Donkey Kong Land III Review (Game Boy, 1997)

Donkey Kong Land III was a pleasant surprise. The Game Boy was no stranger to scaled down ports. Since the 90s third party developers have been big on multiplatform releases. The Game Boy had an audience that was too big to ignore. The thing is the hardware lacked the extra oomph of 16-bit consoles. Because of this the developers had to significantly scale down their titles, and the results were often little disasters. Rare took a more interesting route however. They made original titles based on their games that better fit the hardware. Donkey Kong Land is the perfect example. While they contained most of the gameplay conventions of the SNES DK Country titles the levels were new, and smaller in scale. They really went the extra mile. Today we’re going to be reviewing part 3. Let’s get right to it.

The game, while based on most of the same conventions as Donkey Kong Country 3, has an original storyline. It’s not great, but at least it’s something. In this iteration there’s a contest to find the lost world. Donkey Kong and Diddy have already teamed up to locate it leaving Dixie behind. She sets out to beat them to the punch and brings along her infantile cousin Kiddy Kong for the ride. It’s definitely not going to win any awards as far as storytelling goes. The good news is the plot is basically hidden away. Donkey Kong Land III doesn’t saddle you with text or dialogue. This is a platformer, not an award winning film after all. The gameplay is what matters, and Donkey Kong Land III does pretty well in this category.

What we have here is a basic 2D platformer with much of its mechanics ripped straight from its SNES counterpart. That’s not a bad thing because Donkey Kong Country 3 was great. Here you play as Dixie Kong who has the innate ability to jump on foes heads, throw unattended barrels at foes and spin her hair to attack. You can even use her ponytail to fall slowly by holding the B button. Along for the ride if Kiddy, and his abilities don’t differ that much. He’s bigger, and clunkier though. Oh and he doesn’t have a ponytail so he can’t hover in the air. The big guy can however defeat enemies that swat Dixie Kong away. You can only play as one at a time. The secondary character (provided they’ve been released from a DK barrel) remains off-screen. You can however switch between the two with the select button.

The buddy system is kind of unique in that the secondary character acts as a life bar of sorts. If either Dixie or Kiddy are touched by an enemy or attacked they die. If you’ve released the secondary kong from a barrel then they take over at that point and you don’t lose a life. This has been a long running mechanic in the Donkey Kong Country/Land series up to this point and I’m glad they didn’t change it. Unfortunately Dixie is far more useful than Kiddy. Her hover ability takes much of the challenge out of platforming. Basically you’re going to want to keep her in play at all costs. Should you lose a character you can get them back simply by breaking a DK barrel. They’re not uncommon. Besides the animal buddies (we’ll get to those in a minute) that’s pretty much the only power-up you get here.

Unfortunately a few abilities from DKC3 are missing. For one you can’t throw your partner character. They’re off-screen at all times. Remember? You also can’t balance on rolling barrels. I couldn’t care less because I barely used this skill in the console iteration. What does return however are the animal friends. These guys are trapped in barrels with a corresponding icon to indicate which one is there. What’s cool is that most of them made the cut. Ellie the elephant returns and can still squirt water at foes (it no longer needs to be replenished). Additionally, Squawks the parrot lets you fly through specific areas while spitting out coconuts at foes, and Enguarde the swordfish lets you easily glide through underwater areas. These guys are used commonly enough that they’re useful, but no so frequent that it becomes repetitive.

The only one that I thought was lame compared to its console counterpart is Squitter the spider. Yes, he still shoots webs, and they can still be made into platforms. The execution is kind of off here though. After shooting a web you have to press the select button in order to transform it into a platform. No matter which type of Game Boy you’re playing on that’s really unintuitive to reach down with your left thumb to press it. To make up for this Donkey Kong Land III doesn’t require the same level of precision platforming with this mechanic as the third game on SNES did. Mostly it’s just there to reach optional secrets this time around. Still, it was what made him unique. To see his skill have this issue is disappointing, but it’s too be expected after Donkey Kong Land 2 suffered the same problem.

Most platformers struggled to run smoothly on the hardware. Donkey Kong Land III does not suffer from this problem. The platforming is surprisingly precise by Game Boy standards. The characters animate fluidly, and the sense of momentum is wonderful. I had little problem timing jumps. Controls are also highly responsive which makes the game a joy to play.. What’s more is the hit detection is surprisingly accurate. Rarely did I feel cheated by the gameplay engine. That’s saying a lot for a Game Boy title. All of these factors are an improvement from the original Donkey Kong Land and its first sequel. It clearly uses the same engine as part 2, but it’s obvious Rare fine tuned and polished it for this release. Environmental elements are even easier to see even without a backlit screen. What more could a guy ask for?

With that out of the way it must be said. Donkey Kong Land III simply isn’t as good as its SNES contemporary. The level design is noticeably scaled back with fewer moving parts. Enemies aren’t as common too. It feels like there’s too much empty space in some of the stages. Even Clapper the seal, as infuriating as the stages based around his spitting mechanic were, is gone. I came in with tempered expectations. This is the Game Boy, after all. Still, these new levels sometimes feel too similar. That’s not to say that Donkey Kong Land III isn’t a fun game. It is. The problem is that it falls short of feeling like a scaled back expansion. Instead it’s the most of the same mechanics, but in less interesting stages. That doesn’t stop it from being one of the best Game Boy games of all time though.

One of the most disappointing downgrades is the level select map. I know, this sounds petty. Right? Donkey Kong Country 3 had several sections of the map where you could move freely in all directions. There were even vehicles. This was where a good portion of the secrets were discovered. There’s no such mechanic in Donkey Kong Land III. Instead it’s just a stage select screen. That’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of secrets to be found here though. Bear coins are still a thing. These are distributed in a fairly liberal fashion in the stages. They’re barely hidden at all in most cases. This currency is used in stores ran by, you guessed it, bears. You can purchase hints, and even warp back to the main map if you want to return to previous areas.

There are also bonus coins that are only acquired from completing bonus challenges. These are unlocked by jumping (or falling) into special well hidden barrels. Your goal in these is simply to collect all of the star items in an area. It’s easy enough, and I found that the challenge never really ramps up in these. Finally we have the DK coins. Each stage has just one, and finding them all is the only way to access the hidden secret world at the end of the adventure. Unfortunately they’re acquired by overcoming the same exact obstacle in every single level. Basically there’s a kremling using it as a shield. You have to stand on top of it, and throw an iron barrel against a raised element in the environment to reflect it back. It’s not very inspired to be honest. At least these guys are fairly well hidden.

Donkey Kong Land III is easily one of the best looking Game Boy games. It uses the same digitized character art as earlier titles did, and pushes the hardware further than it should reasonably be able to go. This is big improvement from Donkey Kong Land 2 in visuals. That game had the pre-rendered characters but the backgrounds looked awful. That’s not the case here with some seriously pretty scenery in most of the stages. There is some slowdown, but even this has been mitigated. It only seems to happen when there are a lot of moving parts or enemies in a stage. I think the game looks beautiful even in black and white. The soundtrack is really nice too. Rare used the same compositions as the SNES title, but they’re scaled carefully to the hardware. Even though it’s just bleeps and blips the songs are all recognizable.