Donkey Kong Land

hangs from a chain in a city-themed level unique to Donkey Kong Land. As a handheld companion to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game Donkey Kong Country (1994), Donkey Kong Land features similar gameplay: it is a side-scrolling platform game in which the player controls the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong across 30 levels. Donkey is stronger, Diddy is faster, and the player can swap between them at will. They jump between platforms, stomp on enemies, swing on vines, and avoid obstacles. The player travels through four worlds, their progress tracked by a world map. Land retains some level themes from Country, such as jungles and coral reefs, but introduces others, such as cliffs and clouds. It also features different level design, enemy varieties (such as flying pigs), and bosses. Levels are populated by collectible bananas, barrel-shaped cannons, hidden bonus stages, throwable items, and letters spelling K–O–N–G that save the player's progress. Some levels feature one of two animal companions, the rhino Rambi and the ostrich Expresso, who provide the Kongs with special abilities. Each world ends in a boss fight. The player starts with a limited number of lives, which are lost if they fall down a bottomless pit or are damaged by an enemy. The player can earn extra lives by collecting balloons or a hundred bananas. ==Development==

(pictured). Rare began working on Donkey Kong Land in 1994, alongside Donkey Kong Country and shortly before the cancellation of a Battletoads Arcade Game Boy port. Rare's co-founder, Tim Stamper, asked their Game Boy programmer Paul Machacek to port Donkey Kong Country to the Game Boy. Machacek convinced Stamper it would be better to develop a similar but original game, as he had with the Game Boy version of Battletoads (1991). He reasoned it would not take much more effort and would expand the audience to those who had not purchased Donkey Kong Country. After Machacek spent roughly three weeks updating the Game Boy Battletoads game engine to handle a Donkey Kong game, development began and lasted a year. Like Country, Land features pre-rendered graphics converted to sprites through Rare's Advanced Computer Modelling (ACM) compression technique. Although the Game Boy is considerably less powerful than the SNES, its basic architecture is similar; this allowed Machacek to easily transfer Country artwork to Land and the artists to use the same PowerAnimator tools for new ACM assets. The limitations meant only one player character could appear on-screen at a time and that Rare had to reduce the number of bonus stages and animal companions. Land team started as just Machacek but grew to over 15. They worked separately from the teams that developed the Country games for the SNES, and designed levels using a spare Silicon Graphics workstation with a custom level editor. Norgate, who described Land as his most upbeat work, wrote original tracks to fit the new locales' atmosphere. It was his first Game Boy project and the system's technical restrictions forced him to focus on melodies. He said Wise helped teach him as they worked together: "He'd drip feed me little tricks to improve the overall sound. 'You can repeat the melody three steps forward at a third of the volume to emulate an echo', and voila, your lead melody now has a lovely tight delay that makes it sound a lot wider and smoother". ==Release==

Donkey Kong Land was the second Donkey Kong game for the Game Boy, following Donkey Kong (1994). In Japan, the game was released under the title Super Donkey Kong GB. Nintendo distributed Land in banana yellow cartridges, unlike other Game Boy games, which came in grey. Land was one of several games optimised for the Super Game Boy, a peripheral allowing Game Boy cartridges to be played on a SNES; playing it through the Super Game Boy adds colour palettes and a jungle-themed border. Donkey Kong Land sold 3.91 million copies, making it the bestselling Donkey Kong game for a Game Boy console. ==Reception==

Donkey Kong Land received positive reviews and was named the best Game Boy game of 1995 by GamePro. Critics considered it a successful translation of Country gameplay to the Game Boy and wrote that players who enjoyed the SNES game would also enjoy Land. Diehard GameFan and Electronic Gaming Monthly highlighted the new levels, mechanics, and locales, and The Electric Playground said the controls were tight and responsive. GamePro said that despite the technical limitations and smaller scope, Land was "a formidable effort considering what it accomplishes on a portable system", with lengthy levels and challenging gameplay. Three reviewers in Weekly Famicom Tsūshin commented on the games difficulty with one summarizing it as too difficult to learn. Reviewers praised the visuals, impressed by Rare's effort to preserve Country pre-rendered art style. GameFan and Video Games: The Ultimate Gaming Magazine called it one of the best-looking Game Boy games with detail unprecedented for the system, and Computer and Video Games (CVG) said the visuals and animations were still excellent despite lacking Country fidelity. The Electric Playground said the visuals, though great, highlighted the Game Boy's limitations, as its monochromatic screen occasionally made it difficult to comprehend the gameplay. GamePro agreed that the Game Boy's screen did not do the visuals justice. Some critics recommended playing Land on the Super Game Boy for adding colour and making the visuals easier to discern. Two reviewers in Weekly Famicom Tsūshin commented on the graphics, with one saying they were hard to parse, even on the Super Game Boy. Another questioned the aim for realistic graphics when the result ended up looking like rough pointillism. Opinions differed as to how Land compared to Country and the rest of the Game Boy's library. Some critics considered Land equal to Country (CVG called it superior on the basis of its gameplay); others called it lesser. Game Players felt that both featured quality gameplay, but Land lacked the visual fidelity that made Country special. A number of critics called Land one of the best Game Boy games, but The Electric Playground said it was not as inventive, satisfying, or original as the 1994 Game Boy Donkey Kong. Still, they felt it was one of the Game Boy's best platformers and an essential purchase. The music and sound were praised as among the Game Boy's best. The Electric Playground believed they were near-perfect translations of Country, and GameFan said they sounded on par with a SNES game when played through the Super Game Boy. == Legacy ==

Michael Teitelbaum wrote a children's book adaptation of Donkey Kong Land, Rumble in the Jungle, following its release. The follow-ups attempted to replicate the SNES games more closely; unlike Land, they do not introduce new level archetypes or enemies. The Land trilogy was rereleased for the Nintendo 3DS via the Virtual Console in 2014. Donkey Kong Land was released via the Nintendo Classics service on 22 November 2024. Retrospective reviewers considered Donkey Kong Land a technical achievement. Nintendo Life felt Rare successfully replicated Country art style on the Game Boy and praised the music, which they considered among the Game Boy's best. Nintendo Life said that enemies blending with the background made Land needlessly difficult and lamented the absence of the Super Game Boy enhancements in the 3DS rerelease. Polygon ranked Donkey Kong Land and its sequels among the lesser Donkey Kong games; In a 2018 interview, Machacek said that of the games he worked on, Donkey Kong Land remained among his favourites. Some of Land levels, such as K. Rool's pirate ship, were featured in subsequent Donkey Kong games. It also established a tradition of Donkey Kong games being distributed on yellow cartridges, which its sequels and Donkey Kong 64 (1999) continued. ==Notes==