Handheld gaming is more than a compromise of power and portability. Whether it’s the ability to play anywhere, multitask or hold an entire console in your hands, it’s a special experience consoles have never replicated. In a world where high resolutions and teraflops reign supreme, we take a look at a portable relic every month and reflect on what makes it memorable. Be warned, spoilers may occasionally populate these articles.
Donkey Kong spent the early part of his career as an antagonist to Mario. Their troubled relationship began with him holding Pauline captive while hurling barrels at Mario during his rescue attempts. Their relationship further soured when Mario kept Donkey Kong imprisoned until his son was able to rescue him. It wasn’t until 1994 that he was given a heroic role in Donkey Kong Country where he flexed his gorilla muscles to prove he can compete with his mustachioed-nemesis as a platforming primate protagonist. Donkey Kong Country was a huge success, but what is talked about less often is Donkey Kong Land.
Donkey Kong Country was touted as being a major breakthrough for 3D graphics on Nintendo’s 16-bit console. Donkey Kong Land was trying to recreate the magic of Donkey Kong Country on the significantly-less powerful handheld platform. Making it a one-to-one port wasn’t feasible, and it was given the title of Donkey Kong Land to distinguish it as a separate entity from Country, as the level designs and bosses were not the same as its more colorful counterpart. Nevertheless, even with the concessions to bring the experience of the Rare and Nintendo collaboration to a handheld platform was a success. The result was one of the better Game Boy platformers and an impressive technological feat in its own right.
The story of Donkey Kong Land is self aware and rather humorous. Cranky Kong lives up to his curmudgeon reputation and claims that people only liked Donkey Kong Country because of the new-fangled 3D graphics. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong claim that it’s because the gameplay was fun. People who played Donkey Kong Country know more than one thing can be true, but if that argument was settled in a sensible way, we wouldn’t have Donkey Kong Land. To settle this debate, Cranky arranges for King K. Rool to steal the banana hoard once again and have the Diddy and Donkey Kong recreate their success on an 8-bit handheld. Sadly this story is only in the instruction manual (remember when games came with those?) and this bit of silliness is lost on those who pick up this cartridge second hand in less than CIB condition.
Recreating Donkey Kong Country on Game Boy is no small feat, and while the graphics obviously took a hit, the gameplay doesn’t suffer. Things are more simplified as there are fewer buttons, but two action buttons are all this game really needs. Donkey and Diddy Kong travel across four worlds and slightly over thirty levels to prove to Cranky that the success was not solely based on graphics. Oh and to get the banana hoard back. The gameplay is what fans would expect based on the cover art. This is its own game, but the two primates jump and swing on vines across hazards, throw barrels at K. Rool’s minions all while collectiong bananas and KONG letters. It’s basically additional Donkey Kong Country content on the go, which doesn’t sound like a bad time.
Game Boy ports of NES and SNES games were often watered-down versions of their home console counterparts. The developers of Donkey Land ensured that this would be its own game, but even so feels like a watered-down version of the new Donkey Kong. There are only a few less levels than the SNES counterpart, but the levels are shorter, making it easy to complete Donkey Kong Land in about half the time as Donkey Kong Country. Out of the five animal companions, only Rambi and Expresso made it onto the Game Boy cart, which is a shame since Enguarde made the aquatic levels so much better. The player can still switch between Diddy and Donkey, but only one of them is visible on screen at a time instead of running in tandem. But to make the game feel different and not just downgraded, Rare swapped in a couple new bosses and and created new enemies such as flying pigs to help give this title its own identity.
Compared to Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Land is a visual downgrade but still an impressive-looking title for Game Boy. It should be noted it was designed for the Super Game Boy peripheral, which was the SNES version of GameCube’s Game Boy Player, or for those too young even to remember GameCube, it’s a device to play handheld games through the console on the TV. Playing it through this peripheral added heavily washed-out color and a bigger screen to see what was happening. It still paled in comparison to the SNES graphics, but an upgrade from Game Boy on its own. Like the SNES counterpart, Donkey Kong Land used pre-rendered 3D graphics that were compressed into sprites. It might not be as detailed and run at a lower framerate, but it does an admirable job of bringing the graphic style to Game Boy. But one of the unintended challenges of playing Donkey Kong Land on Game Boy is with the small screen and lack of color, it’s not always easy to see threats until it’s too late.
Donkey Kong Land is a great example of how to properly bring a SNES game to Game Boy, and would be a great example for devs to follow if we were still working with thirty-year-old hardware. There have been several SNES games that were given abysmal ports to Game Boy platforms, some of which have been featured inPocket Power. Donkey Kong Land was developed by the same studio, and instead of simply porting a great SNES game, they created a new game that maintained as much of the essence of Donkey Kong Country that they could fit into a Game Boy cart. The tech limitations of the handheld hardware don’t make it as attractive as the game which inspired it, but it maintains the look as well as it can, and more importantly its game mechanics make this a blast to play.
Donkey Kong Land is one of the better platformers available for the original Game Boy. The monocrhome color scheme may be off putting to some players, but this is a must-play for fans of the genre. Unfortunately, it isn’t the most readily-accessible game nowadays. It isn’t currently available on Switch Online and since the Wii U and 3DS eShops have been shut down, the only option is to hunt down a used cartridge.
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