Pros: I don't know if I'm glad this exists or not, while yes, it was cool to have Donkey Kong Country on the GBA, we had just gotten a nifty demake only a couple years prior on the GBC, which added a lot of new features like hidden green bananas, a photo album, and minigames like Funky's Fishing. This version also has a lot of those same features, same Funky Fishing minigame even, some new ones too, like Candy's Dance Studio (which is a thing that isn't terrible but isn't exactly good either) but this version of DKC is on a system that's more SNES capable, and this GBA version does play more like the SNES original... And that's good! But...
Cons: It looks like ass. The sprites look ripped from Spriter's-Resource, but resized, smudged and occasionally improperly cropped. The palette is the worst offender, in an attempt to be more visible on the non-backlit GBA, everything looks washed out and discolored, Kritters now appear bright purple for instance instead of green, and backgrounds are just... gross. Gone are the lighting effects of SNES, the sound chip for GBA, god bless it, is just not right for DKC, the music and sounds are worse in every way... They try to make up for it with added elements like a story intro cutscene, as well as an ending cutscene that totally ruins the moment (though Cranky showin up after every boss is pretty funny I admit) They also added tiny frogs and spiders or clownfish roamin' around the stages to give them more life, but ehh... They kinda feel unnatural all said and done. And yeah, I'll say it, it's worse than the GBC version, despite this GBA version playing more like the SNES game, the GBC version at least had the charm of being an 8-bit demake, and the extra features in there felt novel.
What it means to me: Look, Donkey Kong Country is pretty much my favorite game of all time, I'm not not going to be excited any time they give me another way to play it. And here, it was actually pretty remarkable given the fact that Rare had just been sold to Microsoft, and I thought we'd never get another Donkey Kong game from them again! So, the fact that they got to make this, I felt pretty lucky. Unfortunately, it was the portable team at Rare that made this, and their output is nowhere near as quality as the home console department... Eh, take what you can get I guess.
Cons: It looks like ass. The sprites look ripped from Spriter's-Resource, but resized, smudged and occasionally improperly cropped. The palette is the worst offender, in an attempt to be more visible on the non-backlit GBA, everything looks washed out and discolored, Kritters now appear bright purple for instance instead of green, and backgrounds are just... gross. Gone are the lighting effects of SNES, the sound chip for GBA, god bless it, is just not right for DKC, the music and sounds are worse in every way... They try to make up for it with added elements like a story intro cutscene, as well as an ending cutscene that totally ruins the moment (though Cranky showin up after every boss is pretty funny I admit) They also added tiny frogs and spiders or clownfish roamin' around the stages to give them more life, but ehh... They kinda feel unnatural all said and done. And yeah, I'll say it, it's worse than the GBC version, despite this GBA version playing more like the SNES game, the GBC version at least had the charm of being an 8-bit demake, and the extra features in there felt novel.
What it means to me: Look, Donkey Kong Country is pretty much my favorite game of all time, I'm not not going to be excited any time they give me another way to play it. And here, it was actually pretty remarkable given the fact that Rare had just been sold to Microsoft, and I thought we'd never get another Donkey Kong game from them again! So, the fact that they got to make this, I felt pretty lucky. Unfortunately, it was the portable team at Rare that made this, and their output is nowhere near as quality as the home console department... Eh, take what you can get I guess.