Donkey Kong Land does a really solid job of adapting the Donkey Kong Country gameplay to the Game Boy. For the vast majority of its runtime I genuinely did not have a strong preference between it and Country, despite the technical downgrades. I found the camera to be more responsive, the swimming controls to be a bit more to my liking, and the save system to be slightly more reasonable. It was also kind of refreshing to play a game with Country's controls that was generally quite a bit easier. This sentiment was quickly swept away as I tackled the latter half of world 3 though, where Donkey Kong Land devolves into the kind of level design you'd see in a bad Game Boy licensed game. Sky High Caper is a genuinely terrible level, and the game doesn't ever really return to its previous quality after that - though world 4 is still far better than this later half of 3. I'd feel far less positively about Donkey Kong Land if I'd played it using any of the monochrome Game Boy palettes, as everything kind of blends together. The backgrounds are somewhat overdetailed for the Game Boy, and it makes it difficult to distinguish the foreground from the background at times. Enemies, barrels, and items aren't contrasted so starkly from the background either. I would not, under any circumstances, recommend playing this with any palette other than the Game Boy Colour one. Despite some later stinkers, Donkey Kong Land has some genuinely interesting and unique level themes and mechanics. It's drastically stripped down from Country, cutting Engarde and Winky, barely using Expresso, and having no visual indication that you have another Kong in reserve, but it's a genuinely valient effort for the Game Boy. My largest gripes with the gameplay are largely technical issues, but running and rolling feel distinctly off as well - though I can't put my finger on what exactly is wrong with them. As for the technical issues, reaching a certain elevation seems to cause the bottom of the screen to become an instant kill, even when there's ground just below this - which was cause for a lot of frustration - and you can often die immediately even when you have a DK in reserve, as the game is unable to find a valid place to spawn them. I don't really think these should be ignored purely because they're a product of the hardware, as they kind of suck, a lot. In the end, Donkey Kong land is just about teetering at a 7 for me. It's distinctly worse than Donkey Kong Country, but is genuinely very much worth a play if you're looking for more DKC content, despite its issues.

Donkey Kong Country is a fantastic SNES platformer. It's both one of the best looking and best playing games on the system. DK and Diddy both feel weighty and satisfying to control, with roll jumping giving both of them a generous coyote time window. The camera generally gives you a significant amount of lookahead, keeping both Kongs at one side of the screen rather than the center, but isn't at the level of more modern 2D platformers just yet. It takes a bit too long to turn around, centres the Kongs when facing left on the final boss - removing the lookahead - and sometimes lurches up when it probably shouldn't, leading to blind jumps. Enemy placement, in combination with the camera, often introduces trial and error, which doesn't feel great. Luckily, aside from a couple of enemies that are difficult - but usually not impossible - to react to, Donkey Kong Country is largely challenging but fair. The difficulty curve is relatively steep - with most early levels being deceptively easy - but you can save at any point after unlocking Candy's Save Point or Funky's Flights in any world. There's a period where you're unable to save after starting a new world - with levels that you have to beat back to back - but again this still feels relatively fair, especially as you can replay previous levels to build up lives prior to entering a new area. Donkey Kong Country, even now, is a standout platformer, and it says a lot about the quality of these games that the new ones haven't really changed all that much. It's a deceptively challenging series, but it feels good to finish each game.