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Name: Donkey Kong Country 4
Developer: Hummer Team
Release Date: 1997
Console: Famicom
Ok, despite my praise for the awesomeness that is Donkey Kong Country, I've never actually finished a single game. I never had a SNES, it didn't work on the emulator I used back when I regularly downloaded console ROMs onto my computer, and I'm much more of an Xbox guy now, so this is one of those classic games that slipped through the cracks for me. Maybe I'll get around to playing it sometime in the future, but it's not a high priority for me right now, with all the Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Lego Dimensions, and Spelunky I've still to play.
Still, even someone who hasn't played 5 minutes of it since he was seven can admire just what an accomplishment this game was for the time, and even, to an extent, is to this day! The computer-generated graphics, the tens of thousands of colors, the smooth frame rate, the high number of animation frames for practically everything, the detailed and smooth-scrolling backgrounds, and the wide variety of collectables, secrets, bonuses, settings, and gameplay styles were all revolutionary for the time! It truly showed what the SNES was capable of, and what could be accomplished even on 16-bit hardware in 1994, blowing the arguably more advanced CD-based consoles of the time, like the Sega CD and PlayStation, out of the water! And, on top of that, it's a LOT of fun! You could easily spend hours traversing each level; first trying to get to the end, then going back and finding all the secrets and bonuses hidden in each. Nothing is repetitive, everything has a personality(helped by the game's excellent soundtrack from the legendary David Wise), and it has enough charm and variety to keep both young novice and older veteran players interested for a good, long time.
Not only did it promote Donkey Kong from antiquated cameo antagonist to Nintendo's main stable of characters, but it's what made game developer Rare a household name. Sure, they had existed for about a decade before producing this game, and were behind the cult classics Wizards & Warriors and Battletoads, but most of their output was budget licensed material and sports games/game shows.
They're one of the companies that kept LJN in business...
But after this game, and with their new partnership with Nintendo, it was full speed ahead, no holds barred! Killer Instinct, Goldeneye, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Jet Force Gemini, Blast Corps, Perfect Dark. the various ports, sequels, and spinoffs of Donkey Kong Country, the list goes on and on of just how many quality games they churned out! It seemed that every project they were handed turned to gold! Even throw-away licenses like Mickey's Speedway USA managed to turn out pretty decently with them at the helm! Clearly, Rare was a force to be reckoned with in the 90s and early 00s.
...And then they had a major falling-out with Nintendo(totally Nintendo's fault) and sold themselves to Microsoft. And while they produced fairly decent titles like Grabbed By The Ghoulies, Kameo: Elements of Power, and Viva Pinata, and did a fair conversion of Conker's Bad Fur Day to the Xbox in Conker: Live and Reloaded, it was clear that their glory days were over. Especially with their attempt to reboot/"modernize" Banjo-Kazooie with Nuts and Bolts...
Nowadays, Rare barely exists, with basically nothing to their name in the last 10 years besides a few Kinect Sports titles. Though a few employees recently left to form Playtonic Games, who developed the decent throwback-platformer Yooka-Laylee, and Microsoft/Rare have announced the large-scale MMO Sea of Thieves for March of this year, so there may still be hope for this company yet.
Ironically, it's because of the success of Donkey Kong Country and Nintendo themselves that Rare rushed to end their partnership with them. Donkey Kong Country looked and played so well, it made everything Nintendo was making at the time look primitive by comparison. Nintendo got so jealous and worried, that they scrapped the work they had already put into the Super Mario World sequel and started on what would later become Yoshi's Island, pulling out every stop they could in a desperate attempt to make it as technically impressive as Rare's work. However, while Yoshi's Island is also a glorious classic that holds up today, their attempt to match Rare ultimately failed, with Donkey Kong Country selling over DOUBLE the copies!
And it was this defeat and intimidation that led Shigeru Miyamoto to utter his infamous quote:
"Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good."
Miyamoto later apologized for the quote, saying he was stressed from being pushed to develop Yoshi's Island, but the damage was done. The relationship between Rare and Nintendo became more and more strained, ultimately resulting in Nintendo insisting that Rare scrap all work they had done on their magnum opus Dinosaur Planet and turn it into a new Starfox game. To which Rare flipped them the bird, took the first bid Microsoft threw their way, and sent Nintendo the mediocre, half-finished Starfox Adventures as a sign that they were no longer going to put up with their jealous meddling.
Thus ends the story of the game that both made AND broke its company. Rare's work was so good, their own partners felt threatened and tried to destroy them... Sort of a modern Biblical parable, come to think of it.
And that brings us to a certain game made in 1997, when Rare was still the king of game making and before their ugly split from Nintendo. Donkey Kong Country was doing so well, that even countries where video gaming was barely a thing were taking notice. Some unscrupulous companies even decided that they could cash in on the craze by making their own versions of DKC, but for the more popular Famiclones that were easier and cheaper for the average person there to acquire. Thus opened the floodgates for a number of unofficial demakes of this game, including what we have today: Donkey Kong Country 4!
The DKC4 cartridge I have is a bit of a different design than most other Famicom carts I've come across, official or otherwise. It's slightly larger than the standard "Famicart", with much more rounded edges and slight dips on either side of the pin housing. My favorite part, however, are the ridges on the top, which almost look like they melted the middle, as there's a curve that turns the lines wavy. This was possibly put on to make it easier to take out, but, for all I know, this is just a manufacturer trying to stand out.
This is what I'm going to refer to as the "Russian style", as this seems to be the standard for Famicom cartridges manufactured in that country, which is where I got mine.
You can tell where this came from, since the warnings on the back are all in Russian. Plus they continue that griddle wave from the front. ...Anyone else want to grill a cheese sandwich on this thing?
I'd also mention that it sticks out due to its orange color, but since there's no standard for cartridge color, it's not exactly unique.
As it's a port of Donkey Kong Country, its cover is a direct copy of the original game's box art, heavily cropped to cut out the bullet points, rating, and Nintendo attributions. Mine doesn't even have the "4" stamped on!
Though there are some that do, so I guess I just lost out on getting my unofficial copy graced by the almighty "4".
Though if I was REALLY lucky, I could have had the palette swap Super Smash Bros DK variant! ...Life's just not fair sometimes, is it?
Today's game was developed in 1997 by Hummer Team.
Hummer Team(or Hummer Technology Co., Ltd.) was a Taiwanese pirate game developer that was established in 1992 by former employees of Computer & Entertainment, which also developed unofficial Famicom and Mega Drive games. During their roughly eight years of activity, they became quite prolific for porting games from later consoles(mostly Genesis and SNES) to the Famicom, and being one of the most competent demaking companies at that! ...Though, seeing as how these are versions of games meant to be played on more advanced hardware that were made on the cheap, that's not too high a bar to set...
Among their well-known "retromake" contributions are Kart Fighter(a Mortal Kombat-like version of Super Smash Bros), Street Fighter II, the SNES version of Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, Super Mario World, Final Fight, and the infamous "Somari the Adventurer", a mash-up of Super Mario Bros. 3 and the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. And while I have most of those titles, their Super Mario World port is undumped and frustratingly difficult to get ahold of, so it's going to take quite a while to get around to that one...
After 1998, their output significantly stagnated, with their only major releases being the simplistic platformer Panda Adventure, and the also infamous Titenic/Harry's Legend, which I briefly mentioned in my review of the other Titanic NES game(and is ALSO stupefyingly hard to come by...)
They stopped producing games around 2006, with their last known release being the Plug n Play "ZDog" console, containing variants of their last few games. They officially closed their doors in 2010, leaving a legacy for bootleg gamers like myself to research and share.
While not mentioned on the cartridge, the game was published by J.Y. Company, which you might know for their creepy "spider-sun" logo that can be found on some of their published games. ...And won't go away once brought up...
J. Y. Company was also a Taiwanese game company, which lasted roughly from 1989 to 2003. For most of their life, they published multicarts, but from 1994-1998, they released "original" games, mostly from Hummer Team and Ei-How Yang. After those partnerships ended, likely due to the Famicom being truly and utterly dead by 1998, they went back to multicarts, including cartridges for the SNES and Game Boy, before they finally folded in 2003, leaving their MS-Paint logo abomination to haunt the darkest corners of the unofficial game market...
And yes, that's a copyright symbol you see next to Hummer Team. ...I REALLY hope that's just a screen hack of something, because the thought of being sued by Hummer for sharing their illegal Donkey Kong Country fan creation is hilarious to me...
This demake of one of the greatest games of all time begins REALLY promising, starting with a VERY faithful version of DKC's intro sequence. Cranky Kong turns an old-fashioned phonograph that plays a mellow, 8-bit version of the game's theme, only to have Donkey Kong swing in from the top of the screen with a boombox and funk that 8-bit jam up! ...To which Cranky throws a TNT barrel that ruins Donkey Kong's groove. Sure, the background is missing the construction platforms which referenced the original Donkey Kong, and the sound effects and a few frames and animations are missing, but considering how smooth and detailed it looks on a console that had barely grasped the concept of a cutscene(and that couldn't even include all levels of their port of Donkey Kong), it's REALLY impressive!
The title screen is also a simplified version of DKC's, slightly downgraded and with the backdrop missing. Plus it has the addition of a skewed "4", placed in a location that actually looks like it fits with the rest of the title! Kudos!
As an aside, I think I know why at least some bootleg games have a random number in their title that sets them apart as a sequel(even if there were no previous sequels.) I have nothing to back this up with, but I heard that the number actually stands for how many zones are in the game. Donkey Kong 4 has 4(technically), Sonic 3D Blast 5 has 5, etc. Obviously, that's not the case with ALL pirate games(such as Tom & Jerry 3 and Hercules 2), but it is an explanation for random title numbers like this. ...Though, since this technically IS "Donkey Kong Country 4"(as it came out after Donkey Kong 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!), this explanation was more unneeded than most of my others. You're welcome!
As you can guess from the intro, all in-game sprites are directly copied from the original game! The color palettes aren't as varied, the background is mostly black, the animations have a smaller number of frames, and the sprites have been shrunken to avoid sprite flicker, but the layouts are nearly 1:1 with the original, and the detail that's kept from the conversion from the SNES is stunning! This is quite easily one of the best animated Famicom/NES games, and an incredibly faithful reproduction considering the downgrade in hardware! Even if the art is stolen, the fact that they had to get it to run on a previous-generation console, plus make it look this smooth, plus incorporate this many colors and varying sprites without slowdown, PLUS keep the gameplay mechanics the same as the original, especially on a controller with only two buttons, is nothing short of mindblowing! This is an amazing technical marvel for what they had to work with, and a great example that all because it's obsolete, doesn't mean you can't create great work with it!
...And then you start to play it...
When you take control of everyone's favorite NOT-King Kong, you may notice that this game has something more in common with the Sega Genesis than the Famicom:
For some reason, everything moves much faster here than in the actual game, or most other platformers in general. Movement, attacks, animations, all feel about 20% faster than it should. I don't know if this was an unintentional(or possibly even intentional) move on the developers' part, or if it's an issue with the conversion from PAL to NTSC(or my console trying to run a PAL cartridge), as PAL formats were generally programmed to run faster since the lower GHz of the CPU would then slow it to normal speed, but whatever the reason, it's a VERY annoying feature that you NEED to get used to in order to progress anywhere.
Especially because, since everything is moving at a faster rate, you can walk right into off-screen obstacles with no time to react to them. You'll encounter more cheap deaths this way...
It gets even worse in later levels, where you need to launch yourself out of barrels and timing is crucial to avoid flying headlong into a Zinger... The game simply gives you no time to react to onscreen obstacles, so if you think you can zip through this game because you're the world champion at DKC and know every pattern to the point your tongue can also function as a perfectly-balanced metronome, prepare to be knocked down several pegs...
And don't even get me started on the levels with the barrels of respawning, turbo-charged snakes...!
None of the speed issues are helped by the other major problem I actually CAN blame Hummer Team for: The obnoxious jumping and "jump camera." Since the game is trying to replicate the level design of the original as closely as possible, that means it has to vertically scroll as well as horizontally, a feature not often attempted in NES games. And since the sprites are smaller than the original, yet the space of the screen is basically the same size, I guess they thought the player might easily lose track of DK or the game wouldn't scroll correctly, so they permafixed the camera to ALWAYS remain fixated on the character in the middle of the screen. As such, every time(EVERY time) the player jumps, and there's area above to scroll to, the camera moves along with DK or Diddy!
I almost feel sorry for having to show this as a GIF, because the overall effect is horrendously nauseating! Nearly every jump feels like someone grabbed you by the collar and is forcing you to jump on a trampoline. While you're trying to hop over beds of nails that have also been placed on the trampoline. And somehow, your perspective of time has been altered, so everything seems to be going twice as fast. And if you think this is hard to watch, imagine having to play the game like this!
The combination of the camera jumping around and the increased game speed makes something as simple as jumping over a pit or on top of an enemy a needlessly brutal chore! DK/Diddy shoots into the air like a rocket and falls like a lead weight, tossing the camera around with him. Since you lose sight of the other side, and you only have maybe half a second to orient yourself, you can easily find yourself jumping right into an obstacle or falling down one of the game's many pits...
And just thinking about the later levels with moving platforms makes me feel nauseous...
So if you're a huge fan of the locked-on camera perspective for microscopic sprites pioneered by such gems as Mighty Max and Marsupilami... Go home. You're drunk.
Ok, so now that you know how hard it is to play the game... Let's talk about the game!
Cosmetically, the game is a straightforward conversion of the original game for the SNES. As in the original, you start with a map screen, showing the various areas of the island that you'll be traversing through. ...But don't be fooled, as, unlike the real game, you can't actually choose your location, nor go back and replay any of the zones you've already completed. For this game, this setup just serves as an over-elaborate progress screen.
Not that you could select any of the levels even if you could replay past zones, anyway. Once a zone is selected, you're then expected to go through four levels in sequence(excluding Zone 4, which is bizarrely split into two sections of 3 levels each.) Three platforming areas(or two in both sections of Zone 4) and a boss battle at the end. Once a level is complete, it transitions to the next. There's no way to select individual levels, and, unlike the original game, you are only sent back to the main overworld map when you fully complete a zone. ...Though again, you can't select previous zones, so the overworld map is completely pointless.
There are several different areas a level can take place in, but the goal in each is the same: Run to the right and get to the exit, where DK/Diddy will do a victory dance. ...And that's the ONLY goal!
The gameplay is about as bare bones as you can get with a platformer, and lacks nearly everything that set the original game apart. Besides not having a map, meaning no bonus locations, level selection, or supporting characters, there are no medals, no secret areas, no minigames, even the animal sidekicks are missing! And fine, I understand a lack of space and sufficient processing power, but wasn't there at least enough memory to include a minecart level? Even Ducktales pulled that off back in the day.
Also due to the less powerful system, only one Kong can be on screen at any time. The method to get another Kong remains the same(smashing a DK barrel), but the other can only be seen on screen if the current Kong is hurt or if you press Select. Which then brings up another question:
Is this a conversion of Donkey Kong Country or Donkey Kong Land?
However, they DO keep the "Extra Life" collectables, so you can still get additional lives by collecting 100 bananas, all 4 "K-O-N-G" tiles, or the DK Balloon.
Which is good, because, even with the game starting you off with a whopping 25 lives, you'll find your stock quickly depleted by how easy it is to die in this game...
Since there's not exactly a unique layout for each zone, and I don't remember the name of each level they copy, I'll just break down the levels you'll encounter by each type of environment. They all follow the exact same "move left-to-right" style of platforming, so if you're familiar with one, you'll know what to expect with the next.
Jungle(Level 1-1, 2-2, 3-1, 4-2). This is the layout most people associate with the Donkey Kong games. Palm trees in the back, mounds of dirt to jump on, cliffs to scale, and plenty of Gnawtys and Kremlings to jump on. ...Though oddly, no trees to jump on. I don't remember if that was a thing in the original game, but it's odd that, in a section populated by trees, they don't serve as a platform anywhere in these levels...
As with the original game, the first level starts off with no major surprises or mechanics, just running to the end and avoiding all enemies in your way. This is the best time to get used to the wonky controls of the game, as after this level, things are going to get crazy...
Especially since later Jungle levels involve a large amount of barrel blasting, which, as I mentioned with the game's increased speed, is INSANELY difficult to time correctly... You'll find yourself smacking right into a Zinger the first 4-500 times you go through these obstacle courses.
Remember how I said they left out nearly all bonus items and areas from the original game? Well, that also includes the Star Barrel checkpoint system, so if you screw up at any point in the level, you start ALL OVER AGAIN! So if you launched Diddy into a neverending pit during one of the barrel sections, you can forget about immediately getting a second chance, as you then have to run past about a dozen Kremlings, Gnawtys, Zingers and pits, and probably another barrel blasting area before you get the privilege of trying again! ...Did I mention to stockpile lives?
Underwater(Level 1-2, 3-2). The standard swimming level for 2D platformers. Tap "A" to swim and move through this seafloor level full of fish, sharks, and spinning octopi as you navigate a maze to the end. Luckily, the apes have mastered Jedi Force breath control from Jack from the NES Titanic game, so you don't have to worry about running out of oxygen. ...No, you have a lot more to worry about.
These are easily some of the hardest levels in the game. There are only two of them, luckily, but they all but guarantee that they'll take up most of your time trying to progress through this game.
The MAJOR problems come from the enemy patterns, the hit detection, and how cramped most of the space you're given is. The fish especially have a wavy movement pattern that take up most of the tunnels you swim through, giving you VERY little room to hide in and wait them out. ...Provided you CAN find a hiding spot, since the tunnel layout doesn't quite make it clear what you can swim through or not. If the fish so much as touch the aura around DK/Diddy's sprite, it hurts them and you start over from the beginning. Lather, rinse, repeat.
You also have to deal with how slowly you move underwater and the fact everyone's faster than you. You might THINK you can swim fast enough to avoid a rapidly approaching octopus, but you'd be wrong...
It goes without saying that you can't attack anything, and without your trusty animal friend Enguarde, you're left completely defenseless as you try to maneuver around the constant threats coming your way. And with how each obstacle will hurt you if you're so much as in the same ballpark, it's a fact that you'll die unless you're the breadth of Mars away from any of them.
As a final resort, towards the end of the level, they also introduce fast moving spiky-gear things, which follow the same pattern as the octopi, but MUCH faster. Don't be fooled by the octopi you've seen before, or they will gladly saw through you and send you back to the beginning, where you need to spend another 3 minutes making it back to the end of the level while listening to the corruption that is this level's theme music!
Yeah, let's talk about the sound and music briefly, especially since it's the hardest thing TO talk about on a blog. For the most part, the sound is nonexistent, consisting only of beeps when a banana/KONG/balloon is collected, a crashing sound when a barrel is broken, a "whoosh" sound when another Kong is called into play, and a jingle when the game is paused/unpaused. So if you thought you'd get some background monkey sounds and vocal utterances from the characters, or even any major sounds to indicate you're interacting with the environment... Well, you're playing a Famicom game, so you likely wouldn't get those anyway...
The music, as seen with the earlier rendition of the title theme, is all taken from the original game, just recomposed in an 8-bit style. What results from a complex score being mixed down to one beepy track is a mixed bag. For upbeat tunes like the title theme and the DK Island Swing, it sounds great! ...But for "atmospheric" scores like Aquatic Ambiance, which I didn't like that much to begin with, I'd recommend keeping the Mute button close at hand...
Mines(Level 1-3, 3-3). The most straightforward of all the zones. The layout is simply a series of platforms. Just follow along, jump over pits, avoid the enemies, and reach the end.
And geez, talk about having no clue what you're looking at! The background for these levels is so minimalist, I had no idea they took place in a cave/mine. With the yellow bunches in the background and the hanging platforms, I originally wrote that this was a "Treetops" level, and I had to scan through some gameplay footage to find what this area was actually supposed to be!
For comparison, here's a screenshot of the ACTUAL level layout. ...Pretty easy to get confused even if you've played the game, isn't it?
Surprisingly, for a level based around jumping from platform to platform, the awkward jumping controls don't get you killed as often as you'd think. The level is mostly "level", and most of the action takes place at the top of the screen, so the camera doesn't jump around as much as the wider areas, giving you a better perspective of where you're jumping. ...Instead, what's going to kill you are the barrels that infinitely spawn enemies. It's REALLY hard to determine where and when an enemy will spawn, so more often that not, you'll wander right into a Gnawty or whatever else these things spew out. Seriously, these spew out more never-ending trash than President Trump's Twitter page*...
*Was that too easy?
Also, mobile Zingers. I have a hard enough time trying to avoid these with controls and hit detection that WORK!
Caves(Level 2-3, 4-5). Probably the most lengthy and enemy-laden of the level layouts, though surprisingly not that hard to traverse. If you know what you're getting into and can avoid the obvious traps, the only major thing you need to have to get through these is patience. ...And yes, I know that's a precious commodity nowadays, but you can hopefully practice with these levels.
Anyway, I hope you like Zingers, because the first level is bursting at the seams with them! Nearly every obstacle is a mobile Zinger flying up/down or in an arc, so I hope you're ready for a level full of timing, patterns, and a whole lotta waiting.
Still, once you have the patterns down, it's mostly a walk in the park. Just park under a Zinger until you have enough time to run past it. ...And no, unlike the real game, you can't defeat them by throwing a barrel at them. Like the underwater enemies, they're immortal.
What you MIGHT have more trouble with are the bouncy tires. These are pretty tricky even in the actual game, and that's the version with the responsive controls! You can continually press the jump button over and over, and it's a crap-shoot if you're launched into the air. This isn't made much easier when you need to launch yourself over Zingers... Still, I managed to get through on my first try, so maybe I'm overhyping how tricky this segment is. ...Wouldn't be the first time...
World 4-5 is the cave level that you're going to have the most difficulty with, since they replaced all the Zingers with those gears seen at the end of the Underwater levels... They don't let up at all, either, since every few steps introduces another spiky ball with a different pattern, so be on your toes and scroll the screen very slowly, or you might find a suddenly-appearing gear heading straight at your face...
However, since this is the final platforming level of the game, you'll likely have a feel for the controls and jumping mechanics by this point, plus plenty of adrenaline rushing through you from getting this far, so once you understand how the spikes move, you'll get through it eventually.
...Eventually.
Factory(Level 2-1, 4-1, 4-4). And here they are: The HARDEST levels in the game! Three levels of an absolute endurance test against practically everything the game can possibly throw at you! Pits, jumping enemies, spawning barrels, moving platforms, blast barrels, you name it, it's here! If you can manage to get through these sections, you are allowed to call yourself the grand master of Donkey Kong games! ...If that's the best title you can bestow upon yourself...
From the very start, these levels are ruthless, especially with their streams of hopping enemies that seem to come out of nowhere! It legitimately seems that enemies can just hop in from the right side of the screen as it's scrolling, meaning you can position yourself right under them right as he's coming down from his jump! These are levels that absolutely FORBID trying to rush through them, as you'll need to slowly inch your way to the end of the level to avoid having 200 pounds of Kremling smash into your skull...
This gets especially frustrating in areas where two Kremlings are jumping in an arc on the same platform. I don't know how they did it, but they made Kremlings harder to avoid than Zingers!
But the Kremlings are nothing compared to the endless spawn barrels! These are put in the worst possible locations and filled with the worst possible enemies; for example, these Slippas from the first of these levels that are placed above the ledge of each of the stairs at the end! And because these already fast-moving enemies are given increased speed by the game's faster processing, they're almost impossible to avoid! If you manage to jump over the first, the second almost instantly spawns in its place and you land just in time to get hit by that one! There's so much crap happening at once, that the sprite flicker makes these characters almost invisible and there's obvious slowdown as the system tries to process everything! So grab a DK barrel, make sure you have two Kongs, and pray that you can jump on enough snakes to get to the top...
But the worst offense is when they introduce moving platforms from 4-1 onward. Good news: The screen stays still and you don't get the camera shaking. Bad news: THEY'RE JUST AS FAST AS EVERYTHING ELSE! The platforms move side-to-side and up/down like they're skating on butter with skates made of crude oil! They don't pause for ANYTHING, and they don't wait for you to get into position before they change direction! By this point, if you haven't mastered the game's controls and adjusted yourself to the faster speed, you're going NOWHERE!
Especially when they start throwing in the double platforming. Even with your starting 25 lives and whatever else you've picked up during your journey, you can expect to lose them all within 5 minutes...
Actually, I haven't talked about what happens when you die yet, have I? Once you've depleted your stock of lives, you're given the same Game Over screen from the original in lower resolution, before the game starts over from the opening credits and intro screen.
But not before flashing a Password screen at you. As you've probably guessed, this game doesn't have the same battery save function as the real game, but they were kind enough to take a page from the SNES Aladdin game and give you a password system based on character heads. Once you die, the Password appears for the current zone.
Then simply go to the Password option on the main menu, type it in, and you're back! So while the gameplay is relentlessly speedy and awkward to control, they at least show you mercy in ONE area...
...Of course, it still starts you off at the beginning of the zone, so even if you were at the boss level when you got a Game Over, you're starting from scratch...
And that segues perfectly into the next part. Now that you know which landscapes they kept from the original game, and what their bizarre and frustrating takes on each are, it's time to talk bosses. Like everything else, the bosses are taken straight from the original game with the same graphics and attack patterns. ...So really, there's not a whole lot to talk about. Played the bosses from DKC? Congratulations, you've played the bosses from DKC4. With the exception of the faster gameplay and awkward controls, the strategies remain the same as the SNES counterpart. Still, to finish up this look at the game, let's do a quick rundown of which big baddies you'll encounter at the end of each zone.
Very Gnawty(Level 1-4) & Really Gnawty(Level 3-4). A giant Gnawty duo, and the easiest bosses to defeat. Simply jump on their heads while avoiding their leaps toward you. Every time you jump on them, their range gets further, so time your jumps well. Really Gnawty jumps higher, but otherwise, it's the same boss. Repeat pummeling until dead. Sell skins to Daniel Boone.
Master Necky(Level 2-4) & Master Necky Sr.(Level 4-3). Two giant Neckys you can only see from the neck up. They poke their heads in, spit a coconut at you, then retreat. Whatcha gotta do is jump on the tire and hit them before they retreat, preferably before they even get a chance to fire a coconut. Unlike the Gnawtys, there doen't seem to be a difference between them in attack patterns, but the increased game speed and the angle the coconuts are launched does make it harder to jump on them in time. My advice: Just jump on the left side of the screen. Right before the Necky pokes his head back in, bounce on the tire as high as you can and try to land on him on the left side. If he's there, you score a hit. If he's not, the coconut doesn't reach far enough to hit you, so you're safe. Repeat until dead and cook the buzzards for Thanksgiving.
Dumb Drum(Level 4-6). The most unusual enemy and the simplest to beat if you know what to do. It'll first start slamming into the ground(with an additional slam each round), so quickly get out of the way before it squishes you. After each session, it'll dump out a creature that you'll need to avoid and jump on. It then pounds the ground again and shakes out the next creature. Repeat until it falls out of the sky and explodes.
The pattern of enemies it'll spit out is similar to the original game's lineup: Kremlings, Slippas, Klaptraps, Kremlings, Armys. Since Klumps don't appear in this demake, they're replaced by 2 Kremlings again for the fourth slot. Strangely, Armys still emerge as the final creatures, and as far as I could tell, this is the only time they're in the game, so it's odd that they bothered. Maybe they were going to include them elsewhere in the game, or they at least wanted the Dumb Drum lineup to remain faithful, but they ran out of time and/or space and all we got was this one and only appearance and no Klumps. ...But these are bootleg developers we're talking about, so "an evil fairy did it" is just as much of a plausible excuse in their case...
King K. Rool(Level 5-3). After you've gone through every level and every other boss, it's time to face off against the lord high Kremling himself! He'll first throw his crown at you, which you need to jump over and onto his head. He'll then try to charge you, so you need to jump over his attack, then chase him to the other side of the boat, where he'll throw his crown at you again. Jump on him again and he'll charge you again, twice this time. Due to the increased speed, it's better to wait in the middle of the boat for him to charge by than to chase him. Crown throw, knock noggin, charge three times, crown throw, knock noggin again.
After the fourth time you jump on him, he then jumps away and unleashes a torrent of raining cannonballs on you. Since they're so close together and coming down fast, these are pretty hard to avoid. It's best to stay on one end of the ship, wait for the cannonball right in front of you to pass, then VERY quickly run from the one right above you. If you're lucky, you made it out without a scratch. Then run in the direction K. Rool threw his crown at you and jump on his head again.
Do this twice more, avoiding the increasing waves of cannonballs, and congratulations! You've saved your island from K. Rool's devious plot to... Steal bananas? What was his goal again?
Now here in the real game, fake credits roll, followed by K. Rool getting up and trying to stomp you as a last resort, before you jump on him enough to ACTUALLY win the game.
But Hummer didn't have enough time/space to put that last form on, or they didn't want to, or they legitimately thought THAT was the real ending and didn't want to watch further, because instead, we get REAL credits for the Hummer team. All EIGHT of them!
And that's the end of the game. The last thing we get is a plain "The End" message against a blue backdrop as the game's theme plays in the background. ...Yes, after hours and hours of punishing gameplay, we are finally rewarded with what's basically an FBI warning at the end of VHS tapes and early DVDs. ...Can I go play a Donkey Kong game with a more rewarding payoff now?
Like Donkey Kong Jr. Math?
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Design: It's a regular Famicom cartridge with the Donkey Kong Country box art slapped on the front of it. Admittedly, it's more eye-catching than Titanic's stock boat image, but that's more thanks to the awesomeness of the actual DKC than this game's design. Still, I do like the wavy, melted texture of the "Russian design", as it's a simple yet effective way to make your games stand out among the thousands of other Famicom and Famiclone carts. If I were to find this sitting on the shelves, I'd at least pick it up to see what it was. And if it was worth as much as an actual copy of DKC. ...Which it's not.
Controls: It's the standard Famicom/NES layout. The directional pad moves, one button jumps, and the other attacks/picks up items. The game controls pretty well for a cheap demake made by a small team, but there are some glitches and slipperiness trying to get the onscreen character to move where you want. Sometimes buttons don't respond, especially when you're too close to a ledge and trying to jump, and sometimes a button will do something you didn't want at the time, like throw a barrel you're carrying too soon. The major problem is how fast and jerky everything is. Jumping is a nauseating chore and you can easily lose track of where you were trying to jump to, falling into a pit or an enemy as a result. Overall, the controls themselves work decently, but the game doesn't always process them well.
Graphics: Everything's a straight rip from the original game, just downgraded with fewer textures, frames, and colors to accommodate the console's weaker processor. That said, it's impressive how much texture and animation they WERE able to squeeze in. While not AS fluid as the real thing, the animation is still fluid, with plenty of frames dedicated to all sprites' movements, and I'm especially impressed that they kept the 3D spinning animation for the bananas! However, the fact that they had to shrink the sprites and paint them mostly one or two solid colors to keep the game running smoothly REALLY affects how clear everything is. The main characters, barrels, and bosses fared alright, but most of the enemies have been reduced to blurry piles of pixels, only barely recognizable even if you're familiar with the game. The backgrounds have also become very minimalist, with most of the area replaced with inky blackness and vague shapes. The Jungle levels, Boss level banana hoards, and K. Rool's ship turned out alright, but I couldn't even tell the Mine levels WERE mines until I went back and searched through the actual game again! The other levels fall somewhere in between these comparisons. Still, even with all the cut corners, there's obvious sprite flicker throughout, which made keeping track of where everything was, and getting screenshots afterwards, a bit of a chore. I guess I should be happy with how much they WERE able to transfer to this game, especially with how graphically advanced the original was for the time(and even today), but considering that the graphics were one of the major selling points for the original, to see them reduced to this level without adjustment for the smaller sprite size is heart-breaking.
Music & Sound: The music is all from the original game, just recomposed to work on an 8-bit system, and in the conversion process, some tracks fared better than others. The opening theme and the Jungle music sound just fine, while tracks for the Mines and Underwater are pure ear poison! Some of the tracks I couldn't even identify, even after listening to the entire DKC soundtrack, so I have no idea what the original music for these zones was. On the whole, I guess I'd recommend listening to the title, Jungle, and boss tracks, and just muting everything else. The sound effects are taken straight from the game, just heavily bit crushed to fit, and there's not many of them. There are basic sounds for collecting items, pausing the game, and switching between Kongs, but most of the ambiance, environment feedback, and character feedback is missing. I guess I'm glad they HAVE sound effects, since that's not something commonly found in these knockoff games, but what they do have is mostly unneeded. So points for bothering to include sound, but overall, I'm not impressed.
Gameplay: Do you like rushing through Donkey Kong Country without bothering to use any of the bonus items, find any secret areas, explore the map and side games, or even play all the levels? Well, you'd probably still get more out of that than you would this game. It's as bare bones as you can get with a platformer without removing all but the enemies and layout. You move right, avoid obstacles, collect items for extra lives, fight the boss at the end, and move on. Everything that set it apart from all other platformers of the time have been cut. Even the difference in Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong's mass and fighting styles is gone! And what's left isn't much fun either. The camera and the sped up gameplay is absolutely obnoxious, leading to many, MANY cheap deaths from bumping into enemies or falling down pits, which could have been avoided if you could see where you were going! This is especially hurtful to the game during the Underwater and Factory levels, where everything's being thrown at you at once and a clear view of where you're going is necessary. Also, having to enter a password and start over again from the beginning of the zone if you run out of lives is annoying at best... Plus, you can forget about using your regular attack, since the hit detection is so bad, you're more likely to get hit by the enemy than roll into them... The only sections I could say I had fun with were the boss segments, though they didn't last that long and they're arguably the easiest parts of the game once you know what you're doing, so the challenge I was expecting after the challenge I had just gone through was completely absent! One more minor good thing I can find is that the character is positioned in the center of the screen, instead of 3/4ths of the way to the right as most of these knockoff games have. This allows for a lot more visibility and preparation for what's about to fly in your face. ...Even if enemies can still jump you from the edge of the screen if they're in the wrong position when the screen scrolls... Overall, this was a boring experience, with no trace of the revolutionary style of gameplay the original gave us.
Replay Value: Honestly, I'd be surprised if you got through this ONCE, it's that broken and boring! But if you do end up completing it, there's nothing else to come back to, since all extra bits have been removed. The only reason I can see to come back is for a speed-run. And even that's only if you're a hardened masochist...
Overall:
It's an interesting experiment to convert as much as possible from an advanced 16-bit game to an 8-bit console, but as a game, it's just not that fun. The animations are nice, a few tracks of music sound great, and it controls better than most other knockoff games I've played, but the gameplay is bare bones and BORING! FRUSTRATINGLY boring at that, since each level is a slog to get through, with a nonexistant reward at the end and no incentive to continue. This is especially sad given the variety and entertainment of the original game, and how little of it is represented here. I'd only recommend this game to the curious out there who are wondering how they managed to squeeze a technological masterpiece onto one of these outdated cartridges. Otherwise, I'd suggest saving your monwy and buying a digital copy of the original game for whatever Nintendo console you own. ...Provided Nintendo doesn't remove it from the Virtual Console again...
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