Prerelease:Donkey Kong Land
This page details pre-release information and/or media for Donkey Kong Land.
Conception
The game was originally going to be a straight port of Donkey Kong Country, until programmer Paul Machacek convinced the higher-ups that an original title would make more financial sense:
Whenever anyone asked me to convert a console game onto Game Boy I expressed the opinion that we'd be better off writing a new game in the same vein, and that the extra resources to do that wouldn't be much greater than for doing a port, whilst not limiting your market by reducing its size to those people who hadn't just bought the console game. It was a point of view I expressed [...] in 1994 when I was asked to port DKC and instead wrote DKL for Game Boy.
Donkey Kong Country would eventually be released on the Game Boy Color five years later.
Scrapped Characters
Several creatures and characters who were originally going in this game were abandoned for unknown reasons. Their renders, and names in a few cases, were featured in Nintendo Power #69.
Pucka, an unused fish enemy. Fangfish appears in the same article, labeled "Pucka Jr."
Ram Bunkshus, a baby ram who was planned to appear as a new Animal Buddy. There are no new Animal Buddies in the final game.
Another render of Ram Bunkshus.
An unnamed Kong who wears a hat. Donkey and Diddy are the only Kongs to appear in the final game, though Cranky is featured in the manual's story.
Another render of the unknown Kong.
Early Screenshot
A screenshot released during the game's delay seems to depict the Bonus Level of Kong Krazy. However, the layout of the shown portion is slightly different from the final game. In the screenshot, both Mincers are in a slightly different position, with the first being off-screen in the final version, and the floor under the Blast Barrel is either not present or not visible in the screenshot. The direction of the Mincers also appears to be flipped in the screenshot. The easiest way to distinguish is that there is too many hearts, possibly a cheat. This snapshot also has the Super Game Boy borders, however, showing different colors.
