Day 144, Game 144 - Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!

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Look, here is a quick peak behind the curtains. I wanted to play Donkey Kong 64 for this week of Donkey Kong, and if I was able to, tonight would have been the night. Unfortunately, I don't have the game, and since it is the only Donkey Kong game not to be on the Wii Virtual Console, I'm kind of out of luck. 

Some things are just out of my control. Fortunately, for whatever goes wrong while i'm not in control, I always have back up plans. Always. Tonight was no different at all. 

Besides, I kind of teased playing this game on last night's blog, so I guess I owed it to you all to follow up on that tease, right? Either way, it is what it is, and all you have to know is tonight, I played Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble.

Now, this isn't a bad game by any means. It is a formidable game, developed on the same engine as the last two. Only this time, it doesn't feature either one of our now familiar characters, instead using the sidekick from the previous game (Dixie) and a baby. Oddly enough, it plays almost identical to DKC2, which is a good thing for the game. The bad thing for this game, and why it isn't remembered fondly, is because people forgot it existed. They do now, and even worse, they did when it was released. 

You see, DKC3 suffered from the unfortunate timing mishap of being released for the Super Nintendo after  the new, hot, exciting console known as the Nintendo 64 was released. Sure, there were still people that picked up this game because they hadn't bought into the N64 yet, but the sales numbers are quite clear that they lost sales, most likely because it came out on a last-gen system. If N64 had been backwards compatible, this wouldn't have been a problem I'm sure, but we all are aware of the lack of interest in that feature that the big console companies have currently, and obviously back then as well.

The game is fun, don't get me wrong. It feels like the last two. For some reason, however, playing as these two characters just don't do it for me. They didn't back when I was kid, and they still don't tonight. I would much rather play as Donkey and Diddy Kong than what this game offers. Maybe they were trying to target an unreached market? I don't know if that's the reason for the decision, or if it was strictly to keep the franchise fresh, but either way, I had already invested in the previous characters, and wasn't ready to move on from them. 

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