At the beginning years of the Gameboy's reign, we'd see semi-ports of NES games like Megaman, Mario and Gradius, but Donkey Kong Land was the first to take a stab at the Super Nintendo.

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Being released one year after their SNES equivalents, the Donkey Kong Land series seemed to successfully capture the lush visuals and easy flow of Donkey Kong Country. The plot, controls, and even the environmental setup were almost identical with each other, but the designs of the levels themselves were completely different.

Interestingly enough, I played Donkey Kong Country 2 for the SNES a few months before playing this. Sounds like the perfect time fooor:

:::Home to Pocket Comparison!!

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In the SNES version, sprites and backgrounds are very flush in color, giving an almost 3D feel during gameplay. The shape and animation quality of the sprites separate themselves from the traditional SNES sprite. On the Gameboy edition, sprites are monochrome, but the shading gives a nice touch. The shapes and animations give a similar flow, separating themselves from the average pixel-tastic Gameboy games. Controls feel very spot on, allowing a wonderful sense of flow during gameplay. They both give an extremely similar look and feel when played on their respective consoles.

Final "Home to Pocket" verdict? Take Donkey Kong Country 2, condense it, rid it of color, and completely shift all level designs into something brand new, and you have Donkey Kong Land 2.

Gameplay is kept very similar to DK Country. You complete a series of 5+ levels before fighting a boss. Environments range from the traditional platform jumper, to underwater levels, and even wall jumping at special points. Within the levels are various banana coins (used to save your game) 1-2 Kremlin Coins and one DK Coin: Collect all 48 Kremlin Coins to unlock a secret world where you face a handful of challenging levels before defeating K. Rool for the second and final time. Kremlin Coins are located in hidden bonus rounds while DK Coins (which reward you with nothing but 100% completion) are hidden in the level. Minus the secret world, there are 5 other worlds, totaling in about 30+ levels.

Much like every DK Country title, this game is hard. Hard, but completely fair. If you die after jumping off a rope above two moving giant wasps and run into the jumping Kremlin that you timed incorrectly, it is YOUR fault. The controls are spot on, and I couldn't repeat that enough. I would recommend avoiding this on the original's blurry green screen, since sprites will get confused with the background.

In some levels, you are given an alternate character used to play through the majority of the level, and they are a tougher than testicles Rhino, a Snake with lemur genes, an impact web shooting/platform making Spider, a pecan shooting Parrot, and a Swordfish. One minor disappointment is that you need to spend two Banana Coins whenever you want to save a game. Which, doesn't get all too ridiculous once you figure out how to spam exiting levels.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
This game is incredibly fun to play and complete. Extremely rewarding once the secret world is unlocked and beaten. It looks and plays just like its Super Nintendo version, giving you all new grounds to cover, and still feeling very familiar to the previous home console installment. You are playing a SNES game on the monochromatic Gameboy. It is that awesome.

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