this is the game that taught me to give yourself some room to be surprised by a piece of entertainment. I got this for christmas in 1994 and was of course polite as one should be when receiving a gift, but in my head I was thinking god, I've beaten donkey kong classics 8 million times, why do I need this on game boy, but fired it up anyway, briefly thought huh, why does this need a save file but didn't think anything of it, beat the first four levels...

...and when the victory music cut off and donkey kong jumped back up and broke the bridge and ran off with pauline, and I realized there was far more to this game than I had expected—reader, let me tell you, my grandparents were not happy with the amount of melted brain I got all over their carpet

best game on the game boy, yes even over link's awakening, every mechanic is drum-tight, every level accommodates both careful consideration and cocksure speedrunning, the locales are wonderful, every lost life is no one's fault but your own, and the soundtrack, my god, the soundtrack is straight fire, it is truly criminal that taisuke araki's entire vgm career comprises just three game boy games, his résumé should be longer than a cvs receipt and he should still be composing for nintendo today, how on earth did he fit a dang METAL SOLO onto this hardware, oh and it looks gorgeous both on super game boy and the monochrome machine, donkey kong '94 is perfect, PERFECT, and I defy anyone to say one unkind word against it