THE MAKING OF DONKEY KONG LAND

Ask a SNES fan what their favourite platformer is, and chances are they’ll respond with either Super Mario World or Donkey Kong Country. Mario’s games had defined the genre for over a decade, but the Donkey Kong Country series was the new kid on the block under the development of British studio Rare. DKC pushed the limits of what the SNES could do graphically, thanks to cutting-edge pre-rendering techniques, but also in terms of audio production due to David Wise’s techno-wizardry and innovative use of single-cycle waveforms to create layered sounds from tiny amounts of data.

So when [Rare cofounder] Tim Stamper approached Paul Machacek in 1994 about developing a direct port of DKC for the modest Game Boy, you can see the challenge that was to be faced. Undeterred, Paul decided to take things one step further.

“In 1991 when Tim asked me to do a Game Boy title, he actually asked me to port the in-production NES game. I suggested that, as I’d have to write everything from Game Boy game sold well. So in 1994 when Tim asked if I’d do a port, I argued the same case and he agreed, although the ‘bit of extra design work’ would clearly be more substantial here.”