#honestly halfway through this I realized this should be posted to my neocities

[athetos]

Donkey Kong Land 2 is interesting. Unlike DKL1, it’s less its own game and more a remix of DKC2 for weaker hardware. Most levels from the SNES title are accounted for here, but with layouts that differ from only slightly to a rather large amount, but it’s still obvious what stages they’re based on; they even share the same names. Due to the limitations of the game boy, there are a couple of stages that had their gimmicks tweaked; “Glimmer’s Galleon” no longer features it’s namesake (which is doubly weird, as Glimmer as featured on the box art in all regions), instead forcing the player to rely on timed switches to light up the level, and two levels from the SNES game - “Haunted Hall” and “Castle Crush” - are replaced with “Krazy Koaster” (in line with the roller coaster stages from Krazy Kremland) and “Dungeon Danger” (a non-scrolling castle stage), respectively. While they’re less interesting solely because the original gimmicks were two of the best the franchise had, they feel like they belong.

Unfortunately, while DKC2 is such a great game that it’s pretty much impossible to fuck up the formula, there’s some pretty glaring issues in DKL2 that make it much less fun. First and foremost, it has the problem that virtually every other game boy platformer suffers from - the screen is just too small. The spritework here is honestly incredible, with the SNES pre-rendered graphics converted rather nicely here, but that’s only feasible by making them large and detailed. That leaves far too little room to see what’s ahead of your character. You will frequently be making blind jumps and hoping that an enemy or obstacle isn’t hiding just off screen. Because of this, you’ll be playing much more cautiously than usual, and when you do make a blunder, you’ll feel cheated, as without trial and error, there’s just no way you’ll progress.

(Below: comparison of Hot Head Hop in DKL2 with Hot Head Hop in DKC2.)

To make things worse, the controls just feel… off. I have beaten the original DKC trilogy at least 5 times at this point, and the movements of the Kongs here don’t feel anywhere near as precise. Even after clearing the game, I still wasn’t able to adapt to the changes in jump speed and distance, and was frustrated by how wrong it felt. The select button being used for the special abilities of the animal buddies was also incredibly awkward, particularly with Squitter, but considering the original hardware didn’t have shoulder buttons or x or y, I can’t really think of a better solution, other than removing the abilities altogether and reworking the levels to accommodate for that.

The bosses were never the high point of any of the DKC games, but they’re pretty underwhelming here. It’s nowhere near as bad as DKC1 or DKL1, thankfully, but it would be hard to do worse. Kleever and Kreepy Krow are the biggest downgrades, and Kudgel is missing entirely, as worlds 2 and 3 from DKC2 were merged into one extra-large world, for some reason (having a volcano and a shipwreck in a swamp on the same map is pretty amusing). The music and sound effects also just don’t cut it. Surprisingly, the soundtrack is composed by Grant Kirkhope, one of my favorite composers, and it’s his first one while working at Rare, too. Unfortunately, it’s a straight conversion of the SNES soundtrack, and it simply wasn’t meant to be played on game boy hardware. Without the samples the SNES worked with, and the extra sound channels, it all sounds very flat, which is a shame, because David Wise’s original soundtrack is among the greatest video game ost’s of all time. To top it all off, while the sound effects aren’t bad, there seem to be some that are blatantly missing. The samples used when the player or an enemy takes damage obviously couldn’t be translated over to game boy, but not having any auditory feedback for a hit or kill is odd. It seems like a small thing, but you really miss its presence.

Overall? It’s hard to recommend, solely because there’s no reason to play this game when DKC2 exists, and is even more accessible than DKL2. I played on NSO, as I needed something simple as a palette cleanser between longer games, and DKC2 is also available on the service. It’s also extraordinarily easy to emulate, anyway. At least DKL1, while not coming close to the heights of DKC1, did its own things, with unique level theming that was never revisited in other titles, and completely original layouts, plus some new tunes. DKL2 is just a strange port/remix that sticks far too closely to DKC2 to be worth your time, unless you, like me, have played every DKC game to death and are looking to see these games in a new light. In that case, it ends up being an amusing diversion, but not much else.

The only question now is - does DKL3 adhere too closely to its SNES counterpart to be worth your time, or does it manage to learn from its predecessors and be an experience that is separate enough to deserve a deeper look? I’m guessing it’s the former, but I’ll find out soon enough.