User Reviews (1 - 11 of 79)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Donkey Kong Country?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Not exactly. I was a die-hard fan of Donkey Kong Country when it came out for the SNES, and I had hoped that this game would be a re-release of the same game for new fans to enjoy.
It's not.
This is why, more or less, the grade is so low. I loved that old SNES game to death. I think I may have loved it a little TOO much, however, because I waited several days before actually entering my name to play it. Why? Because although I turned the game on the very first day, the absence of that wonderful image of Cranky with the phonograph made me realize I wasn't back in Kansas, so to speak.
Yes, you may get some kicks out of this game if you're a new gamer. Yes, you may find it amusing if you were a casual fan of the original, but for an orthadox Kong-aholic like me, I just don't reccomend it.

Donkey kong needs help!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: December 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I really do not like this game at all!I think the graphics are bad and the game is boring.If you are going to make #2 make sure you improve it!

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.

Not that Great!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 14
Date: June 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I rented this game from Blockbuster for a week and didn't play it after the second day. One of the best pars of the game is when you dance, but that's the best part. When you play the actual game, you die way to easily. i have beaten all the Zelda games within a week each, but i could not get past the first level, mainly because you don't see enemies until you hit them and die.

Donkey Kong...to go?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: June 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

OK, let me just start by saying that I have loved the Donkey Kong Country series and Donkey Kong 64 since they came out. Therefore, I was very disappointed when I began playing Donkey Kong Country for the GameBoy Advance! Why you might ask? Well, I'll tell you why.
1. You can't jump as far. In the SNES game, you could jump quite a ways, however, that has been reduced by a noticable amount.
2. In bonus levels, time goes faster. If you've played both, go to the same bonus level, and try to do the same thing that you did on the SNES on the GameBoy. You can't do it.
3. Life balloons rise faster. This combined with the jumping loss makes it much harder to get them.
4. Some of the world maps have changed their graphics! I know this is just being picky, but for a die-hard DKC fan, this makes a difference.
5. Some of the levels have moved up in the order that you play them in, and some have even been removed! The third area is the biggest example of this.

There are two main advantages, however, that do make this game different from the SNES game.
1. Once you complete the normal mode, there is a "Hero Mode" that becomes unlocked, in which you play Diddy only with no halfway barrels.
2. The ability to take one of the best SNES games along with you in the palm of your hand.

Overall, I give it a low three stars because it IS nice to take this game with me on trips, but with all the changes, it keeps nagging at me. If 2.5 stars were an option, it'd have that. But for now, I'll let it round up.

Improvement strongly needed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: June 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I was really glad that Donkey Kong, which helped popularize the Super Nintendo System back in 94' returned in handheld gameboy advance. I just bought the game today and for the past hour or so, I have been playing it. As you know, the games are exactly the same as the first released donkey kong in SNES system and nothing significant has changed. (Love those cute game transition...if you know what I mean) I have played all the past four donkey kongs, (I,II,III in SNES,and N64) but although the gameplay remained the same, this is the worst. I have the original gameboy advance, meaning no fancy reflective LCD screen which becomes a huge factor for the negative aspect of the game. As you can imagine, the setting is the jungle meaning the background is typically composed of dark colors such as green and brown. It is extremely arduous to see the two monkeys and I find myself struggling to beat the levels which I beat without any difficulty in SNES. Unless you have a Gameboy SP, I would strongly recommend that you have some kind of worm-light or other light accessory. Otherwise you would have to squint throughout the game just to see your little monkey. The poor graphics then lead to misgameplay and I've lost 3 lives trying to go through the second level which never happened before. Really it is a good game, but I would recommend passing this one unless you have advance SP. I hope that the DK company learns from this one and release a better one sometimes soon.

This game is not really difficult

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: February 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I found this game, ok... i guess. it wasnt really all that great. I mean, sure, at first it's fun but then I simply began to play for the pleasure of finding out what the next level was about. I was also playing the Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 and I played more often because it was more fun and then I beat the game. Once I beat the game I began to play Donkey Kong and it was SO easy. I beat it in a few days of 1 hour per day. If you want a game that is really difficult and will last quite a while, dont pick this game. It was extremely boring.

It's fun, but the graphics are dissapointing...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: June 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I like this game, but I am upset that the graphics arn't that sharp. It's hard to see the characters eyes and features 'cause the graphics are kinda blurry or something. I just wish the graphics were sharper and easier to see 'cause it was kinda hard to see where you are going.

Donkey Kong Country ~ Game Boy Advance

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Although it's not nearly as good as the SNES version, it's still a pretty cool game. The graphics are a little bit better than I expected. However, the gameplay is more complicated and some of the added sounds are annoying (like whenever Donkey Kong falls and makes an annoying scream). The music is okay. The enemies are a lot easier to bump into, even if you own a Game Boy Advance SP. Some of the levels are out of order and a couple of the bosses are more difficult to beat. The balloons float a lot faster and you can't jump as good as what you could on the SNES version. In my opinion, this game gets 3 1/4 stars. Still, it's a great game to carry around while traveling. It's fun, more challanging, and not bad for a hand held game.

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.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next 

Actions