|
Few successful games let you play as the villain, and care for nobody but yourself. No princess to rescue, no world to save. Your only goal is to find treasure, and ransom the gold statue of Princess Toadstool for money. Yes. This is Wario Land.
[img width=175 height=156]http://i54.tinypic.com/2yuil9c.jpg[/img]
Wario Land takes a snide twist from the standard Mario formula. You still get Nintendo's wonderful platforming, but you also get this neat sense of exploration. It's rich with secret areas, and secret worlds, encouraging you to increase your treasure hoard to its full potential. After beating the game, the level map tells you where the remaining treasure is hidden which gives you a nice clear path for 100% completion. With 40 brilliant levels to explore, you get quite a large amount of gameplay.
[img width=150 height=135]http://i55.tinypic.com/2w73lvn.jpg[/img][img width=150 height=135]http://i53.tinypic.com/8wcv9t.jpg[/img]
In his standard form, Wario can perform a dash attack, allowing you to break blocks and destroy anything that gets in the way of his shiny things. You can also obtain three other temporary power-up hats which dissapear after taking damage. They include an increased dash, jet engines, and a flamethrower hat. These can be used to go places otherwise unattainable, get more coins, discover more treasure, and make Wario happier. There really is no stress in this game at all.
This game is the Anti-Mario. You'll even hear some of the original Mario tunes as if it were remixed by a stoner. The general concept of Wario Land, allowing you to perfectly portray the role of an anti-hero, is complete genius on Nintendo's part. Being a legendary game which helped give the Game Boy its extraordinary appeal, Wario Land is one of the best platformers released on the console.
I highly suggest this game to anyone who owns a Game Boy at all. It's quite affordable, especially for the amount of game you get. Nowadays, bare copies will cost you a little under $10.
At the beginning years of the Gameboy's reign, we'd see semi-ports of NES games like Megaman, Mario and Gradius, but Donkey Kong Land was the first to take a stab at the Super Nintendo.
[img width=196 height=200]http://i54.tinypic.com/yi9ft.jpg[/img]
Being released one year after their SNES equivalents, the Donkey Kong Land series seemed to successfully capture the lush visuals and easy flow of Donkey Kong Country. The plot, controls, and even the environmental setup were almost identical with each other, but the designs of the levels themselves were completely different.
Interestingly enough, I played Donkey Kong Country 2 for the SNES a few months before playing this. Sounds like the perfect time fooor:
:::Home to Pocket Comparison!!
[img width=500 height=100]http://i54.tinypic.com/t0ougx.jpg[/img]
[img width=253 height=220]http://i52.tinypic.com/2hwobwm.jpg[/img] [img width=244 height=220]http://i56.tinypic.com/2aeph50.png[/img]
In the SNES version, sprites and backgrounds are very flush in color, giving an almost 3D feel during gameplay. The shape and animation quality of the sprites separate themselves from the traditional SNES sprite. On the Gameboy edition, sprites are monochrome, but the shading gives a nice touch. The shapes and animations give a similar flow, separating themselves from the average pixel-tastic Gameboy games. Controls feel very spot on, allowing a wonderful sense of flow during gameplay. They both give an extremely similar look and feel when played on their respective consoles.
Final "Home to Pocket" verdict? Take Donkey Kong Country 2, condense it, rid it of color, and completely shift all level designs into something brand new, and you have Donkey Kong Land 2.
Gameplay is kept very similar to DK Country. You complete a series of 5+ levels before fighting a boss. Environments range from the traditional platform jumper, to underwater levels, and even wall jumping at special points. Within the levels are various banana coins (used to save your game) 1-2 Kremlin Coins and one DK Coin: Collect all 48 Kremlin Coins to unlock a secret world where you face a handful of challenging levels before defeating K. Rool for the second and final time. Kremlin Coins are located in hidden bonus rounds while DK Coins (which reward you with nothing but 100% completion) are hidden in the level. Minus the secret world, there are 5 other worlds, totaling in about 30+ levels.
Much like every DK Country title, this game is hard. Hard, but completely fair. If you die after jumping off a rope above two moving giant wasps and run into the jumping Kremlin that you timed incorrectly, it is YOUR fault. The controls are spot on, and I couldn't repeat that enough. I would recommend avoiding this on the original's blurry green screen, since sprites will get confused with the background.
In some levels, you are given an alternate character used to play through the majority of the level, and they are a tougher than testicles Rhino, a Snake with lemur genes, an impact web shooting/platform making Spider, a pecan shooting Parrot, and a Swordfish. One minor disappointment is that you need to spend two Banana Coins whenever you want to save a game. Which, doesn't get all too ridiculous once you figure out how to spam exiting levels.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
This game is incredibly fun to play and complete. Extremely rewarding once the secret world is unlocked and beaten. It looks and plays just like its Super Nintendo version, giving you all new grounds to cover, and still feeling very familiar to the previous home console installment. You are playing a SNES game on the monochromatic Gameboy. It is that awesome.
|
|
|
This is scarper's Blog.
View Profile | RSS  |
I really love Game Boys, but more so the simplicity of owning a Game Boy Color. Although its not immediately noticeable, the GB/GBC has a LOT of fantastic portable versions of just about every franchise at the time it was commercially available. And most of the time, they had different content than their home console predecessors. Dare I mention the amazing exclusive games. The general experience of owning a Game Boy has yet to be re-created by anyone, including Nintendo.
The goal of this blog is to give those forgotten yet fantastic Game Boy games the credit they truly deserve, and to show people how amazing and genuinely fun it is to own an original Game Boy. Colors included.
I am an avid retro gamer, and used to collect for a lot of systems, but now that I plan on attending college and whatnot, money and time have become an importantish thing. So now I collect nothing but Game Boy games. I'm a film maker, and also show considerable interest in broadcast journalism (My YouTube channel reviewing GB games will happen shortly.) I am a senior high school, and plan on studying film in college. Although Game Boy Advance reviews are not contained in this blog, I do love the GBA to death. It was my childhood console, and a treasured one at that.
Here's mah Backloggery page:
http://backloggery.com/games.php?user=scarper&console=GBC |
|
Blog Navigation
Browse Bloggers | My Blog
|
|
Hot Entries
|
|
Hot Community Entries
| |
|
