Level Up: Donkey Kong Coutry 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble

When I was a kid, Donkey Kong Country blew me away. When I finally got back from being blown away, Donkey Kong Country 2 blew me away even farther. Then, a third game came out! I am ashamed to say though that I never owned a physical copy of that game (fun fact, me and 2 of my friends each owned 2 of the 3 games so we had two complete sets between the three of us. I would always just borrow it from one of them); today I’ll be playing it on the Wii Virtual console. Here’s Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble originally for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

The game starts off in a similar manner to the last one, but this time K. Rool (now under the moniker of Baron K. Roolenstein) has kidnapped both Donkey Kong and Diddy. He did this by building a giant robot, which introduces us to our theme for the game: the first one was a tropic island, then we had pirates, here, it’s mostly technology. There’s not as much done with it though, but that keeps it from clashing with the jungle setting.

Once Dixie arrives, she is asked to take care of the toddler Kiddy Kong, her sidekick for the game. Now, I want to talk about Kiddy Kong, as his character perfectly represents this game. Kiddy Kong is big and strong and reminds players of Donkey Kong. But much like this game in regards to the first Donkey Kong Country, he’s actually a more childish version. That’s where we run into a problem with this game; it seems too “child-friendly”.  The bad guys look less menacing (they’re big and puffy) and everything is a lot brighter. There is nothing wrong with a game aimed at a younger audience, but when it’s the third installment of a series, you invite the comparison, and too drastic a change becomes a negative aspect.

The fact that Kiddie is big actually adds a lot to the game play. Beyond just returning some old elements omitted in Donkey Kong Country 2, it makes things interesting with the piggy back system. This means that while playing as Dixie, you can throw Kiddie to kill tougher baddies and break through certain areas. Playing as Kiddie allows you to throw Dixie farther, just like in the previous game. So, which Kong you play as makes a more significant impact in this game.

Another BIG change is that you can now freely enter and exit worlds. Before you had to visit Funky Kong or beat a boss, but this time you can come and go as you please. This is because there is now a big amount of over world exploring to do (rare in 2D side-scrollers like this). Any time you’re in the water (which is a lot, since the map is laid out like a series of island), you have free control of movement. Instead of just going to the next destination, you can adventure around, see what hidden secrets you can find and unlock things to get the full 103%. As you play, you’ll be given vehicles to overcome certain obstacles, and the fun of exploring really kicks in.

Now, as fun as over world exploring is, you wouldn’t want to get to the next level if they weren’t fun to play. Again, the common complaint is that the game is more child-accessible, so it’s also easier. You don’t seem to have to master the skills and timing of the game as much (which is good for me, the button layout on a GameCube controller make this hard to play). However, the game makes up for it by having some really creative levels. My favorite parts of this game include climbing up a tree being cut in half, an underwater level where you need to keep feeding a fish that’ll eat you otherwise and one where you play as Squitter the spider while someone keeps shooting at you. These gimmicks are rarely repeated, plentiful and memorable. I applaud the creativity of this game.

I think the Donkey Kong Country series can be compared to a lot of movie trilogies; the first game was amazing, really set things up and made us want more. The second one gave us more and improved it. But the 3^rd one is weakest overall. (And like some movie trilogies, it even has the recent reboot). However, Donkey Kong Country 3 isn’t a bad game. At the time, people might have passed it up due to it being too easy or because the Nintendo 64 was already out, but it really shouldn’t have been. It’s easier, it’s more childish, the 103% ending is very anti-climactic, but it’s still a Donkey Kong Country game on the SNES and still has every good aspect that implies. Though this would be the last game to carry the “country” name for a while, Rare would make one more home console platforming DK game. And as a matter of fact, with the over world adventuring, it’s easy to see how this game led to it. But, that’s a review for later. I give Donkey Kong Country 3 for the Super Nintendo 9 levels out of 10.

Level Up: Wii Sports & Wii Play

How can I even introduce this game? You guys all know about the Wii and how it brought a new audience of casual gamers into the industry (whether you like it or not). With the simple “motion controls”, some of the games offered on it were pretty much accessible to everyone. And when people think of Wii games, Wii Sports will come to mind instantly; it is packaged with the system after all and as of 2009, it’s the best-selling game of all time. If you’re on the fence about getting this system and game, (or have been living under a rock) then listen up; here is Wii Sports for the Nintendo Wii.

Wii Sports is made up of 5 games: baseball, tennis, golf, boxing and bowling (everyone’s favorite). They all use motion controls which make these games very intuitive to play: swing the remote as if it were a racket for tennis, hold the Wii remote and nun-chuck in each hand and make punching motions for boxing, etc… Though there are slight difference (like holding A or B in baseball for different throws), you play most games in a similar manner to real life. After playing a match in each sport, you are rewarded points on your performance, and the more points you have, the more difficult the next challenge will be (except in Bowling or Golf naturally).

The real fun of this game is playing it with other people though. However, if you’re playing on your own, you don’t have to wear yourself out with full matches. There are mini-games designed to train you in some key aspects for each sport. This could mean practicing hitting tennis balls without missing, hitting baseballs in the right direction or dodging some balls to learn how to dodge punches. You’ll also be given a medal on how well you do, so try getting that platinum medal to be sure to beat your friends.

And if that’s not enough, there is still Wii Fitness mode. This mode you can play once a day made up of random selection of 3 of the mini-games. Once all three games are done, you will be given an age between 20 (the best possible score) and 80, all judged on your stamina, balance and speed.

So yeah, Wii Sports is a good package with the system. However, the real fun of it comes when you can play with someone else, but the Wii doesn’t come with a second controller. You can go out and buy one, or you can spend just 10$ more (usual price I’ve seen) and also get Wii play bundled with one. So, let me tell you about Wii Play now.

While Wii Sports is fun, it doesn’t demonstrate what Wii remote can really be used for. Wii Play has the goal to introduce players to most of the other things it can do. You’ll have to point at the screen, twist and tilt the remote around, move it back and forth and *gasp* even press buttons. These are all used in mini-games where you fish, play pool, shoot tanks and ride cows, among other things.

These games all do their jobs, however I found it all less fun than Wii Sports as a whole. Sure there’s more to do here, but nothing lasts long enough. Breaking this out at a family gathering or something is entertaining, as it allows everyone to have quick turns but the novelty will still wear off quickly. It feels kind of like Hogan’s Halley, in that, it’s just there to show what this gadget can do. Still, it gets the job done for something you’re likely to get with a remote you’re going to buy anyways, and it’s a decent and entertaining selection of mini-games.

So those are two Wii games you’re likely to just “get”. Wii sports is as fun as everyone makes it out to be, easily accessible, a good multiplayer experience and has enough to offer to make the single player entertaining. Wii play is more like a toy box: a bunch of short games you’ll get some fun out of, but nothing really to rave about, and it’s a good way to learn how to use the Wii remote properly in many ways (and again, worth buying if you want to get a second Wii remote). Both use the standard Wii/Mii look and the music is the usual elevator style stuff they use too, so no complaints there. If you’re asking me, you can’t go wrong playing either of these with a group of friends or family if you just want to have some quick fun. I give Wii Sport 9 and Wii Play 7 levels out 10.

Level Up: Mega Man 7

It seems that Capcom’s reputation right now has taken a significant turn for the worse. For those of you unaware, over a month ago, Street Fighter X Tekken was released. However, before the game came out, hackers revealed that there was data for more characters locked on the disk that Capcom wanted players to pay to unlock (along with other things it seemed Capcom lied about). Now two of the characters included in the locked away section were Pac-man and Mega man. Even worse, Capcom decided to be “funny” and make Mega man appear as a fat version of the North American cover art for the first game. Now I’m not the biggest Mega man fan, but it seemed like they were making fun of their own character. It all made me want to go back to when I first played Mega man and he seemed so cool. So for this edition of *Capcom Time*, I’ll be taking a look at Mega Man 7 (yes, I got into the series later than I should have) originally for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (but I’ll be playing it on the Mega man Anniversary collection).

Now at this point in the series, Mega man had everything that you associate with the usual Mega man game play (charge shot, sliding, Rush Power ups, etc...) and it had stayed that way for a few titles. So what would this game do to shake the series up? The really big thing would be Bass. There are characters that are remembered highly in the Mega man series, and Bass would be one of the top billed ones: he is Mega man’s evil duplicate after all. This is something that would heavily affect the series and its spin-offs afterwards, so yeah, it’s a pretty big deal.

Another change was the fact that you didn’t have all the robot masters to choose from at the start: you only had half. After beating those 4, you’d play a mini-stage, and then the 4 others would be selectable. The problem in this game is that the “rock-paper-scissors” pattern makes one big loop through all 8, which means it is impossible to have the weapon that Burst man is weak against when you first face him. In other words, this game clearly has a path the game makers wanted you to go through. I feel like this takes away from the non-linear feel the series normally has. Other than those elements, most of the rest of the changes will be chocked up to “better graphics”, so I’ll just get right to it.

The transition to 16-bit actually added a lot to the game. For example, this is the first Mega Man game where I clearly knew the weapon I was using was the correct one. Before, you had to watch the Robot master’s life meter and see which weapon did the most damage, but now there’s a signaling animation. Also, the advanced graphics allowed for new secrets where you need certain weapons to uncover areas, like using the flame wheel to burn away leaves in the foreground. This makes it fun to replay levels.

The music is a mixed bag though. On one hand, they use the advanced pallet to orchestrate some wonderful tracks inspiring a hope for the future. On the other hand, a lot of the tracks miss the “time for action” feel that made the music from Wily’s stage 1 in Mega man 2 so popular. Nothing’s going to hurt your ears, but I don’t feel the music adds much as it should. But the nail in the audio’s coffin is the sound effects. Jumping sounds more suited for a menu cursor, shooting could have sounded less like a pea shooter now and the dialog is just annoying bips at different pitches, just to name a few common examples. It’s all poorly chosen.

Having now played and beaten Mega man one through eight, I don’t regret starting with number 7: unlike a couple of the last NES titles, it feels like effort was put into stepping up the series. I am disappointed that the graphics weren’t more fondly remembered (though The Power Fighters did reuse the style to remake some robot masters), but I do get that there is the most nostalgia in the original 8-bit version. And yeah, despite the fact that this is the first Mega man game I played, I’m not completely uncritical of the game; the sound effects are bad and the design of the robot masters and levels lack a certain memorability to them. It’s not the strongest link in the series, but it is FAR from the weakest: it at least moved the series forward. I give Mega man 7 for the Super Nintendo 8.5 levels out of 10.

Level Up: Shadow the Hedgehog

*Level up music starts, around 5-7 seconds, static cuts in. Transitions to classical music*

Narrator voice: And now for another Bum Review, with Fester R. Bum. Today’s review: Shadow the Hedgehog.

Bum: OH MY GOD: This is the greatest video game I’ve ever played in my LIFE!
Shadow impression (rusty, like new Batman): I am the Ultimate (Normal Bum voice) SPOILERS!

There is this character called Shadow the Hedgehog. AND HE’S AN OKAY ONE TIME USE CHARACTER THAT DIED AT THEN OF SONIC ADVENTURE 2! I TOLD YOU THERE’D BE SPOILERS! But then, Shadow returned from the dead to be Sonic Heroes!

*panicking sounds* AH RUN, IT’S ZOMBIE SHADOW! He’s gonna eat you while whining about Maria! JUST KIDDING! Actually, the explanation for his return went more like this!

Kid voice: Why is shadow coming back when his story had such a satisfying end in Sonic Adventure 2?

Stuffy executive voice: Well, he’s a dark character with an interesting past and we wanted to explore that, so we

Kid voice: -interupting- And he’s a fan favorite and would sell well?

Stuffy executive: and he’s a fan favorite and would sell well.

Kid voice: that’s what I thought.

Stuffy executive: Also, we needed a 3^rd person on the dark team.

Kid voice: what about Eggman? I’d love to play as him again.

Stuffy executive: well he’s the bad guy at the end!

Kid voice: No he’s not!

Bum: SPOILERS!

So anyways, Sonic Heroes comes out and the fan response was very “MEH!” So one of the problems seemed to be that there were too many character to play as, so Sonic Team decided their next game would have only one. Let’s see: who would Sonic Team, makers of Sonic the Hedgehog, choose to star in their next Sonic video game? Oh! Shadow the Hedgehog! Right, of course!

Kid voice: So why is Shadow getting his own game?

Stuffy executive: Because he’s a *kid with him* fan favorite and will sell well.

Kid voice: Not even trying to hide it this time are you?

Stuffy executive: Not even a little.

Bum: And it worked! There was MAD HYPE about this game!

Chipmunk style voice: (over excited)Oh my god! Shadow the hedgehog is coming out! He’s gonna have his own game! He’s gonna be a bad ass and use guns and ride bikes! It’s going to be awesome! I’m gonna get an X-box, a GameCube and a PS2 and 3 TVs so I can play all the versions at once! I’m gonna wet myself! (improvise more)

Bum: -interupting- Fred from YouTube, what are you doing here?

*Beat, gun cock, fire*

Bum: So as I was saying, people were-

Chipmunk voice: Oh my god, I’m bleeding! It’s everywhere! (improvise) (another gunshot)

Bum: So anyways, everyone was Super hyped about the situation, and as we all know, getting REALLY excited for something NEEEVVVEEERRR leads to disappointments. This is why Titanic is the best movie ever, Duke Nukem is the best video game ever and Venom was the best movie Spider-man villain ever!

So the game starts off with ALIENS FROM OUT OF NOWHERE! Explanation: who cares? This series aint going to bad ass itself! So Shadow starts off and he’s like:

Shadow voice: I got to find the Chaos Emeralds

But then he runs into Sonic, and Sonic is all like:

Sonic: HEY! You should kill all the aliens!

Shadow: Ok.

But then Shadow meets up with the evil alien, and he’s all like:

Dark Eye (deep): Kill all the soldiers

Shadow: Ok

I’m starting to suspect our hero is bi-polar. I WAS BI-POLAR ONCE! Wait no, I was “Binoculars” once…

Oh, and beyond just being able to be bossed around by two people, this game was also advertised as letting you use guns. Cause I remember thinking to myself as I was bouncing off robots as Sonic and having fun “Man, this would be awesome if I wasn’t bouncing off robots as Sonic yet still kinda was some how.”

So then you’re running around in confusingly similar looking corridors killing aliens with weapons found on the ground while army guys are dying all around you.

Wait, sorry, that’s Halo.

So then you’re running around in confusingly similar looking corridors killing aliens with weapons found on the ground while army guys are dying all around you. (Thank god I caught that mistake, yet totally didn’t edit it out for no reason at all).

Oh wait! Something totally different from Halo: you get to ride in vehicles that have confusing and awkward controls to them!

Wait a minute… Shadow is bad tempered, easily manipulated, violent, unable to drive correctly and I have no idea what he’s thinking or talking about. He’s not bi-polar; he’s a drunk!

Shadow voice –drunkish-: I am Shadow the ultimate- *barfs*

Seriously people do not drink and drive.

So after you beat a level, depending on who you decided to listen to, you’ll go to one of 3 levels. And because that level is normally accessible in one of 3 ways, it doesn’t always make sense plot wize. But he’s a wandering drunk, so it doesn’t have to!

Gun agent voice *Serious*: Alright Shadow, you killed all the aliens in the city, but we now have reason to believe their next target will be our government headquarters

Shadow drunk: YEAH! I’m going to Hooters!

So then you finally get to the end and you learn that Shadow is a CLONE OF THE ORIGINAL! *dramatic music* oooorrr… He’s a ROBOT! *dramatic music* oooorrrr… he was made in a lab for evil purposes. Or good purposes! I am so confused. It’s almost like FACTS CHANGE and this game has several multiple endings… GENIUS! Make everyone’s theory right! Imagine if they decided to instead have a real ending, but you’d have to visit all the fake endings first: it would almost be like you’re making the players waste their time, especially since you’d have to start the game ALL over again. But –pft- that’d just be a mean way to get more game play time out of a bad game.

So in summerizamation: Shadow the Hedgehog is really fun cause he’s drunk and I’M DRUNK!

This is Fester R. Bum saying: CHANGE! YA GOT ANY CHANGE? AH COME ON HELP A GUY OUT!

-classical music- I just want to get myself a chaos emerald. Pft, those are thrown around so much they can’t be worth THAT much!

Level Up: Game & Watch Gallery 3

If you thought Nintendo’s first handheld games were on the game boy, then you would technically be wrong. Before the Game Boy- heck even before the NES- Nintendo had the Game and Watch series. You might know this name due to Mr. Game & Watch, a fighter in the last two Super Smash Bros. games, but I heard it first on a compilation game. Now, normally, compilation games like this would go in a “collection collection” review, but I have to talk about the history behind the series, so I have enough material here. Let’s look at Game & Watch Gallery 3 for the Game Boy Color.

The Game & Watch series is historic because it’s partially responsible for turning Nintendo from just another game maker into the giants they are today. The series itself consisted of several portable devices, each one with its own game displayed on an LCD screen. The device also had a clock and alarm built in, so we have a “Game” and a “Watch”. Though the games seem simple now, the fact that they were all portable and that most allowed you to adjust the difficulty made these quite noteworthy at the time. (Or, so my research says; I was two years old when they decided to stop production.) Several years later, in 1997, the Game Boy was going strong, and it seemed the Game & Watch series had been forgotten. However, the first Game & Watch Gallery then comes out. Not only did this offer four historic games on one cartridge, but also “modern” remakes of every game using Mario characters. This series would continue for 4 editions (dates and the number of the games change if you’re in Australia).

The first game on this collection is called Egg. The concept is pretty simple: objects will be sliding down, catch them before they hit the ground. The next one is Greenhouse, a game where pests will be after flowers and you have to get rid of them. A thing to note here is that this was originally a dual screen Game & Watch game (it’s like the DS’s Grandfather), and when playing the classic game, you can shift focus (though both screens are always visible). Next up is Turtle Bridge, where you have to try to get a package across a bridge of turtles (or birds in the modern version) that will go away randomly and let you fall if you stay on one too long. Just keep getting packages to the other side and don’t miss your step. The 4^th game is actually called “Mario Bros.”, but it has no relation to the arcade game or the Super Mario series. Basically, the two brothers work on an assembly line, and each one needs to be in his proper place when a piece needs to move from one conveyer belt to the next. If a part falls, you get a strike. And lastly, there’s Donkey Kong Jr. It’s simpler than the NES game that carries the same name, but follows the same concept: avoid enemies and get Jr. to save his dad (this version has you navigating the level 4 times to free him once though).

Now, as I’ve already said, this game has both the classic and a “modern” version of each game. Not only does the modern version look better, sound better and run smoother, but there are also extra rules. For example: in modern Mario Bros, Bowser will occasionally reverse the conveyer belts.

But what incentive do you have to play the classic versions if the modern ones are all around better? Well, getting a certain amount of points on each game and each difficulty get you stars. The more stars you have, the more stuff you unlock, which include Game & Watch game info, music and more games. Yeah, Game & Watch Gallery 3 actually has 11 games total, but 6 need to be unlocked and they don’t have modern version of them. Still, it’s worth it.

I am really glad games like this exist: as the Game Overthinker once mused in his “Open the Vault” episode, it allows new gamers to easily experience older games important to the history of the industry, and I think these games are very important to remember. Despite that, they’re now so simple, it makes Game & Watch Gallery 3 into more of a Minigame collection by today’s standards, but a very good one! This edition in the series had almost double the amount of games than the previous installment and the modern versions are incredibly well made bringing a new level of fun to some already great games. Though I sometimes found star collecting to be tedious, it actually made me want to keep playing. I give Game & Watch Gallery 3 for the Game Boy Color 9 levels out of 10.

Level Up: Inspector Gadget

If you’re like me, you watched Inspector Gadget growing up: a hilarious cartoon series produced from 1983 to 1986,that ran in syndication into the 90’s. And guess what? There’s a video game based on it. It’s a side-scrolling platformer on the Super Nintendo Published by Hudson Soft and Developped by AIM. And it’s actually good… What are you still doing listening to me instead of tracking down this game right now? What else do I need to say: Inspector Gadget, Super Nintendo, platforming... If that knowledge alone hasn’t convinced you to get this game, I don’t know what else I can say… Well I guess you need a little more convincing. Here’s Inspector Gadget for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

The plot is simple, but being an Inspector Gadget fan, I have things I need to talk about. The game starts with Inspector Gadget’s niece, Penny, being kidnapped by the M.A.D. agents of Gadget’s arch enemy Dr. Claw. This is done in an effort to drag out the Inspector to various locations hoping to finally get rid of him once and for all. Throughout the game, police Chief Quimby will point our hero in the direction of the next local/level. (He even gets blown up each time, like on the show!) Adventure ensues.

The first thing I want to point out is that all these events never happened on the show. However, a bit of research tells me that all the locations were used (thought the similarities here are only superficial). The reason this particular plot is such a big deal though, is because, if you watched the show, you’d know Inspector Gadget was never really the hero, and it was always Penny that secretly did all the work. So to have a game that actually allows Gadget to use his abilities to be the hero is awesome.

Another thing to note is that the plot finishes with a showdown between Gadget and Dr. Claw face to face (no spoiler alarm, I think that’s pretty obvious). The thing about this is that we NEVER saw Dr. Claw’s face. For those of you who actually play this game and get to the last fight, you’re rewarded with knowing one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of 80’s cartoons. Sure it’s only a partial view, the game isn’t considered canon and the internet allows you to find other versions of his “official” face a lot easier, but I can imagine that for an Inspector Gadget fan in 1993, this would have blown his mind.

It might not surprise you to learn that in this game you get to use a lot of gadgets. There are too many for me to list one by one, but they’re all useful in ways to hurt the bad guys, stop you from dying or just get farther in the game. However, you’ll have to bust some bricks and find the icon of some of the gadgets to use them. The good part about this is that it allows you to upgrade them: find more of that icon and the gadget gets more “powerful”. These gadgets use what I call “hat points”, which you will also find by breaking blocks. I feel I also need to mention that physical attacks use don’t need to be selected or use any hat points but can still be upgraded to the point of reaching all across the screen.

As for how this game handles, it’s a little stiff. Inspect Gadget doesn’t seem to move or jump as quickly as he should. However, this isn’t to the point of Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts. Speaking of that game, Inspector Gadget does have the same life system: if he gets hit, he’s in his underwear and one more hit means a life lost. Again, this isn’t very dignified for an inspector, but he was always about the comedy. But his hat always stays on, giving strength to my theory that Gadget’s hat is attached to his skull.

So that’s the Inspector Gadget video game, and it’s not perfect; the game engine feels a little stiff (not enough to ruin the game though) and there are a lot of moments of Engrish. The biggest problem however is its lack of memorability. Most of the game play mechanics have been seen before, and the graphics and music are only alright. It doesn’t do anything really new or “great”… Except be a good Inspector Gadget game, and I think that warrants its existence. I feel like the makers of the game played it relatively safe, but concentrated on quality here. I give Inspector Gadget for the Super Nintendo 8.5 levels out of 10.