5th October 2012, 5:25 AM
So it's been a while but I recently played through DK GB again, and I've got a few things to add here.
DMiller, unfortunately what you were seeing wasn't SGB support. The Gameboy Color and GBA (and DS) have NO Super Gameboy support. Instead, that was just a built in palette treating it just like a lot of original GB games.
Now, I have a Super Gameboy (2), and I still use it for the appropriate games. This game is the shining example of what the SGB could do when designed for well. Aside from adding in some sounds using the SNES's sound capabilities (Pauline actually cries for help instead of just a garbled noise, for example, and she sounds kinda like Olive Oil), the game has a built in border that looks like a DK arcade machine.
The coloring is very well done. The still shots of the world maps all are fully colorized, as are the pause screen, score screen, startup screen, and so on. The individual levels each have a unique palette which does a very good job. They actually handicap themselves a little further by only changing two colors in each stage's palette (the other two stay the same so Mario's coloring is consistent throughout the game). However, the colors always match each other very well. Forests are green, cities are grey, oceans are blue, wooden ships are brown. The final battle is also a stationary screen with sections Mario can't go to, so they colorized it surprisingly well as well.
All in all, the colorized look really fleshes out the world and makes everything seem much more "alive". It's the way the game was meant to be played. To this day it's a shame Nintendo has basically decided it's not worth the effort to emulate SGB modes in their rereleases of Super Gameboy games.
As for the gameplay, it's amazing what they could do. Mario can do handstands and u-turn jumps and all sorts of new tricks now, and the stages progress with a more puzzle-like atmosphere than the first 4.
DMiller, unfortunately what you were seeing wasn't SGB support. The Gameboy Color and GBA (and DS) have NO Super Gameboy support. Instead, that was just a built in palette treating it just like a lot of original GB games.
Now, I have a Super Gameboy (2), and I still use it for the appropriate games. This game is the shining example of what the SGB could do when designed for well. Aside from adding in some sounds using the SNES's sound capabilities (Pauline actually cries for help instead of just a garbled noise, for example, and she sounds kinda like Olive Oil), the game has a built in border that looks like a DK arcade machine.
The coloring is very well done. The still shots of the world maps all are fully colorized, as are the pause screen, score screen, startup screen, and so on. The individual levels each have a unique palette which does a very good job. They actually handicap themselves a little further by only changing two colors in each stage's palette (the other two stay the same so Mario's coloring is consistent throughout the game). However, the colors always match each other very well. Forests are green, cities are grey, oceans are blue, wooden ships are brown. The final battle is also a stationary screen with sections Mario can't go to, so they colorized it surprisingly well as well.
All in all, the colorized look really fleshes out the world and makes everything seem much more "alive". It's the way the game was meant to be played. To this day it's a shame Nintendo has basically decided it's not worth the effort to emulate SGB modes in their rereleases of Super Gameboy games.
As for the gameplay, it's amazing what they could do. Mario can do handstands and u-turn jumps and all sorts of new tricks now, and the stages progress with a more puzzle-like atmosphere than the first 4.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)