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DK: King of Swing Review - GBA

The sky is bright blue; the colourful forest is bursting with life. Normally quiet, today the jungle buzzes with much excitement. The Jungle Jam festival is about to take place to determine the true hero. Cranky Kong and Donkey Kong discuss storing away the winners' medals to prevent them from being stolen, but just before they manage to do so, there's a flash of light from the sky. It's King K. Rool! He snatches the medals and heads for his refuge. Can Donkey Kong get the medals back from his evil nemesis? It's all up to you in this action packed adventure on the GameBoy Advance.

Donkey Kong has seen plenty of action lately - whether it's been in his own game on the Nintendo 64, in either of the Smash Bros. games, his own bongo game known as Donkey Konga, and even in the late Mario Power Tennis. With the release of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat on the GameCube, we also saw a remake of the much loved NES classic Donkey Kong for the GBA. DK: King of Swing is a new title crammed in to a large market of Donkey Kong games which still remains a good idea, but swinging from one wooden pike to another gets quite boring eventually.

Gameplay

Starting the game, you have four selections. Adventure mode will take you into an adventure to retrieve the medals as mentioned in the introduction. You'll go across five worlds fighting bosses of all types and facing new puzzles in every level, more about that later though. The next two selections are the single-player and multiplayer Jungle Jams. There are twelve events to choose from, ranging from a Climbing Race to an Attack Battle. After selecting the event you can then choose your character. Yes, you can play as Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong, and even Funky Kong! They all have different skill levels with respect to their Jump and their Attack. Most of these are enjoyable, but they're not diverse enough to create hours of fun playing against your friends.

The final selection on the menu screen is Extras. You'll have to unlock these throughout the game however, so we won't ruin that for you. Adventure Mode unfortunately only takes about 3-4 hours to beat, if you're really good you could probably knock it off in around 2 hours. Each world has four normal levels and a boss level. In the normal levels you need to look out for enemies while collecting all the items you can find. Bananas give you health and also invincibility (similar to when you get a star in Mario Bros). You can use your collected bananas to activate the health regeneration or the invincibility whenever you want just by pressing B or A. Apart from those two buttons, the only other two you'll need (continued next page)