Donkey Kong Land III GAMEBOY

Donkey Kong Land III, released in 1997, closes out the Game Boy trilogy as the handheld sibling to Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble! on the SNES, once again built as original levels rather than a direct port. Dixie Kong and her younger cousin Kiddy Kong search for the missing Donkey and Diddy across a northern, wilderness-themed map that’s noticeably different in tone from the pirate and jungle settings of the first two Land games.

Kiddy Kong’s specific strength — throwing him underwater to reach otherwise-inaccessible areas, and his ability to survive being tossed into hazards Dixie can’t — opens up traversal puzzles distinct from the throw mechanics in the previous two Land games. The overworld map is also considerably larger and more open than its predecessors, closer in structure to the SNES original than the more linear layouts of Donkey Kong Land and Donkey Kong Land 2.

As the last of Rare’s Game Boy Donkey Kong games, it represents the series pushing the original monochrome Game Boy hardware about as far as the pre-rendered-sprite technique could go before the franchise moved on to the Game Boy Color and beyond.