Donkey Kong Land (Game Boy)
Donkey Kong Country, Rare’s reinvention of the classic video game brand, turned out to be a smash hit, ending up the third best selling game on the Super Nintendo when everything was said and done. Excited fans wouldn’t even have to wait long for Donkey Kong Country 2, that game releasing only a year after the original. However, despite that impressive turnover, Rare still found time to make another Donkey Kong game before it, Donkey Kong Land releasing on the Game Boy about five months earlier than Donkey Kong Country 2. While similar in some ways to the original Donkey Kong Country but wildly different in others, Donkey Kong Land isn’t just a retread but a whole new adventure with stages, enemies, and bosses who hadn’t appeared in the previous game.
One of the most unusual elements of this Game Boy adventure though has to be the absolutely bonkers plot the manual lays out for it. Fresh off defeating K. Rool and the Kremlings in Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong and Diddy are on the receiving end of the latest rant from Cranky Kong as he lives up to his name. The old gorilla believes the two younger primates only managed to save the day because they were in a video game on a system as powerful as the SNES, and when the cocky pair claim they can save the day even on a system as simplistic as the Game Boy, Cranky calls up K. Rool and tells the crocodile to steal the banana hoard all over again to see if the duo have what it takes. It’s hard to identify which part of the set-up is the most absurd, whether it’s Cranky easily calling the villain from the last game to repeat his plan or that DK and Diddy are endangering their lives to win a bet over whether a video game console’s power was what helped them win last time, but with no actual story appearing in the game itself, it feels like the manual wanted to get in all the silliness it could with Cranky before throwing you into a set of 34 new levels that thankfully do have more thought put into them than this ridiculous plot.
Donkey Kong and Diddy haven’t changed much since their last adventure, the big gorilla and little monkey still mostly set apart by the big guy being able to defeat tougher enemies that Diddy can’t while Diddy is quicker and carries barrels in front of him that makes them better for shielding or breaking through walls. One hit takes out either character though, but you can have the other in reserve and switch to them with the select button if you’d like. On the smaller Game Boy screen with less fidelity though you can almost see Cranky Kong having a point that the adventure will be harder, Donkey Kong Land trying to approximate the rendered graphics from Super Nintendo but to a weaker effect. Thankfully, a well lit room and anything stronger than the original Game Boy console playing it means normally you won’t run into issues making out what you need to see, although at times extras can be very difficult to spot since they’re already hidden or out of the way before factoring in the fact you need to make them out against a similarly colored background.
This monochrome journey takes the Kongs across four worlds, most of the worlds sticking to two or three level themes. Joining familiar environments like jungles, snowy mountains, and caves are some impressive new ideas for locations like aboard pirate ships, hopping through a modern city, and exploring underwater ruins. There are even stages set in the aptly named Chimpanzee Clouds, platforms made of actual clouds certainly seeing the Donkey Kong series break away from its more realistic designs from the previous entry. Mostly the more natural locations do still try to have their difficult jumping challenges make sense in the world rather than relying on inexplicably floating platforms or pure obstacle course design elements, but Donkey Kong Land likes to get a little silly by throwing in unexpected elements like the flying pig enemy Hogwash or stages where you need to hop across the top of bouncy tornadoes to get where you’re going. The sometimes cartoony concepts don’t detract from the game’s difficulty, and in fact some of the tougher stages are the stranger ones like a level in the clouds where a small moving platform must be managed since it changes direction every time you jump or it hits a wall.
Donkey Kong Land mainly derives its challenge from pressing forward into spaces dominated by large and quick enemies or interacting with elements like the barrel cannons where you need to time your blast right to reach where you want to be. Even the little Gnawty beavers can be dangerous on the Game Boy when screen space is at a premium and you only have a bit to react before they walk into you, but Donkey Kong Land doesn’t feel like it overextends itself, keeping most dangers in check so only rarely are you pressing forward blindly. There are some enemies though that strain the design, such as the Slippa snakes who come twirling down ropes often being too quick to react to or placed so closely together that you might not have time to judge your jump and throw yourself into them as you fail to react properly. The effort to try and make the characters look nice and close to their SNES looks does mean less can be put on screen at once which sometimes limits how a level can be built before running into problems like the Slippa issue, but a cautious approach at first will prevent ambushes and later once you know a stage well and are trying to get back to where you died, you can often speed through since it’s not too hard to remember a stage’s layout. A curious issue can arise though involving falls. Usually a pitfall death makes sense, there is no ground below so falling is fatal. However, there are points where you perhaps climb up a rope and try to jump down to be speedy only for the game to kill you when you go off-screen. Climbing down the rope isn’t deadly, so it might be some issue related to loading since in other areas you can do jumps down to earlier parts of the level.
Two animal buddies return to aid you should you find their crate in a level and free them, Rambi the rhino a bit straightforward in that he just kills baddies his horn hits, but Expresso the ostrich not only can jump off enemies this time around, but his flutter can add some useful distance to your leaps. Bonus areas have been reined in considerably from how they were handled in Donkey Kong Country, now it feels much more reasonable you can spot where they’re hiding thanks to stronger level clues or areas that are rightfully suspicious to encourage you to check them out, and while they’re mostly a means of earning extra lives, Donkey Kong Land handles those in a bit of an interesting way. Actual life balloons are very quick and not easy to grab if you don’t know they’re coming, but other than collecting 100 floating bananas as a way to earn more lives, you can also collect special coins that are redeemed in a minigame room. The lives aren’t guaranteed since you have to line up the cannon that shoots them at you properly, but it means there are ways to build up a lot of lives to make the tougher sections more manageable. Notably, you can only save if you collect the letters K-O-N-G in a stage, and while some levels make you work for it more, not too many are so stingy and you can always replay an old level if you absolutely must lock in a save. It’s not a good system, but it is a manageable enough one.
Whether you’re carefully timing jumps past the spiky Zinger wasps, bouncing across hopping Kremling Kritters at satisfying speed, or running from the concerningly quick nautilus Nemo in the underwater levels, Donkey Kong Land manages to produce a pretty good soundtrack to back that action. Some tunes like the jungle music or the underwater track are just iterations on what was in Donkey Kong Country, but the levels in the sky have a nice adventurous theme that suits their strangeness, the start menu has a nice peppy jingle, and the aquatic ruins have their own haunting ambient track, DK and Diddy even able to say their portable game system adventure could have some quality music despite the limitations. In fact, the bosses end up better in Donkey Kong Land over Country, although they’re not a huge step up. Floating stingrays and a mole popping out of some holes aren’t particularly tough fights but they are unique, but the final fight with King K. Rool is a challenging finale that will certainly take a few tries to master. The usually large fat croc K. Rool has been reduced in size quite a bit from Donkey Kong Country, but more of the game should have followed his lead to help with the occasional rough moment where you do desire more visual information.
THE VERDICT: Donkey Kong Land will sometimes sacrifice clarity for impressive Game Boy visuals, but thankfully DK and Diddy’s portable outing still prioritizes challenging but fair level designs. Whether it’s landing tight jumps and weaving through enemies or engaging with some of the stranger ideas found in places like Chimpanzee Clouds and Big Ape City, Donkey Kong Land still provides smartly designed platforming meant to keep you on your toes and occasionally reward curiosity. Some further visual compromises and some more substantial bonus rooms and bosses could have helped it go further, but this is quite the impressive adventure Rare somehow managed to produce in the small time between Country 1 and 2.
And so, I give Donkey Kong Land for Game Boy…
A GOOD rating. Donkey Kong Land is both more Donkey Kong Country and yet not. It carries on the gameplay fundamentals but it forges its own path with enough new locales and dangers that it isn’t even close to being called a port, yet it also can’t reach the same heights as the SNES game because it is on the Game Boy and not wholly adjusted for it. That doesn’t mean it fumbles the ball though, Donkey Kong Land usually pretty smart about laying out levels that make proper challenges about pressing forward and anticipating the upcoming enemy or figuring out how something like the platform in the clouds should be handled. It has its memorable moments like trying to outswim Nemo and the city levels in particular start mixing in much tighter platforming that provides legitimate challenge without the screen space feeling like an issue. Still, there are times the Slippas drop on you or you miss out on a bonus because the lip of the barrel cannon meant to take you there is camouflaged amidst a rocky wall texture. Little moments like that make Donkey Kong Land less clean and a bit harder to appreciate, but there are still fun ideas it attempts with its navigation that make up for those occasional weak points. Donkey Kong Land still has good music for a Game Boy title, stages that ask you to explore with some skill and smarts, and most elements are technically simple so you can manage moments where gimmicks and enemies intersect since the sum of them isn’t complex despite being a good test of your ability.
Donkey Kong Land is a strange but fun side adventure between two much bigger and better titles, but its curious choices and solid sense for level design mean it is still worth checking out because it’s not too similar to Donkey Kong Country but not so different that it feels out of place. It has its own creative little ways to shake things up to make up for where it had to sacrifice some other ideas, but its compromises only briefly slow things down and you still get the joys of taking on some tough stages with fair challenges. Cranky Kong may have a point that an adventure on an 8-bit system can be quite hard, but while it does occasionally get in the way of DK and Diddy having a smooth adventure, the gameplay still shines even when the world it is in is monochrome.