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Aussie Ben's Donkey Kong Country Review
Obviously, this is DKC's strongest performing catergory. It's made leaps and bounds over the original Donkey Kong Land series - what you see is something closer to what you'd expect if Donkey Kong Country had been released on the original NES. The graphics are really, really good, producing nearly every exact detail from the Super NES version - the location of all the balloons, bananas and enemies are all correct (well, there were a couple of instances where the levels had been made shorter or objects had been removed, but you only noticed those if you were an obsessive DKU fan).
10
Ah, the wonderful Gameboy sound chip that we've come to know and hate. It sure does fail to disappoint here, too. Rare have tried their best to make the music and sounds sound good, but unfortunately the quality of the hardware falls flat for something like DKC. The music is okay, but any tunes that have been ported over (mostly from Donkey Kong Land) have been severly butchered from the SNES version (as the Gameboy can't play sound effects as part of its music, probably) and you'll find that you'll notice some looping sooner than they should. Others (which were made specifically for Donkey Kong Land) sound better, as they take longer to loop back and they can in some cases be more catchy.
Sound effects, however, are awful. Nothing but beeps and boings for picking up items, hitting enemies and such, and the noise that a monkey in a barrel makes now is just stupid. Digitized sound for that at least would have been nice, but that's just wishful thinking, I guess. Oh well, we've got the Gameboy Advance for that.
8
Control was one area where this game HAD TO excel, because of the original's flawless quick control. Luckily, DKC GBC doesn't fail in this area. You don't die if you fall too far off the screen and the scrolling doesn't catch up with you (such was the case in Donkey Kong Land) and you can hop from Kremling to Kremling with ease. Switching between Kongs is no problem, and they both perform as they should. There have been cases where the whole game slows down if there are more than four characters on the screen, but it's very difficult to perform such a task and is mainly the GBC's fault, not the game.
10
Well...it's a port of a Super NES game. Nothing too original about that. There have been some "extra features" added though, such as an auto-save, Candy's Challenges (including pointless coins - collect them all!) and features such as a printable photo album, alphabet and banners, which I've yet to activate. There's also a whole host of mini-games to beat as well. The inclusion of an extra level is nice, but I would have much rather preferred a Lost World, as we were all expecting. But, in the end, it is still the same game, just on Gameboy Color instead of Super NES - nothing more.
7
Overall, Donkey Kong Country GBC is a nice game. It's presented quite well and plays well. I don't understand why there was no 2-player link-up option (one player Donkey and one player Diddy linked up playing together) but I guess that would have been beyond the GBC's capabilities anyway. The hunting for the extra photos is a good way to increase replayability, but an indicator as to whether you've found the photo in a particular level would help. (I have 100% and am missing one photo and I can't be bothered finding it.) In the end, it's the same game as the Super NES game - not that that's a bad thing, as the original was fantastic. Seeing as Rare can produce this kind of graphics and gameplay for the Gameboy Color, I can't see what they've got cooking for the Gameboy Advance. (And don't forget to put this in the Gameboy Advance when you get one - it looks excellent!)
8.5
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