DONKEY KONG COUNTRY ON THE GAME BOY? ARE YOU BANANAS?! RETRO GAMER SPEAKS TO LEAD PROGRAMMER PAUL MACHACEK AND MUSIC AND SOUND DESIGNER GRAEME NORGATE ON THE GORILLA-SIZED TASK OF BRINGING THE TITLE THAT PUSHED THE SNES TO ITS LIMITS TO THE SMALL SCREEN WITH DONKEY KONG LAND

WORD BY BENJAMIN HAYOE

IN THE KNOW

» PUBLISHER:

NINTENDO

» DEVELOPER:

RARE

» RELEASED: 1995

» PLATFORM:

GAME BOY

» GENRE:

PLATFORMER

DEVELOPER HIGHLIGHTS

BATTLETOADS SYSTEM: NES YEAR: 1991

DONKEY KONG COUNTRY SYSTEM: SNES YEAR: 1994

GOLDENEYE 007 (PICTURED)

SYSTEM: N64

YEAR: 1997

“DKC WAS STUNNING; IT WAS THE FIRST FULLY RENDERED VIDEOGAME, A YEAR OR SO BEFORE PIXAR ACHIEVED A SIMILAR MOVIE FEAT WITH TOY STORY”

PAULMACHACEK

Ask a SNES fan what their favourite platformer is, and chances are they’ll respond with either Super Mario World or Donkey Kong Country. Mario’s games had defined the genre for over a decade, but the Donkey Kong Country series was the new kid on the block under the development of British studio Rare. DKC pushed the limits of what the SNES could do graphically, thanks to cutting-edge pre-rendering techniques, but also in terms of audio production due to David Wise’s techno-wizardry and innovative use of single-cycle waveforms to create layered sounds from tiny amounts of data.

So when [Rare cofounder] Tim Stamper approached Paul Machacek in 1994 about developing a direct port of DKC for the modest Game Boy, you can see the challenge that was to be faced. Undeterred, Paul decided to take things one step further.

“In 1991 when Tim asked me to do a Game Boy Battletoads title, he actually asked me to port the in-production NES game. I suggested that, as I’d have to write everything from scratch anyway, if we did some extra design work, we could have a new sibling title for limited extra effort,” Paul recalls. “I felt that a straight port would not sell to people who already had the NES game, but a related offshoot game could, which Tim agreed with. It worked, and that original Battletoads Game Boy game sold well. So in 1994 when Tim asked if I’d do a DKC port, I argued the same case and he agreed, although the ‘bit of extra design work’ would clearly be more substantial here.”