I've had this on my to-do list for a very, very long time. I didn't play many game boy games because frankly I just don't think most game boy games are very good. But I was still riding a Donkey Kong high after finishing the SNES trilogy and figured, welp, might as well.
I actually bought DK Land when it hit the 3DS E-shops and I just... well I was really put off by how different it controlled. Mostly it's the jumps that bother me. That and of course it has screen crunch, because why make small compact sprites like Super Mario Land 1 when graphics are what wow people instead of the game being pocket sized and portable. Because of that I didn't finish it. I got an everdrive for my GBC and intended to play it there, but I think my rom was corrupted or something, idk the graphics were kind of glitchy, and I just got interested in other GB games. But I prefer playing on a TV anyway, so now that my SNES can play all Gameboy games, I figured this would be how I would finish DK Land.
So this one is without a doubt my least favorite of the mainline Donkey Kong platformers so far... but I don't hate it. I do think it has some good platforming, some interesting stuff that wasn't done in any of the Super Nintendo games like cloud worlds and urban cities, my personal favorite level trope, and some decent musical tunes too. I'm very glad I played this and finished it. I do intend to play the other two DK Land games. Hopefully they'll be a bit better to control.
But for now, i'm gonna focus on a different gameboy game, which will lead to me picking an SNES game that came on the SNES Mini back up... Final Fantasy Adventure, AKA Seiken Densetsu... or the first game in the Mana trilogy, whatever you want to call it. Feels like this is a series I've missed out on. I couldn't get into the SNES game but I want to give it another chance, maybe with a few QOL patches or a retranslation. Already enjoying the Zelda like feel of this one.
Did I mention there's romhacks of Super Gameboy too? Check out my cool border. Someone made a tool that lets you adjust settings of SGB. So default control scheme will be A, like it should have been, and I have my own color pallets as well. You can also insert custom borders if you can make them but idk how and I can't find any archives of user made borders sadly.
Wish there was a hack that let you play Gameboy Color on this thing, but alas, it seems that'd be impossible since SNES isn't strong enough somehow to display GBC games. So I guess i'll either have to use the GB everdrive stupidly I paid good money for and rarely use, or start playing on my Wii.
