Retro Corner: Donkey Kong (Game Boy) Review · 4:01am Apr 25th, 2018
A new edition of Retro Corner is up as we review Donkey Kong for the Game Boy. Before Donkey Kong Country hit stores in the 1994 holiday season, earlier that year Nintendo released a game under the series' name. The Game Boy title has nothing to do with Rare's Country and Land series and is a standalone game. It's based on the original Arcade titles from the early 80s that had Mario chase DK to save Paulina.
Of course, the sequels changed the theme and involved two different protagonists. Donkey Kong Jr starred his son (the current DK) who tries to save his father (Cranky) from Mario. What?! Mario acting as a villain and Nintendo actually went there? The theme was a complete role reversal where DK Jr and his father were the good guys but had Mario as the villain. The third game was an entire differentthemeinvolving a exterminator named Stanley trying to stop DK. It's about stopping DK in a greenhouse with bees and that basically the theme. So why the hell is he in a greenhouse bothering this exterminator? The third game is often considered the black sheep (next to Donkey Kong Jr Math) because of such a concept.
Fortunately, Rare took the reins that year and produced Donkey Kong Country which would send the studio into stardom. The seriesfollow a brand-new theme and starred the son who took the mantel of his father Cranky's name. The Country and Land seriesintroduce a new villain for DK called King K.Rool and the Kremlins. That made sense for Rare to develop a newbad guy for the newseries. Who would this be again, Mario? Another thing about the County games is how they would come off like a 3D game for the Super NES. That was literally its biggest selling point as it pushed the console to the limit. Of course, it wasn't actually 3D graphics as everything got digitized and placed on two 2D sprites backgrounds. Like I mentioned in my Doom 64 review, it was a good middle ground technology to use until 3D console became the standard.
