Donkey Kong '94 Gets A 'DX' Game Boy Color Remaster, Thanks To Fans

The color does well for the stage layouts

Looking forward to it! Definitely one of the most deserving GB games to have not yet received the DX treatment.
Easily one of the very best games on the Game Boy. Also, sadly, the best in the series, as (at least in my opinion) Nintendo was never able to quite recapture the charm of the original with the rest of its Mario vs. Donkey Kong series.

Looks fantastic! Can't wait to play it.

Well it hasn’t “got” anything yet as this isn’t finished and hasn’t been released, I’m disappointed by the misleading title of this article.

Cease & Desist from Nintendo in 3... 2... 1...

A shame Nintendo won't re-release it... It's almost like they want to forget it because MvDK has a higher fidelity, but that simplicity of DK '94 is part of the charm, to me. Maybe a release on NSO is not far away.

@MysticX Legally speaking, they are in the clear if they release it as a patch. This has been the case for the other DX releases like with Mario Land 1 and 2.

Not that it doesn't look nice and that this - "This has grown into my most ambitious project ever," - is necessarily an exaggeration, but is colouring in the original GB graphics and recompiling it that arduous a process?

Doesn't look as good as the Super Game Boy enhance version but hey if you still own a Game Boy Color or Game Boy Player this is a good play.

Nintendo will be played by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay for this post:

Gordon Ramsay slams in wearing a Mario hat

“Shut it down!”

@Serpenterror not sure how you can say that. Are you saying you don't like the Game Boy Color palette? The only bits of the game that got enhanced coloring from the Super Game Boy were the title, map, and bonus screens. The stages had the same 2 color effect you get by plugging any "unenhanced" Game Boy game into the Super Game Boy.

Pfff i have a Super Nintendo and will play the superior Version!

But seriously, nice work! Got an Everdrive this Week, so i can test it out on original Hardware

Best Game Boy game ever made even better! So looking forward to this!

I love these DX patches. The ones for Mario Land 1 & 2, Metroid II and Tetris: Rosy Retrospection are all basically the definitive versions of those games for me now. If we could just get a better Wario Land and pretty much all my favourites will have had the DX treatment.

There wasn't a single reason for Nintendo to not include the DK94 stages in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake, but leave it to fans to pick up the slack. This was one of my favorite Game Boy games, next to Super Mario Land 2, so I'll be happy to have any excuse to replay it xD

I applaud the effort, but the Super Game Boy enhancement already exists and plays beautifully on the Analogue Pocket core, and looks better than this. There's so many other great GB games to colorize, not sure why they picked this one.

@TransmitHim Uh, yes. It’s not easy to do such a thing, especially well and visually pleasing. Why don’t you take a stab at it, if you think otherwise?

@Coalescence I disagree it looks better in SGB. A few screens are very colorful on SGB but it’s mostly pretty dull otherwise.

@Bonggon5 🙄 Wow really helpful contribution there little buddy. So insightful! No no, don't bother actually explaining any of why it's difficult, just make blanket assertions with nothing to back it up.

I’m going to assume, given you’ve resorted to the Dullard’s Deflection Of Criticism that you actually haven’t the first clue how this is done and so assume that if you can’t do it must be difficult (like making a meaningful contribution to a discussion - don’t worry, you’ll manage it one day!)

Given there’s no context for the hacker’s assertion from them, Time Extension or indeed you, I looked into it myself. It is more complicated than I realised - the GBC doesn't store palette information the way I thought which means it's more involved than a quick and dirty tile hack, requiring some coding knowledge. But following this tutorial - https://toruzz.com/blog/how-to-colorize-gb-games-first-steps/ - it's not the most complex bit of rom hacking out there. More tricky if a) you have to do some edits to the graphics to make the palettes apply correctly, but doing some comparisons between their promo video and sprite sheets, they don't appear to have, b) if the graphics are compressed, but I don't know if they are, because again the hacker, Time Extension and again you, haven't given that information.

So yeah, plausibly the most "ambitious" hack this hacker's ever done (and again without crucial context, that's hard to assess, which was my point entirely to begin with - I could validly calm that me pulling off an ollie would be the most ambitious skateboarding trick I've ever done, but that's because I've never used a skateboard in earnest) but not the most ambitious complicated hack ever imagined.

I appreciate and admire the effort and passion but all of these DX spins remind me of Homer’s makeup shotgun

@TransmitHim Not sure why you're being so belligerent over being told this is a difficult project, but let's look at what facts can be easily gleaned from the article:
The trailer list 3 people working on the project. Two are working on the graphics, one is working on the code. The quotes are from marc_max, the one working on the code, who you can easily search on romhacking.net to find that they have done multiple other hacks, including other gbc colorization patches.
In their own words, the project has already taken "hundreds (or thousands already?) hours of work!", and they don't expect it to be complete until sometime next year.
In addition, your own reference of the blog on Toruzz.com says in the second paragraph, "doing it properly, loading every palette and attribute at the correct time and translating every effect takes an awful lot of work", and requires understanding of Game Boy assembly language, Game Boy hardware, understanding in the use of a macro assembler and patching binary files, as well a basic knowledge of programming. It adds further on, "If you don't have artistic sensibilities, I still recommend you find someone to help you with it." As someone with a lot of art and design training under my belt, I can definitely vouch for the need of someone who knows what they are doing on that side of things, and not just the training in art and design, but they should also have (at minimum) their own understanding of Game Boy Color palette and sprite limitations if not also knowledge of clever programming techniques that have been used in other games to appear to surpass the hardware limitations, as making something look good within those limitations is a proper challenge in itself.

One of the best Gameboy games ever made. This is fantastic — I wish them the best of luck! I would love more "DX" versions of classic games.

This is awsome, can't wait to try it out. If it's really so far off to not even be planned until next year though, I kind of wish they would have waited to show the trailer. It seemed to have hit the news in a big way, and I'm just afraid that it may bring attention to Nintendo thmselves, and we all know what Nintendo does to fan projects like this one. And in this case, they have over four months, minimum, to try to find some way to kill it before it can even be released.