O tamanho da tela pode atrapalhar um pouco, pequenos defeitos nos controles, os gráficos complexos que foram reduzidos pra rodar no portátil e a facilidade que é morrer no jogo são coisas que afastam muita gente dele. Mesmo com tudo isso eu diria que são os únicos problemas grandes com ele, tirando isso temos uma "versão alternativa" porém única do primeiro Donkey Kong Country muito boa de se jogar, com fases criativas, level design muito bom, algumas fases chatas mas nada impossível e uma trilha sonora bem legal. É uma experiência de Donkey Kong completa, apesar dos defeitos.

Donkey Kong Land is certainly an impressive technical achievement for translating the Donkey Kong Country experience to the Gameboy. The levels vary wildly in themes, length, difficulty, and overall quality. The biggest obstacle however is the incredibly small area you can see at any given time. For this reason an extremely cautious pace and/or rote memorization is necessary, neither of which are particularly conducive to a fun platforming experience. This game is best played for its historical significance and some intriguing twists on DKC, but it is by no means a fun experience.

This was short and sweet; it took about an hour and a half to beat.

Bosses are just as pathetic as in the original and the physics (especially for Diddy) feel wonky, but the level design accommodates for that. The graphics are genuinely impressive as fuck, even if it can sometimes be hard to see stuff due to the black-and-white screen. The music is great. Most of the levels are pretty decent, although there are a few bad ones (Sky Caper). The final world is surprisingly good, though.

Yeah, it’s Donkey Kong Country compressed to 8-bit form and shoved into a Game Boy cartridge, but it still manages to be fun.

Pros: A semi-sequel to Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, this was a brand new game, completely unique, and it went out of its way to show you just how unique it was! Firstly though, this game was visually impressive as hell, getting a game that looked like Donkey Kong Country running on an 8-bit black and white handheld couldn't' have been easy, large sprites, fully animated, smooth framed, it was a stunner! DKC on SNES blew all of our minds with its visuals, and they did again here on Game Boy. It plays like DKC, with the gameplay staples like barrel cannons, rope swinging, animal buddies (just two here, Rambi and Expresso, but hey, you can still ride them!) roll jumping, tag-teaming, the works, this is solid DKC style gameplay! This game featured four big worlds full of 30 levels, with brand new enemies like Hogwash the Flying Pig, Nemo, Swirlwind, and new bosses like Hard Hat the mole. It also featured new archetypes for stages, like pirate ships, mountainsides, crazy cloud lands, underwater sunken temples, and last but not least, the CITY. Beautiful way to end the game, going back to the city where DK started, with construction sites, skyscrapers, blimps, the world acted as a great finale. And this game, in my opinion, stood on its own and succeeded, with creative levels and a good amount of effort. The design here is stronger than it is in the sequels on Game Boy, from beginning to end, this was its own adventure worth having.

Cons: Infamously, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish active objects from the background, as the entire screen can look a bit busy. They did at the very least fix this element in the GB sequels. The physics are also ever so slightly altered, and falling happens a bit faster... Can take some time to get used to, and sometimes the camera can't keep up with your movement, and you may just die by falling to an area that should have ground beneath it... And lastly, the ending of the game, there is no ending, after you defeat K. Rool, the credits immediately start rolling! That's it! But, none of that was able to deter me from having a great time.

What it means to me: This was my Donkey Kong Country, this is the one that was mine and mine alone. The first DKC, my older brother got that one, sure it belonged to the family, but he was the keeper of it. Once this game came along, I used my saved up money in a piggy bank, and took it to the store and purchased my very own Donkey Kong, hell, probably my first video game purchase with my own money ever! And man, did I love this game, obsessed over the new characters (Hogwash, my beloved... ahh), the worlds, the music! I recall taking a tape recorder up to my game boy and making a mixtape of the Donkey Kong Land OST, haha! It was a game I always had in my Game Boy when I was on the go, and on the Super Game Boy at home. Heck, I even got a Banana Yellow colored brick Game Boy to match this beautiful banana yellow game pak. This game was my world, and I can say with certainty, that it is my favorite game on the Game Boy.

Why does a Crocodile live in a penthouse in a city?

Either way its basically DKC 1.5 and its neat. Some fun levels if you exclude the arrow platform ones.

Play it in GBC mode to save yourself some headaches.

What might initially seem like a simple port of Donkey Kong Country turns out to be a whole new experience which, while borrowing heavily from the SNES game, still manages to validate it's own existence.

The best thing I can liken this game to is it's own soundtrack, which while being very reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country, has melodies often diverge slightly or entirely from their original versions.

The game looks good for a Gameboy game, and it sounds great too. But the platforming is unfortunately clunky and often results in some frustrating deaths that never entirely feel fair. The screen size can also add some artificial difficulty, though the levels are usually designed around the small screen.

Speaking of level design, I think the game definitely holds up in this regard, save for a few levels in particular. The last world even features a completely original (and very fresh) world theme.

I enjoyed collecting 'KONG' letters to save, I feel like it made them seem more valuable beyond secret-hunting. But there were definitely instances where I either couldn't find or reliably access a KONG letter and had to accept that I couldn't save after completing a given level.

In short, if you're looking for a fun little gameboy platformer, or are just desperate for more DKC, I think it's worth your time so long as you can overlook some funky controls and compromised visuals.

There's something so ironic about the fact that this game was made to prove that the original Donkey Kong Country wasn't just acclaimed for its visuals, but also for its gameplay, so they stripped down the visuals and let the gameplay shine. Because, like, the gameplay of Donkey Kong Land sucks while Country is still great.

It's impressive that they managed to at least somewhat replicate the style and feel of DKC, and there's a ton of variety with the level themes, enemies, and objects. But the momentum is off, the hitboxes are even worse, and the limited camera view makes the game practically unplayable. But the level design might be the worst offender.

The second level in the entire game is a freaking ice level. There's a level in world 3 that focuses on a type of platform that only moves up, down, left, or right, and it only changes direction whenever you jump on it, or whenever it hits a wall. You have to dodge enemies (usually by jumping on them) and navigate labyrinths while staying on this platform. It's just as horrible as it sounds. Who even thought of that? Two levels after that, a barrel cannon launched me directly into an off-camera enemy and I took damage. You can't make this shit up lmfao

To end this on a positive, this game has a shockingly great soundtrack. It's mostly completely original, and fits right next to any other DKC soundtrack despite being 8-bit. It's so underrated and I just thought I'd share some of the best songs for those of you DKC fans who want more music to enjoy.

Ruins - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqyyFV9XF2g
Kremlantis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFU2fxy35t8
Cave - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QSNUsLDhls
Airship - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDCbX4xdWjQ
Construction Site - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9HMIWB8aes
Boss - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDoDZxoQvfM

This one feels like one of the more ambitious, but still really jank and ultimately pretty bad unlicensed, Chinese pirate games. The levels are visually unclear, especially on a shitty Game Boy screen, due to too much detail in the backgrounds and a lack of contrast with the characters and important objects.
It also feels a bit all-over-the-place with environments even from the first world on. You're in the jungle, you find a secret shortcut that you swim through for no reason, then you're in the snow, another shortcut has you on a classic Donkey Kong arcade style construction site for literally a second, then back to the jungle, back to the snow, onto a DKC2 ship... etc.
All in World 1. And all that without there being anything really interesting happening with the levels. Not to mention the leaps of faith and really janky barrel sections they immediately hit you with as well.

But the worst part is probably the controls and overall physics. It's just not fun to do anything and often you take damage or die for really stupid reasons. The roll doesn't always actually defeat enemies, doesn't accelerate satisfyingly, doesn't do the "coyote time" thing with mid-air jumping after rolling, instead you hold A to awkwardly float in mid-air for a second without that making any sense, the bouncing doesn't feel right, the momentum makes no sense... it just isn't very fun and overall just feels like an utter slog.

I somewhat respect what they were trying to do and I also do like the fact that the game isn't trying to be a direct conversion of DKC but instead is its own thing with its own unique ideas here and there, but none of that helps when I just don't enjoy playing it.
In contrast, Donkey Kong Land 2 did a much better job of delivering a stripped-down version of the DKC2 experience, even if it did lose some of its own unique identity in the process. But at least it's fun and can even be a more-or-less worthy substitute for the SNES version for those who wanted to play it on the go or simply didn't have access to that version.

Donkey Kong Land is such a strange idea.

I understand wanting to port the Donkey Kong Country games to a handheld, but I don't understand why they made it in the same visual style of the SNES game when it doesn't fit the Game Boy at all. I know it's probably because the visual fidelity was part of the allure of Donkey Kong Country, but when the visuals start to get in the way and make things hard to work with like here in Donkey Kong Land, you start to ask yourself why they kept going with this.

I can't say this is all bad though. They really are trying to translate Donkey Kong Country to the Game Boy, and you can see it through some well designed levels with interesting and fun mechanics/gimmicks thrown in every once and was while. The major issue is that the game controls really weirdly, so you can't really appreciate the ideas of the levels at all. It's super easy to run off ledges or miss seemingly easy jumps. I think a lot of that stems from the jump. I feel like you sink immediately to the floor once you let go of that jump button.

Another strong issue with the gameplay is the camera. Usually you can see enough to get by, but very often an enemy will come crashing into you from offscreen. Similarly, the game will register a death when you reach the bottom of the screen even if you know for a fact there's flooring beneath you. It's something that will rarely bother you but you'll notice it once and a while when playing and it'll mindfuck you.

Overall, it's a nice shot really. I don't think this game is good, but I appreciate the effort and can see this being developed more and turned into something great.

5/10 - Mediocre/Mid

Donkey Kong Country was a platformer with an interesting design, where the platforms and even playable characters' physics are kind of vague, they're kind of loosely designed. And on a console like the SNES, it worked very well as it made it easy for the player to flow and react in order to execute quick stage runs! Trying to cram that into a Gameboy does not really work.

The platforming tends to be frustrating, and even at times "too" loose. The entire game feels very haphazardly put together, thus the controls suffer a bit for it. I'm sure there's some miracle story that they got this game working the way it does, but I don't care. It's not fun. It doesn't really fit as even a remotely suitable experience to the SNES game.