It was the Game Boy Advance that introduced me to the series and the third entry was the one I played the most. And part of that was because, Donkey Kong Country 3 was the first Donkey Kong game I played, kind of. I played was Donkey Kong Land 3, which was the Game Boy port/demake of Country 3.

Look, my point is that Donkey Kong Country 3 is a game I have a lot of nostalgic memories of. It's a game near and dear to me and will always have a special place in my heart. And it’s the worst game in the Country series.

That doesn’t mean it is a bad game, on the contrary it’s a really good game. And there are even areas where Donkey Kong Country 3 is the best in the series. Donkey Kong Country 3 is still a good game, but it has some serious issues that prevent it from being a great one.

We start with the graphics, since that’s where we’ve started in the last two reviews so we might as well keep things consistent. With this being the third game in the series, not to mention a game late in the SNES life cycle, it would stand to reason that Donkey Kong Country 3 would be the best graphically. And on a technical level that’s true.

By this point Rare had the pre-rendered art-style down to an exact science. They were doing things with the technology most other studios could only dream of doing and Donkey Kong Country 3 is arguably the apex of what it was capable of. A lot of what I've praised the graphics for in the previous games still hold true here, but there’s a lot more technical aspects of the third entry that manages to impress.

There’s an almost 3D effect to the water in certain stages, there’s much more noticeable parallax scrolling, and certain sections are shooting galleries with impressively large and well animated sprites. Even the world map is far more detailed and intricate this time around. Donkey Kong Country 3 is still a fantastic looking game on a technical level, though it does suffer from some slowdown on occasion which the other games didn’t have.

On a technical level the graphics are excellent, but it’s when you compare the level themes in the previous games that Donkey Kong Country 3 comes up short. The first game went with a jungle island theme, the second had a pirate theme, and the third game... actually I couldn’t tell you what its theme is because it doesn’t seem to have one.

The level themes are kind of all over the place. To be fair, Donkey Kong Country 2 also had this problem, but it made up for that with creative themes and level ideas. Donkey Kong Country 3, not so much. The game takes place in an area called the northern Kremisphere which has a variety of locations like lakes, board walks, mills, cliffs, forests, caves and snow-covered villages. Not bad themes for levels, but boring when compared to the more creative themes of the second entry.

Donkey Kong Country 3 has gone back to the more naturalistic settings of the first game, which isn’t a bad idea, but it does feel like a bit of a backslide. I mean even the first game had stuff like ancient temples, the third game has stuff like sewer levels. Sewer levels! The worst kinds of levels in any game.

Then there are the themes that feel ripped off from the first game. The cave, factory, forest and underwater levels just feel like variations of the ones found in the original Country. That isn’t to say these levels look bad or have no creativity put in them. The forest levels taking place in giant hollowed out trees is a cool idea, and the factory and underwater levels look better than they did in the first game. The underwater levels are especially nice to look at with a much more vibrant colour pallette.

I’m also not a big fan of the enemy designs in this game. They don’t look bad or anything, they just lack the charm the enemies in the first two games did. And like the rest of the game, they lack a coherent theme. Maybe they were going for a mutated monster theme since K Rool is going for a mad scientist vibe this time, but that’s not a major focus so they just end up looking weird.

At least the Kongs still look ok, although Wrinkly’s cool grandma look here is so 90’s it hurts. The Kongs aren’t the only characters you’ll run into. You'll also meet a family of bears that look kind of dopey. I like that each has a unique design to match their personality, but they all have the same expression that makes them look stoned off their asses.

Alright, I think it’s time we address the elephant in the room. No, not the actual elephant in the game, we’ll get to them later, I'm talking about the new playable character. Rare wanted the third game to focus on Dixie Kong like how the second game focused on Diddy. The initial idea was to have Dixie team up with Donkey Kong to search for a missing Diddy. But since that would end up taking the spotlight off Dixie in her own game, the story was changed so that Donkey Kong also goes missing and Dixie teams up with, this...

This is Kiddy Kong, Dixies cousin and the new playable character. And I’m just going to be blunt, this character is fucking stupid. Just, why? Why a giant baby? And why did you have to make him look so dumb. No matter what angle I look at him from he doesn’t look anything more than a complete fucking moron.

And they replaced Donkey with this? People were ok with Dixie replacing Donkey Kong because she’s a pretty cool character. But Kiddy? Yeah, no way you were going to win over people with this design. You know what bugs me about this design, he doesn’t look like a baby, he looks like an adult who likes to pretend they’re a baby. And that’s not an image I want in my head.

Graphically, Donkey Kong Country 3 is the least visually interesting in the trilogy. It’s still a good-looking game, it’s just not as inspired or creative as the previous entries. And Kiddy Kong is stupid and I hate him.

And then there’s the music. Donkey Kong Country is a series lauded for its excellent music. The first 2 games soundtracks are masterpieces of videogame music and the third game, doesn’t live up to the high standards set by them.

David Wise did not come back to do the music for this entry. Well, kind of. He didn’t compose any of the level or boss themes but did compose the songs for everything else. Instead, the bulk of the soundtrack was done by Eveline Fischer.

Now, Eveline is a fine composer in her own right. She even did a few tracks for the first Donkey Kong Country like the temple theme. And to her credit, Donkey Kong Country 3’s soundtrack is pretty good in its own right. There are some decent tracks here, Stilt Village is catchy, Nuts n’ Bolts is a great factory theme that mixes in mechanical sounds to great effect, and I've always had a soft spot for Mill Madness. But there’s one issue that permeates the entire soundtrack.

What made the soundtracks for the first 2 games so good was that they were the perfect blend of melody and atmospherics. The problem with the Donkey Kong Country 3’s OST is that it leans too heavily on the atmosphere and not hard enough on the melody. So, while the songs make for good background music, they lack strong melodic hooks and are not very memorable.

But here’s an interesting tidbit, this is not the soundtrack I grew up with. If you’ll recall, I said that the version of Donkey Kong Country 3 I played as a kid was the Game Boy Advance version. Now the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country 3 is a damn good port and adds a variety of new content including new minigames and even a brand-new world.

But the most interesting thing about the GBA version is that it has an entirely different soundtrack. David Wise was brought in to do brand new level themes exclusively for the handheld version. Now since I'm not reviewing that version and it’s been years since I played it so I couldn’t tell you how good the music is, but I think it says something about the original soundtrack when they felt the need to completely redo it for the port to GBA.

It’s not a bad soundtrack, but most of is little more than nice sounding background noise. As a result, Donkey Kong Country 3 lacks the strong immersion the first 2 games had. The sound design is still excellent but that can only take you so far.

The presentation overall is decent, but a noticeable step down from the previous games. Though there are certain elements that are really good. The writing and sense of humour for example is still very strong and while the level themes aren’t as interesting as prior games they’re still decently varied and still look great on a technical level. It's a good presentation, just not a great one.

And now we move on to the gameplay. One thing you’ll notice right away is the new overworld map. Rather than have a linear world select screen of prior entries, Donkey Kong Country 3’s Northern Kremisphere is a much more open location with various secrets to uncover. There's also a little bit of freedom granted in the mid game as to what order you want to tackle the worlds.

And unlike the previous games where you were locked into a world once you selected it, here you can freely exit a world and return to the world map whenever you wish. This does mean that Funky’s Flights is no longer necessary, but he’s found a new calling by running a boat rental shop. And you progress, you’ll find items that Funky can use to build more boats that let you explore more of the overworld.

This gives Donkey Kong Country 3 a more adventurous feel. I would have liked to have seen them go farther with the idea, but it does help give the game a much more unique identity. Once you get into the game proper it’s the same tried and true platforming gameplay you should be used to by now. Same great controls and game feel, and fast paced gameplay. If you enjoyed the gameplay of the previous titles, you should enjoy this one.

I do admit that, with this being the third entry, it would have been nice to have seen them do something a little different. But you know what they say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. And it’s not like it doesn’t shake things up.

For one thing, we have another change in the playable characters. And for as dumb and ugly and also fat that Kiddy Kong is, I do like the dynamic he brings to the game. It's similar to what it was like in the first game, a small nimble character and a big strong character, only the big strong character is a dumb looking baby.

Dixie has the same move set as before, though she’s a been made a tad more nimble due to the change in team dynamic. Kiddy on the other hand feels like a combination of Donkey and Diddy. He has Donkey Kong’s roll attack mixed with Diddy’s barrel throwing. He does have a move unique to him though, he can skim off water like a skipping stone, fitting for a character who is as dumb as a rock.

The team up mechanic also returns, but it’s been slightly altered to match the new dynamic. While Kiddy can throw Dixie incredibly high, Dixie can’t throw Kiddy very far at all. However, Kiddy will slam on the ground when thrown to uncover secrets. You almost never need to do this though, most of the time you’ll be using Kiddy to throw Dixie to reach out of the way areas.

And, like the previous games, we also have Animal Buddies to control as well. Though one thing I noticed was an increased emphasis on the transformation barrels over simply riding the Buddies this time around. Not sure why though.

As for the Buddies themselves, only 3 of them return from Donkey Kong Country 2, Enguarde, Squitter and Squawks. Rattly and Rambi were sadly cut. Rattly I don’t mind losing because he was the weakest of the bunch, but why get rid of Rambi? He was one the most fun to control and he’s been part of the series since the first game. I don’t understand why they got rid of him.

We do get three new Animal Buddies to play with. The first, and most interesting, is Ellie the Elephant. Ellie is one of the more versatile of the Animal Buddies. She can use her trunk to suck up barrels from a distance and she can suck up and shoot out water. The downside is that she’s terrified of mice and will run away when she sees them, because they aren’t above using that cliché.

The second new buddy isn’t technically new as they appeared in a level in the last game, but they’re more prominent here so I’m counting them as new. Quawks the Parrot who is basically a palette swap of Squawks, only instead of shooting coconuts, he can pick up and throw barrels. I don’t really get why he’s here; I'd much rather play as Squawks.

The final ne Buddy is Parry the Parallel Bird. This one is a weird one, you don’t control them directly, they’ll just follow you around while hovering above you. You basically just have to keep them alive until you get to a signpost where they’ll turn into an item, usually something better than what the other Buddies turn into. It basically turns the game into an escort mission.

I’m not a huge fan of the Animal Buddies in this game. The returning ones are the same as they were before and are perfectly fine, but the new ones I don’t care for that much. Ellie is ok but she’s certainly no Rambi, Quawks is just a shitty version of Squawks, and Parry I don’t understand at all. Why would you put escort missions in a platformer, in fact why put them in anything at all. Escort missions suck!

Even then, I don’t think the returning Buddies are as fun here as they were before. I don’t know if it’s the level design or what have you, but they were nowhere near as fun to play here than they were in Country 2, or even the first game. That being said, I didn’t hate playing as any of them, except for Quawks. They’re ok I guess and at least they add some variety.

Variety has been a strong point of the Donkey Kong Country series, and Donkey Kong Country 3 is no exception. Every level introduces a new concept or gimmick which helps give them a unique identity and keeps things fresh and interesting throughout the playthrough. Water levels make a return along with mine cart levels, this time in a sled, which only further adds to the games varied levels.

There’s a ton of different concepts and ideas in this game, but it comes at a cost. While the previous games had levels I wasn’t keen on, these were the exception to the rule. The majority of the levels in the last two games were fun and challenging. In Donkey Kong Country 3, for every fun level, there’s one I either didn’t care for or outright hate.

This is mostly the case in the final third of the game. Everything before that point is great, the level design is solid and I was having a lot of fun, but then you get to the final third and the quality takes a massive nosedive. The final stretch of this game is an absolute chore to get through and I just feel drained when I'm done.

And a lot of that has to do with the difficulty. The Donkey Kong Country games have always been known for their challenge but I maintained that they were always a fair one. I never dealt with any cheap bullshit. That isn’t the case in Donkey Kong Country 3. I counted numerous instances where I got hit by an enemy I couldn’t see or died because of unfair hit detection or bad enemy placement.

But even then, a lot of these level gimmicks are either frustrating or just not that fun. The chase levels in this game are pretty much the reason why I hate chase levels in general. I hated these when I was a kid, I could never beat them, and all they did was piss me off. Even now I dread playing them.

And I know this is going to sound weird, but a lot of the level gimmicks felt too gimmicky. I think they went too far with a lot of them. Take Poisonous Pipeline for example, the entire gimmick of that level is that your controls are reversed. That isn’t fun, fighting the controls isn’t enjoyable it’s frustrating and annoying.

And then there’s another level with low gravity. Now that could be fun, but you move so unbearably slow, so it just becomes aggravating to play. Oh, and the theme of those levels? Sewers! See, I told you they sucked.

Now I want to make it clear that there a lot of good levels here. Even some of the later levels can be a good time, but there were a lot more I disliked here than in the previous games. The level design is still solid, but it’s not as consistent this time.

By this point you’ve probably noticed a pattern with this review. Donkey Kong Country 3 is a good platformer, great in some instances, but when you compare it to the other games in the Donkey Kong Country series it feels like a big step backwards.

It feels like for every small improvement it makes, it takes another step back. Here's an example, the saving issue from the previous games has now been fixed. It still won’t save your lives, but all your other collectables will be, including the Bear Coins, which replace the Banana Coins from the second game. So need to grind for coins when loading a save, yay.

The problem is that there aren’t many places to actually use these things. Despite there being a bear in every world, only two of them take these things. They do try to circumvent this by having an item you can buy cost 50 coins, but even with that I still had an overabundance of them.

You can use them at Swanky’s place. Unlike last time where he ran at quiz show, now he runs a carnival game where you compete against Cranky. There’s three different variations and you can play as many times as you want, but you don’t get extra lives from it, you only get bananas and Bear Coins. So now you have to play it multiple times just to get one extra life and it gets old fast.

You see what I mean. They improved on some aspects of the game but took a step back in others. That’s not what a good sequel looks like. It should be an improvement on everything. Now, does this make it a bad game? No. As a standalone platformer it's still a fun game to play. I would still recommend it to anyone who enjoys platformers, but only after you play the first 2 Country games.

And there are some areas where it is better than its predecessors. The bosses are the best of the entire trilogy in my opinion with decently challenging fights and fun designs. They also don’t repeat bosses so they’re all entirely unique now. So at least the game has that going for it.

Just a heads up, don’t go for 103%. It's really not worth it this time around. To get 103% you have to do the same thing you did in Donkey Kong Country 2 with some slight differences. The bonus levels work exactly as they did before, only there’s a new level type of objective and you get Bonus Coins as opposed to Kremkoins.

They do the same thing though, unlock levels in the Lost World. Though now the Lost World is in a single location so it’s more convenient just to save it for the end game. There’re also way more bonus levels this time, even the Lost World levels have a few in each of them with their own Bonus Coins to get, and you need all of them to get to the true final boss.

And here’s a fun cheat you can do. If you press LRRLRRLRLR and type in the word MERRY on the cheat menu, all of the bonus stages become Christmas themed. The music change to a Jingle Bells type tune and the stars and bananas become bells and presents. Try it come the holidays, it’s a fun easter egg.

The Hero Coins also return but now they’re guarded by a new enemy called Koin. The only way to get the Hero Coin is to take Koin out, but he’s heavily armoured and the only way to kill him is to hit from behind with a metal barrel. Unlike last time the Hero Coins aren’t particularly well hidden, they’re either out in the open or just off the beaten path. The challenge is trying to kill Koin, which isn’t that hard to do most of the time. They aren’t as much fun to get now, they felt more rewarding to find last time.

You do get something out of getting all of the Hero Coins this time. By collecting all of them, Funky can build his ultimate vehicle, the Gyrocopter. And you need to get this thing to find the last 2 Banana Bird caves. What’s a Banana Bird you ask, this is a Banana Bird.

These horrifying abominations of God are hidden in various caves scattered throughout the game. Some you merely have to approach but others will require a bit more work to get to. Once you enter them, you’ll have to play a game of Simon Says to free the Banana Bird. You get most of them through this, though two you get by helping some of the bears.

The Banana Birds are what you need to get in order to see the true ending, and I don’t understand why. The Banana Birds come across as filler to me. You could remove them from the game and little would need to be changed. It also makes the pacing for the end game wonky. After you beat the true final boss, nothing happens. You get the last Hero Coin so you can get the Gyrocopter, so you can get the last Banana Birds to get the best ending.

I like that the collectables are all important for completion, but the way they’re integrated is just awkward. Get rid of the Banana Birds and just have the Hero Coins necessary for the best ending. The only reason to have Banana Birds is to give the overworld a reason to exist, which goes to show how well thought out the overworld was.

But is it worth going through all that? Not really. The ending you get is pretty lame and it’s not worth going through the Lost World levels. The Lost World sucks in this game. The levels in it are some of the most frustrating and annoying in the entire series and it end with a Rocket Barrel level that comes completely out of nowhere and has a completely different control style you don’t see again. It's so random; why is this here?

Donkey Kong Country 3 is a game I have very mixed feelings about. I like the game and enjoy playing it, but there’s so many little niggling issues that just hampers my enjoyment of it. Compared to how tightly designed the first two games were, Country 3 feels sloppy. There are some good ideas here, but a lot of them feel underdeveloped.

You can tell Rare weren’t all in on this one as they were in the process of moving on to more powerful hardware. It's a testament then that Rare were so talented that Donkey Kong Country 3 still ended up being a pretty solid platformer. It may be the worst Donkey Kong Country, but even the worst Donkey Kong Country is still a good time overall.

And that’s going to do it for this look back on the Donkey Kong Country games. After Donkey Kong Country 3, Rare would move on to the N64 and would reach the height of their critical and commercial success. Games like Goldeneye, Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark would define an entire generation of gamers and are all immutable classics in their own right.

Rare weren’t done with the Donkey Kong series yet. Diddy Kong Racing was an excellent kart racer starring our favourite monkey sidekick and they would take Donkey Kong into the third dimension with Donkey Kong 64. However, Donkey Kong 64 ended up being the last Donkey Kong game Rare would develop.

In 2002, Rare was bought out by Microsoft and ceased development for all Nintendo consoles and IP’s. They still developed for Nintendo handhelds and even released ports of the Country games to Game Boy Colour and Advance systems, but that was it as far as the Country series was concerned.

Nintendo would keep the Donkey Kong brand alive with various spin offs. Some were quite decent, but none could capture the magic of the original Country trilogy. And with Rare out of the picture it looked like no one ever would again. Or would they?

In 2010, Metroid Prime developer Retro Studios would develop Donkey Kong Country Returns, a reboot of the Country series for the Nintendo Wii which helped revitalize the series and was one of the very best games on the console. But that, and its sequel Tropical Freeze, are stories for another day.

I will look at the Retro Studios games later. I love them both and Tropical Freeze is one of my favourite games of all time, but for this little celebratory look back I wanted to focus on the older titles. Because without them, Donkey Kong may not be the household name he is today.

The Donkey Kong Country trilogy is one of the best platforming series of all time. They were innovative on a graphical level, they had some of the best music of that entire generation and they were just damn fun to play. So happy 40th anniversary Donkey Kong, here’s hoping your future is as bright as your past.