Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Base Breaker: Kiddy Kong's definitely not a popular Kong thanks to being viewed as an unnecessary Replacement Scrappy for DK, but he has a surprisingly large fanbase who like him due to finding him cute, hilarious, or simply appreciating the fact that he's a badass baby character who doesn't bog down the gameplay.
  • Breather Boss: Despite being the apparent boss of the Kremlings this go-around, KAOS is surprisingly easy. His attacks take no effort to dodge, and hitting him is more annoying than truly hard. This is intentional for the final battle since he's meant to be an easy Red Herring for K. Rool, but his "tougher" proper fight as the boss of Mekanos is still far easier than a lot of the bosses before and after him.
    • Croctopus in the GBA rerelease is a surprisingly simple boss sandwiched between a battalion of Those Few Bosses. It's a straight forward fight with no gimmicks, and an attack pattern that is predictable and easy to counter.
  • Broken Base: Is the original SNES soundtrack (by Eveline Fischer) or the re-done Gameboy Advance soundtrack (by David Wise) superior?
    • Does the sheer magnitude of Gimmick Levels bog the overall experience down or not?
  • Demonic Spiders: Fucking Kopters. These flying propeller-blade wielding Kremlings are invincible, move quickly and at odd angles, and have a bad habit of ambushing you from off-screen. They show up a lot in later levels, and will be the absolute bane of your existence.
    • Koindozers may appear to merely be pink Palette Swaps of the harmless Koin enemies, but they're fast, aggressive as all hell, and will bounce you to your death unless you jump directly on top of them and use their shields/trash can lids(?) as makeshift platforms.
  • Goddamned Boss: The challenge when fighting KAOS in Mekanos isn't surviving his attacks. It's trying not to lose your patience as you constantly fall off his blades when you try to use them as platforms to hit him from.
  • Most Annoying Sound: If you don't find it funny, Kiddy's "lose a life" scream is annoying no matter if it's his "AAAAAAAAGH!" from the SNES original or his "NYAAAAAAAHAHAAAAA!" from the GBA port.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Kiddy Kong caught a lot of flack for taking Donkey Kong's role as the "bulky, tough Kong" instead of letting DK himself be playable. This wouldn't be so bad if this was DK's first time getting kidnapped, but it's not. It's his second. In a trilogy named after him.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: Part of the song "Nuts and Bolts", which is played in the factory levels, sounds similar to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".
    • The GBA version of "Rockface Rumble" bears a resemblance to "Sweet Home Alabama".
  • That One Boss: Quite a few of them.
    • Arich is a nasty Wake Up Call Boss following the incredibly easy Belcha. His difficulty stems from having to hit him from directly underneath him with a barrel to hurt him, and there being no truly easy way to do so since Dixie and Kiddy have their own hurdles to clear (Dixie having to deal with Arich's bouncing venom balls potentially breaking her barrel, Kiddy having to throw his at an odd angle).
    • Squirt forces you to navigate a finnicky circle of platforms while dealing with a fight that's essentially a One-Hit Kill parade. If he doesn't blast you off the edge with his torrents of water, you'll likely fall to your death by botching a jump while dodging said torrents of water.
    • Bleak isn't as bad as the two prior two, but the Unexpected Gameplay Change sucks if you haven't been playing Swanky's carnival games. And even then, you're basically dealing with a boss whose attacks cross into Bullet Hell territory, and if you miss the very narrow window in which his weak spot is vulnerable, it'll be a while before you get another shot at it.
    • Barbos, dear god. If Bleak's attacks merely cross into Bullet Hell territory, her needle barrage at the end of the fight is Bullet Hell.
  • That One Level: Oh yeah. Unsurprisingly, a good chunk of them are Gimmick Levels with each gimmick being more annoying than the last.
    • Fish Food Frenzy is essentially an Escort Mission where you're trying to prevent a "friendly" Nibbla from getting hungry enough to take a bite out of the Kongs. Problem is, you have to manually make him eat the Kokos that are safe for him to eat, meanwhile he'll happily go out of his way to devour the Lurchins that speed along his anger/hunger-fueled rage. And if you miss any Kokos or take too long to reach one, he's all but guaranteed to attack.
    • Ripsaw Rage and Kong-Fused Cliffs are among the very few Auto-Scrolling Levels in the series, and are painful for that very reason. Each one has its own reasons for being irritating: Ripsaw Rage has you navigate crowded, cramped tree trunk interiors that make it easy for the giant saw to catch up to and kill you, and Kong-Fused Cliffs has you constantly climbing burning ropes while enemies constantly ambush you from off-screen.
    • Low-G Labyrinth, where your running and falling speed is slowed... but the enemies aren't. Your jumps are also, as the title implies, affected by low gravity. And of course, the developers decided to let Buzzes absolutely infest this level. And if trying to avoid banging your head on or crashing into one wasn't already annoying, you're forced to play as Quawks late into the level and deal with his awkward aerial movement.
    • Lightning Lookout has you dodging lightning bolts in a rainy level, while said lightning bolts home in on you and love to strike where you're going to be to trip you up. Many a controller has been smashed thanks to this level, and even the Virtual Console and Switch Online ports with their save states/rewind features only do so much to alleviate the frustration of getting fried.
    • Koindozer Klamber is centered around using the Koindozers detailed in the Demonic Spiders entry above as platforms. And as mentioned in that entry, the frustration comes from having to use these ultra-aggressive enemies as platforms, and anything less than perfect play will result in them shield-bashing you into a pit over and over and over again.
    • Poison Pipeline is the level just before the final boss, and it does not let up. It's an underwater level... where your controls are reversed. Have fun!
  • Tough Act to Follow: After its predecessor set a very high bar standard, it was no surprise this trope would happen.
    • Not to mention, the game came out literally two months after Super Mario 64 wowed the video game industry. Donkey Kong Country 3 ended up getting hit hard with the Popularity Polynomial.
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