![]() The characters move too slow allowing less for running starts leading into jumps. Momentum is seriously off regardless of terrain. ![]() In addition there’s something terribly wrong with the physics here. You basically have to walk through each stage which screws up the pacing. The blurry screen only makes enemies harder to see and react to. I realize this was a graphical showcase but I’d much rather sacrifices be made elsewhere. It leads to a lot of frustrating and cheap moments because you have less time to react. This leaves many hazards just out of view. You simply cannot see enough of the stage at any given time. Unfortunately this comes at the cost of screen estate. No doubt this was to show off the digitized graphics on the handheld. With all that out of the way let’s get to the problems. Because of this it’s safe to say that if you like Donkey Kong Country you’ll enjoy Land as well. It doesn’t necessarily push them forward nor does it refine them though. Donkey Kong Land plays it very safe to Country by recycling nearly all of it’s gameplay elements. Animal friends (that you can ride which offer different dynamics) return. What’s nice is that there are less auto-play barrel sections where you simply blast around a level. It’s unmistakably still Donkey Kong Country. What’s interesting is that Rare was able to port over a significant number of enemy models and environmental elements. The level designs here are less complex and generally shorter than in Donkey Kong Country. This doesn’t work as well as it did in the past. You still hop on enemies heads and can use a roll attack against them. The levels however are completely new albeit based around the same themes as in Donkey Kong Country. The mechanics here are identical to those of its console brother for better or worse. When both are out of play it’s lights out and you lose a life. Both Donkey and Diddy Kong can only take one hit before dying, but if you have the partner character unlocked the other will simply take their place. Like how Mario collects coins the two monkeys gather bananas and one hundred will score them an extra life. You can control the two main characters as you jump and roll through over thirty different stages. This is a neat idea for a Game Boy conversion for sure.ĭonkey Kong Land, like its predecessor, is a side scrolling platform game. Donkey Kong Land is more of an expansion to Country. Think not of this as a spin-off or sequel. This allows for some recycling of concepts and content. Regardless, the set up is pretty much the same here. The fourth wall breaking scenario did manage a chuckle out of me. You wouldn’t actually know there’s a story without consulting the instruction book. To prove him wrong Donkey and Diddy once again set out to reclaim their banana horde, but this time on the Game Boy to prove that graphics don’t matter. Cranky Kong is sure that the only reason Donkey Kong Country was so popular was simply because of its high graphic fidelity. Strap yourself in, because the story this time around is a little weird. Unfortunately this too suffers from an overzealous development cycle, but thankfully not all is lost. I must admit I was quite excited the first time I saw a commercial for Donkey Kong Land. Nintendo was one of the few developers that understood how to make a console quality title for the platform. Others were completely broken because developers were trying to push the system too far. So many of these conversions were missing major elements from their console counterparts. At the time I didn’t realize the tech discrepancy between the Game Boy and other mainstream systems, and when I finally got my gray brick it was like a punch in the face. One of the major reasons I wanted a Game Boy at the height of its popularity was because so many developers offered down port conversions of their popular console titles.
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