While playing as Dixie you can throw Kiddy and ride atop his rolling body to defeat enemies, but that’s not really a great addition. All of the abilities return, and there’s only one new one. Unfortunately not a lot has changed since the last installment. Kiddy Kong is large and handles very similarly to Donkey Kong in the original game. She can also float to the ground slowly by spinning her hair which is the most handy skill in the game. For example, Dixie is much smaller than Kiddy and is therefore much more agile. Despite their similar functions each does have a few abilities that differ from one another. Both kongs can run, jump, pick up and throw barrels, perform a rolling attack via the Y button, and swim. Your kong can only take one hit before they die, but after releasing the other from a specially marked ‘DK’ barrel they follow you around and you take control of the other when you take a hit. Instead of coins your two characters gather bananas and when you reach one hundred of these you get an extra life. If you’ve played the previous Donkey Kong Country titles then you know the drill. What is important however is that this is a side scrolling platform game. That’s what we’re given here, but it’s not a problem for me because this isn’t a sweeping RPG or other storyline focused release. Dixie and her cousin Kiddy head off to find them. Donkey and Diddy Kong are off on vacation somewhere and they go missing.

The only area in which Rareware phoned in is the story. At least someone was keeping the dated hardware relevant. Donkey Kong Country 3 may be a bit of a lost sequel, and it didn’t innovate the franchise, but it is just as fun to play as it once was. I myself couldn’t afford more powerful hardware, and was extremely happy that such a high profile new title was still available to me to play on my humble Super Nintendo. Because of the late release date this was the least popular of the trio. Unfortunately this had a few consequences. The Nintendo 64 was already a few months old, but developer Rareware still wasn’t done with the Super Nintendo. This came at a time when nearly everyone had already moved on to more powerful hardware. It didn’t hurt that this turned out to be one of the very best platformers ever released either. I always assumed that was a one off game, and the fact that a sequel was released shortly after was a pleasant surprise. Second of all it was rather surprising that the Donkey Kong franchise was re-invigorated and re-purposed into a side scrolling platformer ala Mario. First of all the graphics were above and beyond anything I could have ever expected for the Super Nintendo. The original Donkey Kong Country was a huge surprise for me for two reasons.

Donkey kong 3 famicom