The game's manual explains that, after the events of Donkey Kong Country, Cranky Kong claims that the only reason DKC was a success was it's use of George Wood Voice Silicon Graphics. Cranky then challenges DK and Diddy to once again save their banana hoard from King K Rool, but this time on the Game Boy. It's a genuinely funny explanation for why this game exists outside of just being a tie-in to what was becoming one of the SNES's most popular series, and it's also a cute little allegory to how Rare may have felt making this game. Could they actually manage to capture the spirit of DKC within the limits of a handheld 8-bit console? The result ends up being mostly a success, believe it or not.
Land has to make a couple of big compromises to get there, though. The smaller screen size isn't actually as much of a menace when it comes to getting killed by offscreen enemies, but what it does do is make Diddy and DK feel a lot slower and less capable. The rolling jump you can normally do off platforms in DKC is way harder to pull off due to it being a lot more finicky to get the right amount of acceleration for it. The Game Boy's smaller memory also means that when a level gets vertical, falling down often doesn't mean landing on a lower platform but instead immediately dying because whatever was down there simply isn't there anymore. The CG sprites of DKC on the Game Boy certainly don't look great, but their silllhouettes are readable enough that I never found it much of a problem to spot enemies and read level design (granted this is probably a lot easier to do on emulator). While these limitations definitely keep this from being as good of an experience as the original, what we have here is still a very competent and fun set of DKC levels.
None of the levels are really 1-to-1 with DKC, as this game was made more as a companion to DKC rather than a port. But the original levels here can be just as fun, as a good amount of the feel of the SNES game is retained here in enemy placement and the prioritization of keeping things kinetic as much as possible. Surprisingly, one of my favorite parts of this game ended up being the water levels, as they introduce some neat new enemy designs like a jellyfish that you can go under or over, each having its own distinct risk, or a nautilus that chases you through parts of a level. The water levels also have a new underwater temple setting, and in fact there are a lot of new settings for the game here, which help keep things varied on a console that requires a lot of clever reuse and tricks to get a game like this onto it. As for the music, well I guess it should be no surprise the geniuses behind the SNES soundtrack can also make those songs sound great on the Game Boy. The compositions here are slightly different from the SNES versions, but this is usually because the song decides to take advantage of the GB's sound rather than see it as a limitation, an opportunity to make something new. The original tracks in this song don't slack at all.
At its best, this game can manage to perfectly capture the feel of DKC, and it can feel like you were just given a whole new set of levels for the game you never knew about. But not only are there the limitations I mentioned before, but there are also just some stinker levels here. The levels that take place in the sky setting are almost all bad, as most of them require waiting on slow, small platforms while trying to avoid enemies. The second one, in which you can change the direction of the platform by jumping on it, is probably the worst level in any Donkey Kong game. It's slow, it's way too easy to fall off, jumping and landing on the platform in quick succession feels bad, and the problems with acceleration really hit when you have barely any land to run and jump off of. Also, sometimes it feels like this game gives you no hang time off cliffs whatsoever, whereas I feel like the console DKC games do a good job of giving you some slack when it comes to jumping off cliffs. I was expecting a lot more levels like these when I played this, but as I said, there's a lot of neat stuff in this game. It doesn't fully succeed in capturing everything that's great about DKC, and the level design isn’t nearly as fine tuned and elegant, but it ends up serving as a fun supplement to the original, I would recommend it if your fiending for more DKC and have overlooked this game in the past.
Land has to make a couple of big compromises to get there, though. The smaller screen size isn't actually as much of a menace when it comes to getting killed by offscreen enemies, but what it does do is make Diddy and DK feel a lot slower and less capable. The rolling jump you can normally do off platforms in DKC is way harder to pull off due to it being a lot more finicky to get the right amount of acceleration for it. The Game Boy's smaller memory also means that when a level gets vertical, falling down often doesn't mean landing on a lower platform but instead immediately dying because whatever was down there simply isn't there anymore. The CG sprites of DKC on the Game Boy certainly don't look great, but their silllhouettes are readable enough that I never found it much of a problem to spot enemies and read level design (granted this is probably a lot easier to do on emulator). While these limitations definitely keep this from being as good of an experience as the original, what we have here is still a very competent and fun set of DKC levels.
None of the levels are really 1-to-1 with DKC, as this game was made more as a companion to DKC rather than a port. But the original levels here can be just as fun, as a good amount of the feel of the SNES game is retained here in enemy placement and the prioritization of keeping things kinetic as much as possible. Surprisingly, one of my favorite parts of this game ended up being the water levels, as they introduce some neat new enemy designs like a jellyfish that you can go under or over, each having its own distinct risk, or a nautilus that chases you through parts of a level. The water levels also have a new underwater temple setting, and in fact there are a lot of new settings for the game here, which help keep things varied on a console that requires a lot of clever reuse and tricks to get a game like this onto it. As for the music, well I guess it should be no surprise the geniuses behind the SNES soundtrack can also make those songs sound great on the Game Boy. The compositions here are slightly different from the SNES versions, but this is usually because the song decides to take advantage of the GB's sound rather than see it as a limitation, an opportunity to make something new. The original tracks in this song don't slack at all.
At its best, this game can manage to perfectly capture the feel of DKC, and it can feel like you were just given a whole new set of levels for the game you never knew about. But not only are there the limitations I mentioned before, but there are also just some stinker levels here. The levels that take place in the sky setting are almost all bad, as most of them require waiting on slow, small platforms while trying to avoid enemies. The second one, in which you can change the direction of the platform by jumping on it, is probably the worst level in any Donkey Kong game. It's slow, it's way too easy to fall off, jumping and landing on the platform in quick succession feels bad, and the problems with acceleration really hit when you have barely any land to run and jump off of. Also, sometimes it feels like this game gives you no hang time off cliffs whatsoever, whereas I feel like the console DKC games do a good job of giving you some slack when it comes to jumping off cliffs. I was expecting a lot more levels like these when I played this, but as I said, there's a lot of neat stuff in this game. It doesn't fully succeed in capturing everything that's great about DKC, and the level design isn’t nearly as fine tuned and elegant, but it ends up serving as a fun supplement to the original, I would recommend it if your fiending for more DKC and have overlooked this game in the past.
FrozenRoy
1 year ago