[Super Game Boy, No Border] Donkey Kong -- #4. Nature Walk
1Going on an ape hunt! Gonna find a big one!
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Also, what's the deal with playing a Super Game Boy game WITHOUT the parts that ostensibly make it "Super" and not just "Game Boy"?
To see this in all its bordered glory:
• [Super Game Boy] Donkey Kong -- #4. Nature...
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I promise I'll be DONE talking about the Super Game Boy enhancements specific to this game and this hardware configuration soon enough... but I played it this way SO much that I flat out did not even KNOW for the longest time that the vocalized cries for "HELP!" at the start of nearly every stage were one such feature.
I mean, in hindsight, yeah, no, that makes sense... it definitely doesn't fit within the tech specs of a Game Boy game. But part of the magic and whimsy of having discovered the bizarre treasure that was the Super Game Boy and its capacity to confer bespoke diffentials from the original capabilities of a game's base content... is the part that I hadn't even discovered just how well it was doing its job without my knowing it!
Listen. Kids are stupid. And observation skills and critical thinking come later. Sorry, kids. You'll grow out of it! Into... it? Something! You got this!
At least the lush, but INSANE (and not programmatically scalable with tech of the time) colorization was really eye-catching, so I didn't miss that. Until I was trying to figure out why a Game Boy Color apparently COULDN'T manage to figure out how to do the same thing.
A wizard did it. At R&D2. Yep.
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In this pre-World demo, we get introduced to... switches!
No! Wait! I swear! It's good! It's not "oh, that's totally obvious!"
Umm... ... ... Donkey Kong uses switches of a totally unnecessarily different design than the ones Mario uses?
(It's actually quite rare that Mario can even REACH a switch that DK might be using, and not just because there's some big palooka in the way, but this is more of an observation of the visual language of Donkey Kong 1994 than anything actually useful.)
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In case it was unclear up to now, there's... like... a LOT of extra lives to be had in this game. Bonus stages. Time bonuses! Every four stages, the combined remaining timer values for stage clears all get added together, and you get a 1up for every 100 counts left over! Even the excess extras after that is an extra life!
Collecting all of Pauline's dropped accessories (hats and handbags are one thing, but how many parasols does she ACTUALLY need?!) also gets you a free play of either a slot machine or a wheel of extra lives. Sure, it's usually one life per visit, and I'm REALLY bad at slot machines, but it all adds up! Mario is basically immortal! ... ... ...he better be, with how easy it is to utterly destroy his flimsy body.
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Forest, 2-1
You may also quickly notice... this game has an absolutely absurd variety of enemies. Sure, most of them end up funcitonally identical in many ways and are just a snazzy coat of paint, like... two sprites at most each time. It's a small detail, but also simultaneously an abundant one, serving to make the overall flavor of an otherwise gentle curve of simple gameplay very gradually ramping up can always feel fresh.
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Forest, 2-2
See? You didn't know all there was to know about switches from just that one little demo segment! They don't just control platforms in a slightly different fashion from those ladder and bridge pickups! They can control the movement of elevator platforms! They can even have more than two states!
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Forest, 2-3
Two helpful notes here that don't really get shown off... you can actually safely crouch under the plants' projectiles, but only when you're not holding something in your hands.
The other thing is that because the ladder pickup is so close to where Mario starts and the path to the door only shutters off once gameplay begins... you can actually block that shutter with the temporary ladder occupying that space, even after the ladder disappears.
These kinds of quirks in object interactions are critical to later stages in the game, but it's more of a quirky footnote in this one.
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Forest, 2-4
In a DK stage that's NOT the capstone of the whole themed world, you'll tend to just need to reach Donkey Kong to scare him into running away, much like the three stages leading up to 100m in the original arcade progression.
In this case, it's a recreation of the original stage layout for Donkey Kong Jr.!
... ... ...so... a reverse-reversal!