Introduction: "Once upon a time, there was a little system named Super Nintendo. He was a good little system, but unfortunately he had a problem. The big mean Sega Genesis told people that HE was better because he had better graphical capabilities. This made the Super Nintendo sad.
Then one day, a nice company called Rare came to help poor little Super Nintendo with his problem. Rare gave Super Nintendo an excellent game called 'Donkey Kong Country', which had beautiful graphics (much better than any game the Sega Genesis had) and was incredibly fun to play. So good Mister Rare saved the day, and everyone was happy with the new Donkey Kong Country series for years to come."
A classic tale as old as time, Donkey Kong Country has always been a great series, from SNES to N64 and now to Gameboy Advance. Donkey Kong Country 3 is the third DKC remake on the GBA, and it still plays quite well for a game that's well over 10 years old.

GamePlay: Rare has always been the king of platformers, from Banjo-Kazooie to Conker to you-name-it. And Donkey Kong Country 3 shows their true mastery of platformer gameplay. DKC3 is an excellent exhibition of a single-player co-op game. You alternate control of either Kiddy Kong (a buff little two-year-old) or Dixie Kong (a lass with a handy spinning hat) with the touch of a button, provided you have a partner barrel handy. Kiddy is the muscle of your team and will do most of the heavy-lifting, while Dixie provides you with aeronautic skills via her classic helicopter hat-tail. Between the two of them you'll be smashing every imaginable sort of foe, occasionally with the help of an animal partner. The partners are all unique and all equally useful, from the web-slingin' spider to the peanut-launching elephant.

The gameplay is perfect from a technical viewpoint, and it's a heck of a lot of fun to play too. If it has a flaw, it's the difficulty. Donkey Kong Country 3 is the hardest game in its series, and when I say "hard" I mean REALLY hard. This game took me a solid 50 hours to beat, and that includes a lot of dying. It's not too bad near the beginning, but around halfway through the game you'll find that bosses are difficult to the point of utter frustration. DKC3 is actually harder than any Castlevania game I've ever played, and they're widely regarded as the hardest platformer series around! In my personal opinion, high challenge levels make a game more fun, but in all honesty many people will become so frustrated that they will likely quit well before they finish the game.

Control: Controls are basic (A=Jump and B=Attack), and they work quite well. This game can really test your reflexes now and then, and the controls are up to the task.

Graphics: The Donkey Kong Country graphics were groundbreakingly good on the SNES, and they hold up very well on the Gameboy Advance. DKC3 is definitely one of the best-looking GBA games around, with colorful detail abounding throughout all of the game's vivid worlds. The only ugly part of the game is the snow levels, which lack backgrounds of any kind.

Sound & Music: Catchy tunes that you'll be humming for weeks are liberally scattered throughout the game. Unfortunately, they're balanced out by some equally awful little pieces that will jar your ears and most likely make you turn the music off altogether. The game doesn't make full use of the GBA's sound capabilities, and some of the sound effects seem to belong on a Gameboy Color. They sound distinctly more like an annoying beeping than the quality sound we know the GBA is capable of.

Final Comments: It was fun before, and it's still fun now. I recommend this game to platformer fans who like a good challenge. But it's certainly not geared toward "lite" gamers or children, who will have a ridiculously hard time beating this game.

Pro: Great Gameplay. Excellent graphics. Very challenging, so has long-lasting value.
Con: Difficult to the point of insanity. Some awful musical tunes, generally low-quality sound.
Final Score: 8.2

Reviewed by: Caleb