A small yet popular portion of the Game Boy Advance library consists of remakes of Super NES games. Breath of Fire, Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, and Yoshi's Island are just a few of the many games that have been bought back to life on Nintendo's diminutive handheld system. The latest to join the roster is Donkey Kong Country, which was originally released in 1994 as a joint project between Rare and Nintendo. By and large, it's a faithful port of a fondly remembered platformer.

These graphics were the talk of the town in 1994.

Back then, the game leapt off store shelves to the tune of more than 8 million copies sold, because it combined familiar characters and traditional platform-jumping gameplay with a graphical technique that was relatively uncommon at the time. All the characters and backgrounds were first rendered in 3D using powerful Silicon Graphics computer systems and then transformed into 2D objects and animation sequences for use in the game. The end result was a $50 game with characters and animation that were more colorful and fluid than anything else available for home systems at that time. More importantly for Nintendo, it gave players and their families a reason to stick with the Super NES over Sega's two high-powered Genesis add-ons, the Sega CD and 32X.

Perhaps because they made use of what were once cutting-edge techniques, the graphics in Donkey Kong Country have aged well. The environments, as colorful and tropical as they are, are brought to life by the use of multiple background layers and the careful positioning of light sources during the original rendering process. While you walk, leap, and swing your way through the game, you really get the impression that you're in a dense jungle, with mountains in the distance and the sun glaring down from above. A few stages take place beneath the surface of lakes and swamps, where a bubbly translucency effect suggests the presence of water all around you. Of course, the techniques used to create the backgrounds are old hat now and employed by just about every game currently available for the GBA--but that doesn't mean that Donkey Kong Country won't impress you from time to time. The blowing snowstorm in the Snow Barrel Canyon stage and the eerie haze effect in Misty Mines are just as stirring now as they were in 1994.

For this remake, Nintendo and Rare have made a few graphical improvements and adjustments in an effort to compensate for the unique size and contrast of the GBA's LCD screen. The visible screen area is cropped slightly, more on the top and bottom than the left and right. In general, this doesn't pose a problem, except in rare situations when you need to jump onto a moving platform situated just below your range of vision. Another, more significant change is that the brightness has been cranked way up--so much so that if you own a GBA SP, certain stages may appear washed-out or grainy. Of the 34 stages in the game, roughly three or four may require that you deactivate the GBA SP's backlight to be able to see the backgrounds comfortably. Purists will note that some stages are missing various translucency or parallax scrolling effects, but these omissions really aren't noticeable unless you're looking for them. A new enhancement that's more than welcome is the addition of background accents, such as scurrying rats and crawling spiders.

The underwater sequences are beautiful.

Much of the animation and artwork for the characters has been redone as well. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong, the two stars of the game, move more gracefully and react more visibly to contact with enemies and hazards. Many of the larger Kremling characters, who are the enemies in the game, also display a more lifelike range of motion. At various points throughout the journey, you'll visit homes and businesses set up by three of Donkey Kong's closest friends: Cranky, Candy, and Funky. Their dwellings have all been redrawn to better reflect their personalities. The most amusing of these is Cranky's cabin, which now has a Nintendo sign sticking out from among some crates on the floor, as well as a head mounted on the wall that closely resembles Sabrewulf from Rare and Nintendo's other joint project, Killer Instinct. Overall, Donkey Kong Country fits right in graphically with recent games designed specifically for the GBA hardware.

For the most part, the same holds true for the audio. The background instrumentals feature a mix of various styles--primarily tropical, trance, rock, and classical. Many of the tunes from the original game have been remixed and redone for the GBA version, likely due to the differences between the sound hardware in the Super NES and GBA. Fans of the original game will notice the absence of a drumbeat here or there, but nothing to get angry about. The sound effects aren't all that special anymore, but it's nice to be able to clearly hear the grunts and growls that Diddy and Donkey make.