Why the GBA port is dissapointing

Talk about the Donkey Kong Country ports for GBC and GBA.

Why the GBA port is dissapointing

Postby aperson98 » November 9th, 2011, 8:08 am

I've been wanting to state my reasons on this port for a while, but only now do I feel I'm ready to post this, before I go on I will say for the record that DKC itself on the GBA was a okay game however I'm judging this based on how well it was ported from the Snes which in that regard was not very well done, anyway here are the reasons it's dissapointing.

1. Barely used the GBA's capabilites- What I do mean by this well the GBA is a handheld that is much more powerful then and Snes and Genesis was so why does it only look about half as good in
the visual department as the Snes version? I mean whats with the ugly bright palettes, surely simply brighting up the sprites and backgrounds would have done the trick, but no Rare messed with the colors and made them look pretty ugly, it makes the game so hard to look at, whats more many things like the parallax scrolling in the jungle levels are gone why? I'm sure the GBA was more then capable of doing it, also remember all the great lighting effects from the Snes version yep gone too. The saddest thing about all this it could have looked so much better I mean look at these tech demos showing off the hardware.
Resident evil 2-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uda5RjruqWk&feature=related
Yoshi's story-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6gXrxx0140
and to top all off here's a pic of DKC 2 Snes emulated on the GBA (yes the GBA has a Snes emulator)-http://www.pocketheaven.com/ph/wiki/images/5/55/DKC2.PNG
All in all there's no excuse why the graphics were not up to snuff with Snes version.

2. Inaccurate physics and controls
Now most of the time the physics of the GBA port are pretty close to the original, but there is some hiccups sometimes most noteably when you lanuch out of a blast barrel upwards whereas the Snes the controls felt smooth in what direction you wanted your Kong to go in the Gba port it feels really jerky to move around. another example is the rolling in the Snes version hitting a baddie would always give you a speed boost in the Snes version. In the Gba version (as mentioned here before) you must hit two or more baddies before getting a boost and the roll/cartwheel itself feels slower too, again why change this?
Another thing that feels different is that when you hit a baddie there isn't that slight hitlag like in the original version, trust me when I say riding Rambi is where you notice this the most.

3. Stuff added/changed for no good reason
Maps, warps, and colors on baddies changed with little reason to do so, and in addition to that why did Rare feel the need to give us story and present in a format that seems so awkward, what I mean by this why try to make a mini sprite movie to tell the story, it looks awkward to me. A better way to do this is to make a storyboard with a rendered picture of whats going on, it would have told the story better in my opinion.
The minigames is where I feel the most dissapointed here it's the fact that rather then maybe adding a new level or two Rare just gave us some minigames instead, come on no new levels, there was a new level in the GBC port Necky Nutmare couldn't you guys have ported that to the GBA?

Well those are my reasons feel free to share any of yours. :)
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Re: Why the GBA port is dissapointing

Postby Gaz » December 29th, 2011, 9:45 am

At least it is better than the SNES version of Donkey Kong Country. It at least has modes and minigames. Also, a scrapbook and VERY cool easter eggs like Sabre Wulf's headed mounted in Cranky's Hut. Also, who could forget the Warp Barrel additions. Very AWESOME!! ;)
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Re: Why the GBA port is dissapointing

Postby aperson98 » January 5th, 2012, 5:07 pm

Well some warp barrels were taken out as well, like the ones in Slipslide ride, Tree top town, and Vulture culture.
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Re: Why the GBA port is dissapointing

Postby Bumper » December 30th, 2014, 2:06 pm

Hi im new, so does anybody have a picture of DKC 2 Snes emulated on the GBA
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