Game:

Donkey Kong Country 3 (1995)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 13:02

3,539 views

4

Although it's not New Year's Day anymore (thank you, Captain Obvious), I'm back to kick off the new year with for another round of videos. I'm doing Donkey Kong Country 3 this time, and let me just say that this is an AWESOME game. This is actually my favorite video game ever made, in fact. It has just about everything...fun gameplay, a good difficulty curve for the most part, secrets that are worthwhile but not too annoying to find (usually), and incredible graphics and music. Seriously, can you believe this is only a 16-bit game?! (I said that at least twice in the commentary...) This just goes to show what the SNES is capable of. No enhancement chips were used in this game, either, although it does use FastROM addressing. I absolutely love this game. I know a lot of people like DKC2 better, but I really prefer 3, and most of my siblings agree. That's not saying Donkey Kong Country 2 is bad...it's just, well, very slightly less awesome. I will admit that 2 seems to have better music, though. I don't care...all three Donkey Kong Country games are excellent, and I'll probably LP all of them eventually.

With respect to the gameplay...here, your two characters are Dixie, who appeared first in Donkey Kong Country 2, and Kiddy, who is apparently a monstrous toddler and Dixie's cousin. Dixie still has her Helicopter Spin from DKC2, and Kiddy is better at rolling. (He can even skip across water!) One of the first things you'll notice, though, is that the overworld is quite different from the style used in the first two Donkey Kong Country games. Here, you use vehicles provided by Funky (who shows up only on the main map) to move around the main map, and submaps have an enter/exit path. This also means that you can technically save your game every stage if you need to, since you can exit the submap any time and go back to a previous Wrinkly's Save Cave. When you complete some of the worlds, you get items that will allow Funky to build better vehicles, which in turn allows you to explore more of the main map. It's pretty cool. This game also has some new characters in the form of the Brothers Bear, who often have items to trade or sell. You can use some of them to obtain Banana Birds, cute little banana-shaped birds that seem to have no purpose other than game completion. Each world also has a bonus cave where you can press a sequence of buttons to obtain a Banana Bird. There are several of these on the main map.

As far as the stages themselves go, in this video, I played all the way through 1-1, 1-2, and 1-3: Lakeside Limbo, Doorstop Dash, and Tidal Trouble. Lakeside Limbo takes place on a series of docks above a lake. Being the first stage in the game, it's pretty easy, with some standard enemies to avoid and quite a few extra lives to pick up (as per the Donkey Kong Country tradition, I guess). Doorstop Dash is inside an old mill. It is MUCH longer than Lakeside Limbo, but still not terribly difficult. Basically, you pull a little metal bar down to open a door, then you run to get through the door before it closes. (I pity any beginner players who haven't learned to use the Y button properly yet...) Tidal Trouble is much like Lakeside Limbo, with two main differences: one, you spend a lot more time in the water in this one than you did in 1-1, and two, said water has a current pushing you back. There is also a bonus in here that requires Kiddy's water-skipping ability, one of the few times you actually need it. (I can only think of one other stage where the skipping is necessary.)

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, yes, my YouTube account is enabled for videos longer than 15 minutes, so I could technically have put Lake Orangatanga in just one video. I will still be shooting for the 15-minute mark, though, since longer videos take a very long time to upload and process, even while watching. I just don't need to worry anymore if one of them ends up being 16 minutes or something.

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