Donkey Kong Country

"Could've been better"

I can see it now. The head honchos of RARE sitting around in their offices trying to decide just what their next game for the Game Boy will be, RARE is known for taking an incredibly long time to get a game out, and they need a game out on the market. And then it comes to them… A Donkey Kong Country (DKC) port. They'll port the game to the Game Boy. Since its already been made all they wont have to go through all the planning they'll just need to adjust the graphics since the game will now be appearing on a lesser system. Oh and some new features will have to be added or else no one will buy but hey mini-games can be thought up real quick. It would be perfect. Or would it?

No, not really. I mean, sure, they can keep the games simple story of Donkey Kong getting his bananas stolen and having to get them back. Sure, they could do that, but could they keep everything that made DKC great, namely the perfect combination of game-play, graphics, and sound that they had achieved when they first released it on the SNES? No, not really.

Any one will notice once they turn the game on, and start playing, that the layouts of the levels are unchanged. The excellently designed levels have not been tampered with. And Donkey and Diddy seem to have their same basic abilities. Donkey is strong and can take out most enemies with a single jump he also lifts barrels far above his head and hurls them far, while Diddy, being smaller, has more trouble with enemies, uses barrels as a shield and cannot throw them as far, but is more agile and jump higher. But once again, we're playing this game on a lesser system than the Super Nintendo so things have been changed, namely the animal buddies which you no longer ride, but turn into. And there is no chance of recapturing them if you loose them. Hey one little change would be fine, if it wasn't for the fact that the character handling was shot straight out the window. Donkey and Diddy have delayed reactions to your button inputs. Also for some reason it just seems to take them longer to lift a barrel than it should even with the input to character action delay.

Mini games and a bonus level are the added features to win over into buying a stripped down version of DKC. The bonus level is rather uninspired and never caught my interest. The same can be said of the mini games, Funky's Fish and one named for Cranky though I can't recall its name. Fishing is incredibly easy, and it never ends even though you have a timer slowly ticking away and certain fish that you catch will lower you timer, your timer is always refilled, by the other fish you catch, more than it drains. And Cranky's involves shooting Kremlings that pop out of barrels. Better than fishing but it never could hold my interest for long.

Sound wise the game also takes a hit (of course). Expect lower quality in general. With fewer sound effects and some of the more atmospheric pieces of music removed. Also in a strange anomaly there are two pieces of music that both made into the game (Ice Age alley and Slip Slide Ride) but have switched the levels they are played on. Odd, wouldn't you say?

Graphically once again we're looking at more cuts. The graphics had to be stripped in order to make it to the Game Boy screen. It's just so disappointing to see the once lush and great looking DKC now look so poor. I mean it's certainly good looking for the Game Boy, but if you know how it used to look, the graphics can't do anything but disappoint.

I'm convinced that RARE could have made a good port of this game had it just been for another system. If they had done something like a DKC collection they could have ported all three game to the N64. I'm sure. RARE recently ported DKC to the Game Boy Advance. I haven't tried it yet but I know that the GBA is a much more capable system for the port to be made to. Maybe if RARE had just waited a couple of years they could have done the port right in the first place.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/04/01, Updated 05/16/04