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BUY THIS GAME

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: June 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I was a little skeptical having played Donkey Kong Country for SNES, but I have to tell you that Rare held up to its name. The mini games and multiplayer add that Gameboy feel, while the game itself is almost a direct copy of the original. The graphics aren't as sharp, but the ability to play DKC on the go is awesome, and now you can save in the middle of a level. If you're tired of Mario, DKC won't let you down.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE ANGER MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is a lot of fun, the graphics are very nice, and the music is okay. Plus it has two new minigames which are pretty good. But some of the levels, especially the later ones, are very very very very very... (3 hours later) ...very very very very hard. I remember I was stuck, on one infamous occasion, on the level "Millstone Mayhem" (they like to alliterate) and it was so difficult that I went so far as to renounce all monkeys before clearing it. It's a lot easier for me now than it was, though. Oh, and after defeating Normal Mode and getting about ninety percent of it completed (I think), you can unlock Hero Mode, where you just play as Diddy Kong. I liked this because I got to play as one of my very favorite Kongs, but I also disliked it because there aren't any Save Barrels and Diddy has all the disadvantages.
Overall, this game is a lot of fun, and it's pretty much worth buying, unless you get easily frustrated at harder levels. Then you might want to think about it.

very close to the original

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: August 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

DKC for GBA is the translation of the original from the SNES, with some add-ons.

The game is exactly as the original in the gameplay factor, also the graphics are very close (this game is recommended for GBA SP users, because for the regular GBA, is very hard to watch the details), in the fun factor, you have the same levels of the original, plus two mini-games (the Candy Kong dance studio (á la Dance Dance revolution) and the Funky's fishing zone (very addictive))...

The only flaw to be perfect, are the sound effects... the music is almost as good as the original (this is because the GBA audio limitations) but the SFX are very far from the super NES' DKC, you have only some SFX iddentical to this...

Anyway, if you don't have this game in any of it's flavors (SNES, GB Color), this is a very good choice to begin with.

An all-time classic, unfortunately, is now way too easy.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: October 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When it was first released for the Super NES in 1994, "Donkey Kong Country" set the world on fire. Astonshing ACM graphics, stereo sound, awesome music, and just plain FUN gameplay quickly made it one of the best-selling platform action games of all time. It later spawned two sequels, plus a 3-D version for the Nintendo 64, and each sequel got progressively better as the years went by.

Now we have the convenient travel size version of the adventures of Donkey and Diddy. We have all the same unique levels, heroic Kongs, cute animal buddies, evil Kremlings, and other all-too-familiar enemy creatures. The graphics are not nearly as detailed as they are on the SNES version, but the backgrounds are still beautiful and the landscape of the levels still shows a lot of the original drawing (especially the levels in "Gorilla Glacier"); and the sound is not nearly as crisp, but players can still tell how catchy the tunes are and how well they fit each scenario. (Who could forget the all-time classic jungle music, or bonus area music?)

Of course, this is all expected when you make a portable version of one of the greatest games ever. Unfortunately, there is a major flaw with this portable game: even with all the original levels, the game is now way too easy. Much, much, much easier than the original game ever was.

One of the silliest new features added to this game is that when you save your game, you save the number of lives you have as well. This is especially dumb when you take in the new Mini-game features: six difficulty levels each of a fishing game and a dancing game. If you've played "Dance Dance Revolution" before, you should be able to win 3 extra lives every time you play any level on the dancing game; if not, keep trying, there are no rhythms harder than quarter notes. Fishing is just dropping a hook into the sea and trying to catch the right types of fish; you don't even have to try to reel in the fish since the game automatically does it for you. The only level on the fishing game that I didn't beat on my first try was the "Gorilla Glacier" one, where you had to catch 50 jellyfish in the allotted time.

Also, you are allowed to call Funky's Flights anywhere you want, so you can go back and play easy levels to get tons of extra lives there. This works even if you haven't found Funky in the hardest area you reached, so you basically go and get tons of extra lives any time you want even if the mini-games bore you to tears.

Another easy way to repeatedly get extra lives is with Golden Animal tokens; every time you get three, you can enter a bonus area where you get another life for every 100 little tokens you collect (my record: 1138 in the Expresso one). You could do this as often as you wanted in the original too, but this game saves your tokens, so you often start the game with two of one type of token, and then you may end up going to the corresponding bonus area without even planning on it.

But no matter how you play, you'll find it really easy to keep winning lives over and over again. You'll be up to 99 lives before you know it. Although the game does give you a Hero Mode once you've beaten it--where you can only play as Diddy and have no checkpoints in the levels--you still can save your progress with a huge number of lives, so any difficulty added to the levels quickly gets canceled out. (Oh, and one more really stupid addition is that if you've beaten a level, you can do the START+SELECT trick to escape from the level when you die, EVEN IF THE DEATH ANIMATION AND MUSIC HAS ALREADY STARTED, and you still won't lose a life! It's a really cheap way to save yourself from losing lives when you don't have to.)

But apart from being able to survive infinitely, there is an even bigger problem regarding difficulty; the difficulty of finding all the secrets has been significantly diminished as well. One of the best features of the original game was that there were tons of bonus areas full of great items. The easiest ones to find were hidden in doors that had to be broken with a barrel, but the more secretive ones were in barrels that were hidden off the screen, and often players had to risk jumping into oblivion in hopes of finding a hidden bonus area. The portable game has flattened and shrunk the screen down to an uncomfortable size, and now the "hidden" bonus barrels are often in plain view! There's no more fun in trying to find the "hidden" bonus areas, because now, you can see them all! And even if you don't see the *barrel* itself, you often can still see a trail of bananas leading to the barrel, and even these were carefully hidden from view in the original as well.

"Donkey Kong Country" will always be one of the most brilliant games ever made. I haven't stopped playing the original game since it first came out. But I felt like putting down the travel-size version in a month, simply because it had so much fun and challenge taken away that it really didn't do justice to the SNES version. The game gets 3 stars for remaining faithful to the original with all the same graphics, music, characters, and levels; in fact, this is where the most of the fun in this GBA version comes from. If Rare hadn't at least done this, I would easily have given the game 2 stars, or possibly even 1.

The benchmark SNES classic goes portable!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The big punch for the SNES back in 1994, "Donkey Kong Country" was the evolution of platform gaming, with graphics unlike anything the world has ever seen. It achieved two things: It revived perhaps the oldest video game franchise (Donkey Kong), and it gave Nintendo another mascot to market besides Mario (who never dulled, mind you). The GBA port was inevitable, and could not have been more welcome in my collection.

Donkey Kong and his spry little sidekick Diddy Kong must reclaim their stolen banana hoard from the reptilian swine who took it. The story is simple enough, but the adventure is anything but. There are massive levels with varying degrees of difficulty, and sometimes the game is frustratingly hard. But let's start with the graphics. They are excellent, even by today's standards. The fluid animation and detailed environments are a sight to behold, and they translate pretty well on the small screen. The only drawback is that the characters look overly pixilated at times, and it is sometimes hard to make out certain objects like jump tires and ropes (especially in the darker levels) due to the small size of the screen and the massive amount of detail contained within. The music is as we remember it, though slightly altered in parts to accommodate the GBA's monophonic speaker.

The one complaint I had with the original SNES version is that it was too easy at times. Certain elements have been changed to make the GBA port more difficult, such as adding extra enemies or changing the boss battles slightly (the Giant Wasp boss in particular). It makes the game more rewarding, and sometimes frustrating. On the plus side, all the bonuses are still intact, so achieving 100% completion is still an incentive to play over again.

The extras are not a big deal, and definitely don't make it worth the price of admission alone. There are two "mini-games", a fishing game and a dance game. The fishing game, hosted by Funky Kong, requires you to catch as many different colored fish within a specific timeframe. It is pretty dull. The dance game, as hosted by Candy Kong, might excite fans of "Britney's Dance Beat", but it's nothing more than a reflex test where you are giving buttons to push and they move a character on the screen. There is also a bland picture stills gallery (you add pictures by collecting camera icons scattered throughout the game), which is something you are unlikely to get excited about. However, the one extra I do like is the "save anywhere" feature, which is handy at every turn of the game.

The GBA port of DKC should satisfy any gamer, since the it perfectly balances gameplay with ample eye-candy graphics. The tweaks made to make the game more challenging are both a curse and a blessing, and the extras are pitiful, but the game itself makes it more than worth getting.

Still as fun as it was in 1994

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Donkey Kong Country was a revolutionary game on the SNES. In 1994 it was one of the first games to use 3-D characters and 3-D backgrounds in an environment. This single aspect alone about Donkey Kong still amazes some gamers who played it back in 1994. Unfortunately, in it's re-release it isn't nearly as good as it was nearly ten years ago.

While the graphics were revolutionary then, they're not now. The 3-D graphics are amazing on the GBA without a doubt, but they look a lot better on the SNES. Some areas of the game look a little grainy and others don't stand out. Plus the GBA has a bit of a pixel problem so some things look blurry. That's not the worst part about the graphics. If you own a GBA SP there will be moments where you'll need to turn off the backlight because it'll simply be too bright to make out some things. Other times there's too little light. So while they were good on the SNES on the GBA they don't look nearly as visually striking since they're a little grainy and blurry now.

The gameplay of DKC is great! Very similar to the classic Mario games. You can jump on enemies and they die just like in Mario. You can hurl barrels at enemies and bounce off tires. What was really great about the game were the vast amount of secrets! So many hidden bonus rooms and such that you had to find in this game.

What's also nice is how we can come to enjoy our animal buddies and the kong family. Finding your animals buddies is fun. You find them in crates and then you can ride them around. Each animal can do something different, others can be useless.

DKC doesn't really have any sort of "Power Up" item or anything like that. Instead you play as Donkey Kong and Diddy. When one falls the other takes his place. Each as their own strength and weakness and with no surprise it's the opposite of each other. Diddy is fast but weak and Donkey is strong but slow. You can only gain your ally by finding him in a barrel.

What's baffling about the gameplay is how the screen is. Parts at the bottom seem cut off and it really is a con if you're looking to land on a platform below but you can't see it. Some deaths I could've avoided if I just knew where the platform I was supposed to land on was.

The story of this game is not very complex or anything. King K. Rool has stolen DK's Bananas and has left a trail of them. You're job is to find those bananas and defeat King. K. Rool. What I find odd is that the banana trail represents the coins you gather in Mario. Once you reach 100 bananas you gain an extra life.

Now for the extras that Nintendo has thrown in for us. For starters you can do more in the game by collecting photos to add to your findings, and play mini games with Candy Kong and Funky Kong, which results in obtaining more pictures. Candy Kong has a dancing Mini-game and Funky Kong has a fishing Mini-game which really are nothing special and you'll quickly grow tired of them. Also, once you complete a level you can do it again in a time trial to get a good time and later break your record.

Then there's when you complete at least 90 percent of the game. Do this and you'll be able to play a much harder version of the game in which there are no barrels to get a partner from, you're only one character. These extras aren't anything special to me.

If you played the original SNES version of this game you'll love it! Even if you played the SNES version to death and did EVERYTHING you'll still love it. If you're new to DKC then its basically a love/hate thing. Be warned those who owned the SNES version, the difficulty level of this game has been brought down a lot and it's very simple. Still, it's worth owning. The only question I have are when is DKC2 being re-released?

SOO much fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I LOVE DKC!
I am a 41 yr old Mom with a 10 yr old son. I asked for this for my Birthday. My 10 yr old and I are competing on who can finish first.
We have a blast.
Great graphics, tons of fun for such a little gameboy!

Still my favourite game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Donkey Kong Country is the number one videogame of all time, as far as I'm concerned. I'm hardly what you'd call a videogame connoisseur, but my brother (who is) agrees that this game is a classic. The music is excellent, too!

An excellent port, with some wonderful additions

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I always loved the original SNES version of Donkey Kong Country. It was one of the two games I got when I first got my SNES. There were a few things about the SNES version that could have been better (the fact that you must beat all the levels leading up to a save point and not being able to save just anywhere was one point). The GBA version fixes that small "problem". You can now save anywhere on the select level screen. In addition to that, you have the two mini-games that were added just for the GBA version. The "Funky Kong Fishing" game is really fun. You try to get as many fish as possible within a set period of time. The "Candy Kong Dance" game is alright, but not fabulous. After you get the timing down, it's a breeze. You can either play these games by themselves, or in the actual game. The addition of the picture gallery is really cool. As you go through the levels you may acquire cameras that unlock pictures in your gallery. The levels are perfect copies of the ones on the SNES, so you don't have to worry about learning new levels if you've played the original.

Overall...if you are at all a fan of platform games, or if you liked the original and want to play on the road, this is a must buy!

Exactly like the original with Extras!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Just bought this game today... and it is great. If you have played the original on SNES nothing has changed. The sound effects is great and so is the game play. If you have never played this game before... well this game is about Donkey kong and Diddy kong out to get their stolen bananas back. It isn't lame, also if they made it easier for you to live then this game would be too easy.

You can play as either Donkey or Diddy. If you play Donkey, Diddy follows closely behind you. If you want to play as Diddy, there is a button so you can alternate characters. So, actually you can die once and still be able to play as the second character without having to start over again. There is also a halfway point so that you don't start from the beginning of a game. There are ballons you can find throughout the game (which are lives), bananas, tokens, and animals. If you collect 100 bananas (bananas are everywhere!) you get a life. There are special tokens around which get you secret stuff. Ah! the animals, there are 4 animals, a frog (jumping), ostrich (a little running and flying?), swordfish (swimming), and a rhino (running). You can get these animals only if that level requires it (they'll be waiting inside special boxes for you).

The extras include: dancing game with Candy kong, fishing with Funky, and possibly more (don't want to spoil also haven't played extras yet).

Overall, this is a great classic game. One of the best games i've ever played on NSES when it first came out. Also, since there is a new Gameboy player that attaches onto a Gamecube (not the link, an actual piece that connects to the base of a gamecube), you can play it on the big screens again. Actually, you can play any gameboy game (regardless if it is color or not) on a gamecube with the gameboy player base piece. Well, I hope this helped. Thank you for reading and good luck!

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