When Donkey Kong Country first appeared on the SNES, people were amazed by the pre-rendered graphics. But aside from the Donkey Kong Land series, the games were restricted to the SNES. Now, a popular IP with cutting edge graphics was guaranteed to bring in a lot of cash, so pirate developers far and wide did their bit to port it to other platforms. But how to they compare to the real thing?

Title Screens


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
Donkey Kong Country 4 (NES)
Super Donkey Kong: Xiang Jiao Chuan (NES)

Super Donkey Kong (NES)
Super Donkey Kong 99 (Mega Drive)
Donkey Kong Country (SNES) Box Art

Only Donkey Kong Country 4 looks remotely like the SNES game when it comes to the title screen though it's no-where near as detailed. As usual Xiang Jiao Chuan seems to make it up as it goes along, but it's not too far off, even if it does look terrible. Super Donkey Kong's title is probably based on art from elsewhere.. it's followed by a bunch of character bios so maybe the Japanese manual?. Super Donkey Kong 99's artwork is definitely based off elsewhere - the Donkey Kong Country Box-art, and does a pretty decent job at it too, even though the early DK art looks a bit dodgy compared to today's standards. Also bear in mind most of these pirates base themselves off the Japanese version of Donkey Kong Country, called "Super Donkey Kong", which has it's own, more colourful title screen. None of these look like that either, but the Super Donkey Kong logos are very similar.

Jungle Levels


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
Donkey Kong Country 4 (NES)
Super Donkey Kong: Xiang Jiao Chuan (NES)

Super Donkey Kong (NES)
The Panda Prince (NES)
Donkey Kong Country (GBC)

The Jungle levels. Again a huge graphics loss, but check out Donkey Kong Country 4 - it's almost as good (and is actually better in some places) than the official 2001 GameBoy Colour port. Super Donkey Kong has a jungle-like area for level 2 rather than level 1, though with washed out colours and... erm... banana clouds, it's very different to the original. The Panda Prince is reasonably accurate graphics wise, but has far too much contrast. Makes you wonder whether the graphics were digitized from a camera shot of a TV, rather than through a DKC ROM. Again Xiang Jiao Chuan has made up the level so it doesn't really look like anything much.

Underwater Levels


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
Donkey Kong Country 4 (NES)
Super Donkey Kong (NES)

The Panda Prince (NES)
Donkey Kong Country (GBC)		  

The DKC underwater levels are quite boring in comparison to the later DKC games, and clearly some pirates saw this as a chance to make it a bit more interesting. DKC4 attempts to keep it the same but fails in all honesty, making it the worst looking underwater level of them all. Super Donkey Kong makes things a bit brighter though I'm not too keen on its choice of colours. Surprisingly The Panda Prince ends up looking pretty good, but it's got nothing on either of the official games even if it is the only 8-bit version to include the sand in the background. Just goes to show though - the GameBoy Colour is supposedly a weaker system than the NES, yet its rendition of this level beats all of them hands down. You could even argue that the GameBoy colour game is a little nicer than the SNES one... but it depends on where you stand. The SNES game was trying to look as realistic as possible yet still be cartoony, but the GBC could only really do the latter.

Mineshaft Levels


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
Donkey Kong Country 4 (NES)
Donkey Kong Country (GBC)

What a letdown, only Donkey Kong Country 4 even tried this one. And that's a shame because it really gives the GBC some competition. Both fail in comparison to the SNES game but so does everything on this page. But then again the SNES was showing off lighting effects here which the other consoles just can't do.

Aztec Levels


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
Super Donkey Kong (NES)

The Panda Prince (NES)
Donkey Kong Country (GBC)

A very reasonable attempt from Super Donkey Kong for this stage, but it lacks the "outside" bits making it an incredibly yellow level. The Panda Prince saw past this, and instead decided to put in some bluish bricks in the background. Not too shabby I must say, but this is also the level where everything flickers so it all evens out when it comes to suckiness. These screenshots sure are good at proving the GameBoy Colour DKC is good looking huh?

Mine Cart Levels


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
The Panda Prince (NES)
Donkey Kong Country (GBC)

Xiang Jiao Chaun also had a go at a mine cart level but I'm too lazy to get a screenshot. Nevertheless it doesn't look much like the official games and neither does The Panda Prince, who used the mine cart opportunity to bring some purple into the game. Probably because again this is a pretty dull looking level.

Snow Levels


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
Super Donkey Kong (NES)

Only Super Donkey Kong has a go at the snow levels... but it does a pretty bad job at it. Oh well, not much else I can say really, just loads of detail was removed making it look almost completely different. For these later levels of DKC I've left out the GameBoy colour port because in order to get screenshots I'm essentially having to complete DKC twice, and I'm lazy as hell.

Industrial Levels


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
Donkey Kong Country 4 (NES)
Super Donkey Kong 99 (Mega Drive)

Super Donkey Kong 99 gets really close with this one. Just some mild palette differences, missing foreground pieces and a load of gameplay and music suckage keeping them apart. Donkey Kong Country 4 does an excellent job for a NES title, and actually puts some colour into this boring grey level.

Boss Levels


Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
Donkey Kong Country 4 (NES)

The Panda Prince (NES)
Donkey Kong Country (GBC)

Not a bad attempt by Donkey Kong Country 4 but not perfect. Then again its only competitor is The Panda Prince, and that stages all its levels outside for some reason. All the enemies in TPP are slightly different, so that's why Gnawty appears to have something on his back.

Pier Levels


Donkey Kong Country 3 (SNES)
Super Donkey Kong 99 (Mega Drive)

Despite making a reasonable attempt, Super Donkey Kong 99 still manages to fail graphics wise in comparison to the SNES original. But you'd expect that even if there weren't pirates behind it, because the DKC series were designed to look amazing. The MegaDrive really slips up on the water (lol pun), which isn't even animated nevermind filled with transparency and mode 7 effects... though I'm sure if they cared they could have done reflections. Also the tiling is pretty poor, just flipping every 128 pixels or so. As I've said before, for some reason the resolution of the MegaDrive game is adjusted to the size of the SNES one. Maybe it was planned to be a straight port after all... DK99's second level is a similar sort of deal - the DKC3 "barn" stage with less colours and flipped backgrounds. Nothing worth reporting.

Donkey Kong Country 2 Title Screens


Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES)
Super Donkey Kong 2 (NES)

Unsurprisingly, the NES port's taken a beating in terms of palette and detail, but it still remains quite accurate and still gives the treasure chest some shine. Aside from the "Super" part and the blue area around it, the whole thing has been done in 5 colours, compared to the SNES that used loads. Also it might just be me but the Rareware "R" logo in the treasure chest has been distorted a bit, probably since it was common practice to remove all company references in pirates. Hard to tell if they got the one on Dixie's hat. The NES Super Donkey Kong 2's title is essentially the same as the Japanese DKC2 (called Super Donkey Kong 2), but for some reason the pirates thought it better to remove the stars in the middle of the "O"s. Perhaps they were worried that people couldn't read. They also removed the Japanese text in the top right which they didn't do in the Super Donkey Kong NES port above. The NES game's title also looks stretched vertically... no idea why they did that either because both the NES and SNES resolutions are the same.

Ship Levels


Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES)
Super Donkey Kong 2 (NES)

The in-game levels have also suffered, but it's still very impressive for NES hardware. Remember, this is the system that originally couldn't get all the Donkey Kong Arcade levels into one cart. Also the camera doesn't shift about to give that "floating" feel, but you'd probably expect that. Despite being the same resolution the sprites are a lot smaller to save space, so that's why there's an unusual amount of sky/water showing.