Donkey Kong Land 2 (Super Game Boy) Playthrough
128A playthrough of Nintendo's 1996 action-platformer for the Nintendo Game Boy, Donkey Kong Land 2.
Played on the Super Game Boy.
Donkey Kong Country ( • Donkey Kong Country (SNES) Playthrough - N... ) was joined a year later by a portable cousin, Donkey Kong Land ( • Donkey Kong Land (Super Game Boy) Playthrough ), and a direct sequel. That sequel, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest ( • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest ... ), was likewise followed up by a handheld companion piece and a sequel of its own.
On the initial impression, Donkey Kong Land 2 feels like an improvement over the first game. It runs on the same engine, but the controls are better, the graphics have more detail while still looking reasonably clean, and on the Super Game Boy, it pulls off a few neat color tricks (notice how the HUD elements have a unique palette?) and sports an eye-catching banana border.
Unlike the first Game Boy title, DKL2 isn't a new game loosely based on the structure and mechanics of its console counterpart. Instead, Rare decided to create an adaptation of the Super Nintendo game. To their credit, they managed to cram a huge chunk of its content into a 512K Game Boy cartridge. Many of the stages closely mirror their SNES twins, bazillions of secrets still lurk in out-of-the-way corners, and a large chunk of the soundtrack was retained.
It was impressive, but it was also disappointing. It forewent doing something new - something that might've appealed to the SNES game's millions of fans - for being an inherently worse version of a year-old game. I like it on its own, but I don't see why anyone who had an SNES would've bothered. (Especially not when the music quality took such a hit. DKL's PSG adaptations of DKC's tunes were stellar, but DKL2's abrasive remixes wore on my nerves. I tend to play this one on mute.)
Donkey Kong Land 2 is an excellent Game Boy game, but it's difficult to get excited about something that's best defined by what it lacks.
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