Donkey Kong Land

Donkey Kong Land is basically what you would get if you photocopied Donkey Kong Country onto a Post-It.

Internal Name
Perhaps taking a cue from Donkey Kong, this game's internal name is DONKEY KONG LAND 95.

Unused Music
Two tracks are unused in the game. Thanks to composer Graeme Norgate's website, we know exactly what they were intended for. Thanks!

The tracks can be heard in-game with the GameShark code, replacing with the values mentioned below.

Last Boss
The King K. Rool battle was supposed to have its own unique theme, but the final game uses the generic boss music.

This has a hexadecimal identifier of.

Skyscraper
Intended for the Skyscraper levels. Those levels use the "Building Site" theme instead.

This has a hexadecimal identifier of.

PFLOYD string
The string PFLOYD exists in both the English and Japanese ROMs at offset. This is used for save data integrity, and this same string needs to be present at, , and in RAM for the three save files to be functional (along with two checksums). If this string is not present in one of these files (even if the two checksums succeed), the corresponding file will be erased. Naturally, the PFLOYD string is never visible in the game.

Unused Super Game Boy Functions
There are two unused commands. There is no evidence that palettes were going to be disabled, but it may have been a thought.

PAL01
Located at is an empty palette setting. Games typically set this when transitioning to a black screen before masking the screen in preparation of the border transfer preventing garbage from appearing on screen. Game Genie code will load this command instead of the first instance of MASK_EN. 01000000000000000000000000000000

MASK_EN
Located at is an unused screen mask setting having the bit setting of. Game Genie code will load this command instead of the first instance of MASK_EN. B9030000000000000000000000000000

Regional Differences

 * Donkey Kong Land is titled Super Donkey Kong GB in Japan. The title screen and the intro screen with the Rareware logo were changed accordingly.

Besides the name change, the unregistered trademark symbol was changed into a registered trademark symbol.


 * In the International version, when beating a level, the KONG letters only flash on the screen if all four of them have been collected. If the Kongs are missing at least one, the letters will not flash; instead, whatever sprites that were on the screen stay there until the fanfare music is finished. In the Japanese version, the collected KONG letters flash on the screen even if one or more is missing -- as long as least one is collected.