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Donkey Kong Country - Dark Jaguar - 14th February 2024
In modern terms, this game would be called a "demake", taking what was considered cutting edge on the Super Nintendo, a game only possible on that generation and simply saying "nope, the NES could do all this too". Donkey Kong Land was a sort of spiritual "demake", but in truth that game wasn't the same, with it's own distinct levels including new themes and enemies. This was the real deal, a true port to a console that, based on advertising for the SNES game, shouldn't have been able to run it. Oh, and by this point the source code for the SNES originals had been lost. So, they modified the Donkey Kong Land engine, with notable physics changes as a result. This would be a recurring trend with ports of the orig trig, but that's for another time, during the Microsoft era of Rare.
It's the visuals that most struck people playing this version. On the one hand, it's technically impressive that they managed to get everything working and recognizable. Credit must also be given for making sure everything is identifiable and that it's easy to tell sprites from background, or landable terrain from mere background art. This can't be said for the Donkey Kong Land series, due to limitations of black and white or even the Super GameBoy mode those games are designed to run in. That splash of color to differentiate is critical, however, because the decision to keep using the CG assets and downgrade them to this level means everything looks rather messy and noisy at this level of resolution. There is, simply, too much detail to work with, so scrunching it down means things tend to blur into each other as opposed to hand-crafted sprites. As a result, the game is not colorblind friendly any more than the Donkey Kong Land games were. Further, the decision to use those assets and try to maintain the same "size" results in a smaller viewing area, meaning some secrets need more telegraphing to avoid being overlooked. Fortunately, clever use of the camera helps to make sure few can be overlooked, but many obstacles still jump out at the last moment.
The audio is notable as well for borrowing heavily from Donkey Kong Land, taking tunes that were already demade into tone generated form from their MIDI style originals. In a few cases, whole tunes were out and out replaced, and one brand new song was made, but not for the brand new level. All in all, they're enjoyable versions, even if half the tunes had already been done in games previous.
The controls are serviceable and familiar to anyone who's played Donkey Kong Land. While reduced, no sacrifices needed to be made due to the first DKC not having things like "animal special moves" or a "team up" mechanic that needed their own button. What's much more notable are the altered physics. Platformers are particularly sensitive to changes in physics, since every single level in a game, all it's jumps, enemy patterns, bounce pads, tricky items meant to be reached at the very extent of risky moves, all of it is specifically calibrated around the game's original physics. This means even a slight change can have pretty drastic repercussions. Giving credit where it's due, the Donkey Kong Land physics did get altered just enough to be pretty close to SNES values, but it's not just those values. Hit boxes are a lot looser, more like pure boxes than the more form fitting boxes in the original. Further, certain behaviors linger on. The "camera death" glitch (wherein if a camera has a fixed high vertical position, it might not scroll in time to prevent the engine from killing off the player interpreting it as a bottomless death pit) has been mostly resolved from the Land series, but still occurs from time to time. Further, the "bounce" behavior has some odd inertia for players to get used to. Oh yes, then there's the timing of the "3 card monty" style mini-game, which is now far harder to see the final barrel the item appears in.
The game's save system was overhauled. The game now auto-saves level completions and secrets found, which necessitated giving Candy Kong another purpose entirely. Further, new difficulty modes were added. The game allows you to disable either all Kong partner barrels or all continue barrels, but not both at the same time. Notably as a boon to completionists, the game will track progress in all three "modes" on the same save file. So, you only need to unlock stickers and find all bonus levels once, saving some time when you're playing through all the levels three times in a row. Further, the game's old "101% completion" now requires completing both of these new harder difficulty modes.
Back to map design, most of the maps are very accurate to the originals with very few changes. Necky's Nightmare was introduced as a new near-final level in the last world of the game. It's appreciated to see some additional content, and this level is pretty well made, if short. It's a test without being nearly as frustrating as the actual final level in the game. Notably this level would be scrapped from the GBA port later on, but the GBA port's failings are again for another time.
Beyond that, there's a few other notable additions. There are "stickers" hidden in many levels. All of them require giving the ground a hard smack which will stir up a fluttery 8 bit sticker to quickly grab. These can all be viewed in a "sticker book" and printed. Notably the GBA port also added a lot of "photos", but these are not just completely different images, they're all hidden in completely different places. There are also three new mini-games. Candy Kong now has a mini-game barrel. These are a series of unique "bonus levels", much like the ones normally found hidden inside levels but with some unique mechanics. This is honestly my favorite new "mini-game" as it uses the existing game's mechanics instead of tacking on something else entirely. It's certainly better than if they'd decided to have Candy do a dance rhythm game or some crazy thing. This is also part of full completion percentage as well as helping to unlock the other two mini-games by winning unique "coins".
The other two bonus modes exist outside the main game. One involves a series of escalating "shooting gallery" stages... on the Gameboy... without a lightgun... It's serviceable, and even the hardest level at the end isn't too difficult. It's much like a similar mini-game in DK64. The second is a "fishing mini-game", because this was an era when EVERY game had to have a fishing game hidden in it. It's a little more complicated than the Link's Awakening fishing game, but also involves a lot of luck. Beating the high score will be a test of patience more than anything, as no matter how good you get, you can get a string of garbage instead of the squid you so desperately need to extend your time. All in all, these mini-games don't enhance the core experience and in the case of the fishing mini-game can really drag out that full completion time way longer than is enjoyable.
All in all, for the most part the new additions were well thought out (certain mini-games aside) and the demake looks and sounds good enough to at least be playable. However, this is one case where it's hard not to recommend the original simply because the whole package with original graphics and sound really complete the experience. Add to that certain frustrations brought on by the smaller viewing area and the altered physics, the original edges this version out.