MY SCANS: Donkey Kong 1994 Wonder Life Special - APE Inc. Official Nintendo Guide
This is the Official Nintendo Guide for the all time classic Donkey Kong 94 on the Game Boy. It's an APE Inc. made guide filled with a bunch of wonderful original Benimaru Itoh artwork.
Today I beat the 1994 Gameboy game, Donkey Kong, AKA Donkey Kong '94. More magic added to the summoning spell for a new Donkey Kong game announcement this year.
For those not in the know, it appears to be a simple port of Donkey Kong 1981 to the Gameboy, but there's a bait and switch after you beat 100m, and DK gets back up to run off with Pauline, and what you have is a 100 level puzzle platformer that was the precursor to Mario Vs Donkey Kong, which will be getting a remake next month. I haven't played Mario Vs Donkey Kong for more than a little while on an emulator, but I much prefer the framing device here, making DK into a toy thief always felt like a weird move to me, but it beats kidnapping human women, especially when he supposely has Candy Kong waiting for him back at DK Isle ( assuming she's not completely retconned out of canon )
I still think this may be the best game on the game boy. It gives you 1ups like candy, which is a good thing because this game gets pretty tough at some points.
This game was made to showcase the capabilities of the Super Gameboy, which could allow you to play Gameboy games on your TV through your SNES. Some games had custom bezels, and some even had enhanced colors and sound. I don't have a Super Gameboy, and most emulators can only do the colors, not the sound. But my FX Pak Pro actually enables Super Gameboy mode, so I can play Gameboy roms with all the full capabilities of a real super gameboy.
This is definitely the way to play this game, the colors are enhanced, not to the levels of a gameboy color game, but it gets close at times. I thought at first that the only sound enhancement was actually just Pauline having a real "Help" voice clip, but when I beat the game, I was treated to a 16 bit rendition of the credits. Sound font was a bit like Yoshi's Cookie or Yoshi Safari. It was rather nice. But I have to wonder why only the credits got that treatment?
Don't sleep on this game if you have the option to play it, this will be a great primer for the upcoming Mario Vs Donkey Kong remake if you plan to pick it up.
2x Super Game Boy (Super Famicom) [JPN] - Nintendo
Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Dragon Quest VI, Bahamut Lagoon, Wonder Project J, Super Wagyun Land, Trump Island, Captain Tsubasa III, Super Keiba, True Shin Mah-Jong.
Mario's Scientist Outfit in Mario Odyssey was featured in an old advertisement for the Super Game Boy. It was an extension for the SNES that allowed people to play Game Boy games on the SNES.
Today I beat Final Fatnasy Adventure, AKA Adventure of Mana, AKA Sword of Mana, AKA Seiken Densetsu.
I thought this game just had Final Fantasy slapped onto the name to sell more copies in the west but no, it shares a little DNA in that the main character is basically just the fighter from Final Fantasy 1, with other FF classes making guest appearances, there's a status ailment that turns you into a Moogle that takes damage very easily, and you get a Chocobo friend in the game... I actually missed him unfortunately, he's required to progress the game so they have a random Chocobo you never met scoop you up after you take a fall.
This game shares a lot of it's DNA with another game as well. It really wants to be Square's answer to the Legend of Zelda. And it's a pretty good amalgamation of Zelda 1 and Link's Awakening, though it's still very much it's own thing. I very much appreciated this style of game. Especially on the Game Boy, there's just something about top down adventure/RPG games with Game Boy Aesthetics that I love so much that isn't really the same on the NES and I can't quite put my finger on it.
This game wasn't perfect though. Enemies often don't take any knockback... they do Knockback SOMETIMES but not always. And sometimes depending on your weapon, you pull them toward you, and you take damage... Also many enemies are immune to your weapons and you have to switch between them to deal any damage to them. This would be fine if it were a handful of enemies but there were so many, and I could not remember which enemies were immune to what, so often times when an enemy didn't take damage, I would just walk past them instead of switching weapons. There were practically no situations where I was required to kill all enemies so there was no incentive to bother with some of them.
Also, this game's door lock system is dog shit. You buy keys... specific enemies can drop keys but only in the early game, if you run out of keys, you have to leave to buy more...and guess what... Doors re-lock themselves when you leave. Sometiems they re-lock while you're still in the dungeon. It was absolute bullshit.
None of the flaws were deal breakers though. I had a great time with this game. I am definitely more inclined to start up Secret of Mana, I started that game on my SNES Classic Edition since it came on the stock console, but I never got around to finishing it. I think i'll look for a decent QOL patch though. As for my next big Game Boy game, I don't know. Maybe back to DK with either DK94 or DK Land 2... or something else.