The Donkey Kong Country series isn't particularly new to the Game Boy platform, as Rare produced three spin-offs for the black-and-white handheld as Donkey Kong Land. But this is the first time an entire Super NES title has been converted from the 16 bit hardware to the 8-bit Game Boy Color system, and what a challenge it was making the SNES original look somewhat decent on the 11 year-old system. Rare's Game Boy Color team succeeded in this task, even with the heavy system restrictions -- despite some visibility and collision issues, this game is near-identical in play to the outstanding platform game that hit the market six years ago. And what's more, the gameplay still holds up as a fantastic action title.
Features
- Rendered 3D graphics
- Direct port of SNES version
- All new bonus levels
- Game Boy Printer support
- Link cable support for two players
- Only for Game Boy Color
The world spans over many different parts of Donkey Kong's jungle, from the trees to hidden mineshafts, even underwater. And it's not all just running and bouncing on heads, either -- the game has a ton of variety in its level layout. In some rounds you'll ride a runaway minecart, and in others you'll have to trigger Stop/Go switches to keep indestructible rock creatures from coming to life (the latter offering an impressive lighting effect from red to green and back again). Each level in the game is a straightforward conversion from the SNES game, so if you've played through the 16-bit edition there's not going to be much change in the quest on the Game Boy Color.,
And in structure, there isn't much missing from the translation other than a more vibrant color palette and a rich musical score. The graphics and sound do take a serious hit, but let's be realistic -- the Game Boy hardware was released way before the Super NES. Sprites have been reduced to four colors, and the backgrounds only have, at most 32 colors in each level. But this just proves that Donkey Kong Country wasn't just about the presentation, it was also about the gameplay that made it such a special design. Regardless, the Game Boy Color development team worked with what they had, and managed to keep the CG look in the restrictive graphic capabilities, and the overall music score in the dinky 8-bit sound chip.
But of course, it wouldn't be right for Rare to offer a "simple" conversion, so the team threw in specific trinkets that would appeal to the Game Boy Color owner. Two minigames have been included to the design. One's "whack-a-mole" style sniping game where you continuously shoot bad guys with a coconut gun -- it's easy to begin with, but later levels have you playing a "Game and Watch" game where DKC characters are walking across the screen, and you'll have to plug holes with coconuts. The second game is even simpler in design but actually pretty fun -- a fishing game where you'll have to yank up as many fish in a group as possible and dump 'em in your boat. In two-player mode (with a link cable), it's all about grabbing combos of fish to screw the other player's time. It's not exactly Tetris, but it's got some appeal.
There are some issues with the conversion -- most importantly the scale of the characters versus the viewing area -- the developers wanted to keep as much detail to the characters as possible, so the area of the screen is much less than what was on the Super NES game. This causes problems with some levels since, in the GBC game, you can't see what's above or below you, where in the SNES game you could see a little further down the road. Another issue is in the collision detection -- I've had problems where bouncing on a tire actually killed me because there was a snake too close to the bounce...even though he wasn't in "touching" distance.
But the problems are very minor compared to all the good stuff you get in this game. It's not as "perfect" as Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, but Rare's latest performance on the Game Boy Color is an outstanding one.
