DK: King of Swing Review - GBA

are L and R. L controls DK's left arm, R controls DK's right arm.

You'll find yourself swinging around all over the place as you get used to the controls. Luckily in the first few levels it's very hard to die so you should be able to master the controls before heading in to the harder levels. Throughout the levels you'll also have to look out for medals and Crystal Coconuts. The medals are of course needed in order to finish the game as you'll unlock the Jungle Jam mini-games by finding them, and you can find one in every level ranging from bronze, silver and gold. Finding all twenty Crystal Coconuts will of course unlock secret items!

Enemies can range from bats to crocodiles. We're not sure how a crocodile is able to hang from wooden pikes and attack you, but that's for Nintendo to decide, right? You have three hearts which can be replenished at a cost of 10 bananas per heart, and an enemy can only take off one heart at a time. In order to kill them, you'll need to power up by holding both L and R and charging up to do a somersault attack at them. There are other ways to kill your enemies too such as throwing rocks at them, some which require much skill to get the right leverage and angles. Using 20 bananas to go invincible is sometimes an easier way to kill enemies though, as you can just run through them then.

Barrels make up a large part of DK: King of Swing, and they are used for lots of different things. Most barrels contain bananas and can be broken the same way you kill an enemy, however there are some barrels which will shoot you across in different directions around the level, and in some levels there is a hidden barrel that will take you to a secret level. In the secret level you'll find loads of bananas to refill your supplies, and usually a Crystal Coconut too however you'll only have a limited amount of time to find everything, so you'd better get swinging!

Graphics & Sound

DK: King of Swing looks like it could have been released as a launch title for the GBA. The graphics are nothing to be awed by, and the sound isn't much to talk about either. Perhaps we shouldn't have played it on the Nintendo DS. The graphics are very bright and colourful though, making DK: King of Swing a good game for any youngster to play. If Nintendo ever wants to make Donkey Kong appeal to an older audience, all they need to do is make DK look much more realistic, and make the jungle look more like something out of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. Possibly make an adventure where Diddy and Dixie get stolen away, so they don't ...