Donkey Kong Land (1995)

Well, this one was a little surprise for me. After complete and like the first Country game, I had little faith on this one. I just didn't want to play it, so my laziness stopped my progress in that point. Some years later, I replayed the first Country, liked again and decided to play this one before the second Country. I'm glad that I did that.

I played the Color version, and I get used to the graphics really fast. At first, I thought they should have used another style, but now I think they did really great traslading Country graphics to a Game Boy.

The music sounds good, and the new maps have good new songs as catchy as the main game ones.

The gameplay is indeed clunkier here, but I disagree with some other reviews. The controls are fine, the level design is good and fair and the game has some interesting new mechanics. Sky and City maps are specially interesting.

So yeah, this is not as good as Country, but it is not so much worse. It's a good game that worth playing.

Preliminary: So this is the Donkey Kong game we owned growing up. I never quite truly loved it, mostly becasue I got stuck on a mid or late game level, but also because it always paled to whatever brief exposures I had to the great Donkey Kong Country. And now that I've played Donkey Kong Country through, and absolutely loved it (we didn't own that growing up, so I only got tastes/views of it elsewhere), I am worried this will pale even further. But I do have nostalgia for it, so I'm sure it'll get some boost. Plus, we didn't have a way to enjoy the perks of the SGB aspect.

Ok the music is even better than I remembered (but also familiar). And I vividly remember this save file select screen, so I think I played this more than I realized. At least the first few worlds. Then I struggled to get past a level or figure out where to go or something.

The scrolling is a bit nauseating tho. And the hit sound is annoying, as are the collision masks... and the level design... I'm not sure nostalgia and the loose connection to the excellent Donkey Kong Country will earn this a 3 or more... After all, I now have access to DKC and could just uh play that instead.

Yeah I've had enoguh on the 2nd level lol.

Look: 6.5/10

Sound: 7.5/10

Play: 6.5/10

Feel: 7/10

Attachment: 7/10 Can't deny I've put hours into this game. But I also see why it was never my favorite Gameboy gaem we had, even tho it was one of the only if not the only platformer we owned (and platformer is a favorite genre of mine)

Overall: 6.9/10

I think the designers forgot the Game Boy screen was 4-color grayscale and not the full color of the SNES. I'm positive the developers made every hit box 10 pixels larger than the art just to test my sanity. I have to agree with Game Boy Essential's review.

The art for Hogwash the Flying Pig and Gnawty Beavers earn the game an entire star. Love those two.