Donkey Kong Country

"A donkey isn't a monkey, quit screwing with my head!"

One of the best things about the GBA is that you can always expect great titles that will keep your cartridge slot occupied for countless hours on end. There's something special about playing a game that captured the hearts of countless gamers worldwide and made the name Rare a common term in the world of 16 bit graphics, you sometimes get the feeling that it's 1994 all over again. We as a whole should be glad we got to see this game on the GBA, now that Microsoft and Rare are together the chances of seeing re makes or ports of old rare games might not be as possible as once thought, don't pass up a great game.

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Donkey Kong Country is of course a port of the classic Super Nintendo game that Rare made back in 1994. Most people either loved the game or never paid too much attention to the series, but one thing is for sure, the game is fun as it is beautiful. The game play is much like any other platform titles in the 16bit genre, collect items, jump on bad guys, jump on ledges, seems pretty basic to most people but if done incorrectly you can have awful results, DKC tends to pull off the basic physics of a the genre, and it does it well. There's lot's of items to collect in the level, but are not necessary to proceed further in the game. You will find yourself collecting bananas's which seem to be the key to the very way of life to the Kong family, something has gone awry and their banana stash has been stolen! On your adventure you will find different ways of collecting these golden yellow potassium filled treats, they are scattered through out the levels and for the most part can be collected with little effort, the real trick to the levels is looking for those hard to reach bananas's and secret spots. There are two characters in the game, Diddy Kong and Donkey Kong, you can switch between the two, each have there uses, once one gets hit, the other is left alone, so you sort of have two tries before you die. You will also find various items in the game that will be of much help to you, ropes which you can use to swing over gaps, barrels, lot's of barrels, you can pick these up and throw them at your opponents and knock them out that way, or you can pound them into the ground by jumping on them, although certain enemies can only be taken out with the help of your friends. You will find various animals that will help you out through the game, they can be used to defeat certain enemies or they will be used for mini games that grant you extra lives, which you gain by either grabbing a balloon that has either Diddy or Donkey's face on it, or you can just collect 100 bananas. The game itself will please anyone who likes games like Mario, Sonic The Hedgehog, or any games similar to that.

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When the game was first designed it was very unique for one reason, it used actual 3D models of the characters, these in turn made the game stand out on the SNES. DKC manages to keep a nice frame rate with great character models with very little slowdown with a lot of enemies on screen. The backgrounds are equally impressive, with a great attention to detail, especially in the levels where it rains and lightnings, makes for some pretty nice levels. The characters themselves are very well animated and haven't lost too much detail moving to the GBAs small screen. The sound in the game is fun to listen to but may get old fast, fortunately there is a nice variety of music that plays through the different levels of the game, so you won't find yourself getting annoyed with the music. The sound effects are just as good as in the original, very crisp and clean sounding without being over bearing. Although in some parts of the game I had to adjust my sound because it seemed a little too loud.

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The game is full of great replay thanks to the newly added modes, there are plenty of co-op abilities, the best one being the 2 Player mode, you and a friend can play the game together just as you would have on the SNES game. So you can either play the game alone, or with a friend, either way you're going to have a blast. They also added a fairly fun rythym game, it's pretty fun, it's a lot like DDR or Parappa, if they were released for the SNES, great fun and you will always find yourself coming back for more. All in all the game is great and any fan of 16bit gaming will surely pick this up, for the rest of you, go get it what are you waiting for? You got your GBA to play good games, and this is definately one of them, have fun and take yourself back to a time when Rare and Nintendo were best friends.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/12/03, Updated 06/12/03