Day 79 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble

Downloaded Donkey Kong Country 3 for Wii U as I hadn't played it in years. Every time I found an actual SNES copy it was being sold in a reproduction box without CLEARLY stating so, and the seller thinking they can charge above and beyond for it. Sadly for collectors this is becoming a huge problem as it's not difficult to produce a box closely resembling the original.

In DKC3 both Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong have been captured by the Kremlins, so Dixie must take the lead and save our beloved monkeys before it's too late. Luckily she has her cousin, Kiddy Kong, to help her out with his ridiculous strength and adorable blue onesie.

The DKC series always had superb artwork, but what makes DKC3 so special is the beautifully designed hub-world. A tranquil paradise you can navigate by swimming, renting a motor boat, or even a hovercraft! You also had to be on the lookout for hidden areas containing secret items and levels, as there's no shortage of collectables in DKC3!

I'm not usually one for games where you have to spend a vast amount of time collecting items, especially with recent games only offering you an 'achievement' as reward, but DKC3 has a ton of gear for you to uncover and it's all worth it. There's banana birds to pass on to Wrinkly Kong to keep her company and unlock a hidden ending to the game, a variety of coins used to exchange for items and unlock new areas, and of course, there's bananas. ^_^

DKC3 may be almost 20 years old (wow), but it's just as fun now as it was then, and you can't complain at a wonderfully designed adventure costing a little over £5. 

Day 67 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: SNES Game Fest

Ugh, the whole afternoon has been a blur of Irn-Bru, Wotsits and Super Nintendo games. We decided to play the SNES since Snezzy decided to come back to life, starting with Goof Troop.

Goof Troop is a Capcom/Disney title which we've never gotten around to finishing it before. It's similar to A Link to the Past with the added bonus of co-op multiplayer. Surprisingly there's only 5 levels or so and you can have the whole thing finished in under 2 hours, but like many of the Capcom/Disney games the animation's wonderful, and it's nice if you just want something quick to play through.

We then decided to go through some of the Super Famicom games we picked up at NERG last year. One of them turned out to be a mahjong game, so that's going straight to the charity shop, but then we tried a fighting game called Ranma 1/2...

It's based on an anime that I've never watched so I didn't have a clue who I was playing as or fighting against. There was Ranma who is apparently male and female, some other guy who transforms into a pig, a Panda, and another fellow with candles on his head. The animation was fun but it was essentially a Street Fighter clone, good for a giggle.

Super Bomberman provided some more co-op related mayhem, just for the record I'm crap at Bomberman, so we didn't get very far. Thankfully someone and sellotaped a piece of paper to the cartridge with a level code on, so we jumped to world 4-7... and died almost instantly. (; _ ;)

Finally some Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong's Quest to round off the day. I forgot how amazing the soundtrack to this game is, and while the 'DKC Returns' series on Wii/Wii U is great, I prefer the originals as the level design is amazing and Kremlins make the perfect enemies.

Now I'm going to go see if I can find something more nutritious than Irn-Bru and cheese flavoured crisps ... where oh where did I put those vouchers for Domino's Pizza???