Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! (SNES)

It's taken me 25 years but I've finally got around to seeing this through.

First off a couple of minor gripes. Kiddy Kong plays exactly like Donkey Kong (apart from the underutilised bouncing on water), his inclusion feels kinda pointless. I'd much rather have played as Dixie and DK rescuing Diddy instead. It does feel a bit odd that you only play as DK in one of the three games in the original trilogy.

Secondly, the overworld map is more free roaming than the previous games. Your not exactly gonna get lost but again for me it doesn't add enough, following the dotted lines would have been sufficient.

Now these aren't gamebreakers and the main bulk of the game is top notch stuff, but you can kinda tell RARE's top staff were busy with N64 development. Its a little samey and safe.

In 1996 the gaming World was at peak hype for the 3D evolution, and rightly so imo. This must have felt like a relic post Super Mario 64 and to be fair, it's not as good as DKC2 or Yoshi's Island, both of which released a year earlier.

Thats not to say its a bad game though, far from it, and thankfully we now live in a world where 2D games get a bit more respect than when most of us were obsessed with polygons. I was one of those so I can't say I regret passing this by in 1996, but the reality is this is a great platformer and easily one of the best of the era.

Very happy to have finally completed it, and would highly recommend to other fans of the series who it may have passed by.

4/5

My Reviews

Aye. 2 and 3 and splendid solid games but I prefer the first one. The next two showed Rare starting to indulge in overloading as a means of compensating for their relatively weak game craft. They were always better at the technical side of things. A dream team was Nintendo with design and Rare with implementation but I don't think we ever got that.

Game maps started to become unwieldy - SMW's was the concept's peak. It was great and provided entertainment in of itself without feeling contrived. But they boiled that down to a linear level select in Yoshi's Island which is a better game than any in the DKC series.

Mario 64's castle was entertaining on its own as it wasn't just a level select mechanism - it had some light puzzling and discovery of its own - as was Galaxy's hub world. But it's telling that Galaxy 2's was more like the Yoshi's Island map albeit with some split paths.

There nothing wrong with loading in collectables - it added value in the day of £40 cartridges (close to double that in today's money) - but I had had enough of that type of thing. Was a feast for fans though.

KONG letters for extra stages and jigsaw pieces for collectaholics seemed a good way to balance it in Returns/Tropical Freeze (can't remember what the system was in older games, there were a couple of different coins in DKC2 but it may not have had the letters to collect).

Moot_Geeza wrote:

One more week of DKC, then move on?

Anyone up for Rastan?

There was the original that came out on the Master System and various 8-Bit micros, and a dodgy looking sequel for the Mega Drive and PC Engine. There was also an arcade only third entry apparently, but I don't have access to that.

Its the Mega Drive one I'm more interested in, its another early MD game that looks like a 12-Bit mess but I have suspicions its probably OK.

I had the MS game back in the day, really good and possibly a top 5 for the system for me.

Have far you got? Happy to wait if you intend to finish it.

retroking1981 wrote:

Its the Mega Drive one I'm more interested in, its another early MD game that looks like a 12-Bit mess but I have suspicions its probably OK.

I had the MS game back in the day, really good and possibly a top 5 for the system for me.

Prapare for diappointment, it's weak. I completed it at the time as it came with my MD, but even back then I knew I'd been playing better 8-bit games.

Proving my ratings are basically spat out by a tombola as I recently declared Castle of Illusion to be a near-as-dammit top 5 MS game with the same score.

:EYES:

Edit: Although I've just seen I awarded that one a 1988 90%, so it all makes sense again.

Dunno if you created any save states but that's not far off the end.

Rastan (SMS)

Played this for about half hour and was a bit disappointed compared the the memories, and subsequently gave up after running out of continues. It got its claws in though as I quickly went back for another go.

I'm glad I did, as overall I enjoyed it. Its still not as good as I remember it though, the controls are a tad stiff, but worse still is the jumping.

There's numerous times in the game where the normal jump won't get you out of a pit and the high jump will overshoot you to the opposing pit. There is a wall jump but coupled with the stiff controls it can turn what should be simple platforming into pad throwing frustration.

Its a shame as everything else about it is excellent. I got through to level 4-1 on my second playthrough much easier, which goes to show that overall its definitely a playable game, even if the best thing about it is its obvious inspiration for the excellent Volgarr the Viking.

Still, good stuff overall, just short of 8-Bit greatness.

3/5

My Reviews

davyK wrote:

Any decent ports of Rygar? I remember watching someone in the arcade playing it to a high level to the point where it looked like a different game to when I played it!!!

I know the NES version is completely different and highly regarded.

As far as the arcade version goes, Wikipedia states:
The game was ported to the Sharp X68000, Commodore 64, Master System (Japan only, and renamed Argus no Juujiken (アルゴスの十字剣)), ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and the Atari Lynx. It was also included in a compilation of games called Tecmo Classic Arcade for the Xbox. The arcade version was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console.

The bold is probably your best bet.

A 16 minute playthrough....



Krueger claws wrecked. Big bold sprites that don't really animate at all is quite a look....

Rastan doesn't seem to have gained much traction.

If there's no objections shall we move on?

I've always got a list for suggestions, currently I'm thinking:

First Samurai (Amiga, SNES) - This one always seems to pop on on SNES youtube channels as a 'hidden gem'

Second Samurai (Amiga, MD) - Terrible looking sequel to the above

Anyone up for one or both of these?

There was some talk of playing Heart of Darkness on PS1 recently after Monkey played Another World. I'd be up for that or Rygar as Davy suggested up the page a bit.  I'd play First/Second Samurai at some point, but having dabbled on Amiga many years ago I'm convinced they'd be average (at best) without nostalgia.