Donkey Kong Land

Overview

Donkey Kong Land, known in Japan as Super Donkey Kong GB, is a 1995 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy. It condenses the side-scrolling gameplay of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game Donkey Kong Country (1994) for the handheld Game Boy with different level design and boss fights. The player controls the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they defeat enemies and collect items across 30 levels to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool.

Development began in 1994, before Donkey Kong Country's completion, and lasted a year. Rare's Game Boy programmer, Paul Machacek, developed Land as an original game rather than as a port of Country after convincing the Rare co-founder Tim Stamper it would be a better use of resources. Like Country, Land features pre-rendered graphics converted to sprites through a compression technique. Rare retooled Country's gameplay to account for the lower quality display, and David Wise and Graeme Norgate converted the soundtrack to the Game Boy's sound chip.

Donkey Kong Land was released in mid-1995. It sold 3.91 million copies and received positive reviews. Critics praised it as successfully translating Country's gameplay, visuals, and music to the Game Boy, though they disagreed over whether it was an equal experience. Land was followed by Donkey Kong Land 2 (1996), Donkey Kong Land III (1997), and a Game Boy Color version of Country (2000), which attempted to replicate the SNES Country games more closely. Land and its sequels were rereleased for the Nintendo 3DS via the Virtual Console service in 2014, and on the Nintendo Switch via the Nintendo Classics service in 2024.

Official trailer

Longplay. Watch on YouTube

Gameplay

Donkey Kong Land (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete, NintendoComplete. Watch on YouTube

Screenshots

Game details

Genres

Platform, Adventure

Developer

Rare, Nintendo

Publisher

Nintendo

Series

Donkey Kong Land

Platforms

Nintendo 3DS, Game Boy

Age rating

ESRB E

Modes

Single player

Yes

Local multiplayer

No

Online multiplayer

No

Co op

No

Age ratings

PEGI

3

CERO

A

ESRB

E

Release dates

Editions

Check out the store

Space and patches

Update patchNo patch

DLC

No DLC. Game Boy games had no downloadable content.

Playable today

Playable offline todayYes

Single player only, with no online features. The cartridge runs on any Game Boy, Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance, and the game is on Nintendo Switch Online.

Online

Plays offlineYes

Reception

Critics

Outlet	Score	Scale
Computer and Video Games	93	100
GamePro	81	100
VideoGames & Computer Entertainment	9	10
The Electric Playground	9	10

Staff and cast

Staff

Role	Name
Developer	Rare
Publisher	Nintendo
Programmer	Paul Machacek
Composers	David Wise, Graeme Norgate

Notes for collectors

• Known in Japan as Super Donkey Kong GB.
• Brings the side-scrolling play of Donkey Kong Country to the Game Boy across 30 levels, with Rambi the rhino and Expresso the ostrich.
• Sold 3.91 million copies; GamePro named it the best Game Boy game of 1995.
• Came in a banana-yellow cartridge and has Super Game Boy colours.

Credits

Publisher

Nintendo

Developer

Rare

Released

1995-06-26

Age rating

ESRB E

Region

US

Time to beat

about 2.6 hours