''Donkey Kong Land III'' is a 1997 platform game in the '' Donkey Kong'' series for the Game Boy, later being ported to the

Game Boy Color The (commonly abbreviated as GBC) is a handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on October 21, 1998 and to international markets that November. It is the successor to the Game Boy and is part of the Game ...

in Japan under the name . It was developed by Rare and published by

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

. Like its predecessors, ''Donkey Kong Land III'' served as the portable version of and follow-up to its SNES counterpart, in this case '' Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!'', was enhanced for the Super Game Boy, and was packaged with a "banana yellow" cartridge.

Gameplay

Plot

A contest has begun with big prizes for the first person who discovers the Lost World. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong have already left to find it, leaving a disgruntled

Dixie Kong is a series of video games published by Nintendo since 1981 and created by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Donkey Kong and Mario have both had the roles of protagonist and antagonist in the series. Other characters have included other Kongs, t ...

behind. Deciding to prove herself every bit as capable as them, Dixie partners up with her toddler cousin

Kiddy Kong Kidderminster is a large market and historic minster town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, south-west of Birmingham and north of Worcester. Located north of the River Stour and east of the River Severn, in the 2011 census, it had ...

. Baron K. Roolenstein and the

Kremling Krew is a series of video games published by Nintendo since 1981 and created by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Donkey Kong and Mario have both had the roles of protagonist and antagonist in the series. Other characters have included other Kongs, t ...

are also searching high and low for the fabled land. The level archetypes are the same as in ''Donkey Kong Country 3'', which takes place in the "Northern Kremisphere". While the levels have the same environments and the ''Donkey Kong Country 3'' bosses return, the worlds and stage layouts are all unique. Wrinkly Kong is the only non-playable Kong family member to make an appearance. A character simply titled Bear or "Brother Bear" gives Dixie Kong and Kiddy Kong hints and can teleport them to another world as well as hosting a card mini-game. He bears a resemblance to Bazaar Bear from ''Donkey Kong Country 3''. The Animal Buddies Ellie the Elephant, Enguarde the Swordfish, Squawks the Parrot, and Squitter the Spider all return. ''Donkey Kong Land III'' also marks the only time in a Rare ''Donkey Kong'' game where Donkey Kong does not actually appear.

Game Boy Color update

On 28 January 2000, over two years after the game's North American and European releases, Nintendo released an updated

version of the game in Japan. Titled ''Donkey Kong GB: Dinky Kong & Dixie Kong'', it was not released outside of Japan. This version is the same as the Game Boy version, but lacks some animations and dialogues. This was also the version released on the Japanese

3DS Virtual Console A virtual console (VC) – also known as a virtual terminal (VT) – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD, illumos, Unix ...

in 2014.

Reception

''Donkey Kong Land III'' received a score of 81.25% at

GameRankings GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...

based on four reviews. Nintendojo praised the game and awarded it 8.5 out of 10, citing the "brilliantly designed" levels and "impressive" visuals. Nintendo Life gave the Virtual Console re-release 9 out of 10.

References

External links

*
Official Nintendo 3DS eshop minisite
*

a
NinDB
{{DEFAULTSORT:Donkey Kong Land Iii 1997 video games Donkey Kong platform games Game Boy Color games Game Boy games Platform games Rare (company) games Video game sequels Video games featuring female protagonists Video games scored by Eveline Fischer Novakovic Virtual Console games Virtual Console games for Nintendo 3DS Video games developed in the United Kingdom Single-player video games