Uploaded August 2021 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
This is a fully featured "DX" type color hack by SpecialAgentApe, that adds full color to Donkey Kong Land as well as several other helpful or appreciated features.
Names for levels on the world map have been added according to their names in the instruction booklet, as well as a timer that counts how much time you take to complete a level, which is shown on the Select menu on the world map, and the ability to customize the Kongs' color to your preference.
Note that Rareware originally coded the game for the Game Boy or Super Game Boy, and not the Game Boy Color. Due to oddities in how they coded the graphics routines, all these games have issues with how sprites are drawn when played on a Game Boy Color in its backwards compatibility mode with original Game Boy games, and these issues are retained even when playing the game patched into Color mode.
These issues were finally fixed in the Japanese Game Boy Color version of Donkey Kong Land 3, but have not yet been fixed in this game's patch as of this video's posting. This causes accurate emulators and real hardware to show these glitchy-looking sprites at times, which you can see in the video.
If you want to play this, and the graphical glitches are something you actively want to stop seeing, use an older or less accurate emulator for the moment or Virtual Console injection on a 3DS, and wait to play this on real hardware until the graphics issues are fixed in a possible later update to this patch.
The link to the patch for this hack can be found here:
romhacking.net/hacks/6076
Note that it is of course possible for the patch to be improved and for overall colorization to become better and more specific, similar to Land 3's official Japanese GBC version. I'd recommend keeping up to date with the patch link above.
This is a fully featured "DX" type color hack by SpecialAgentApe, that adds full color to Donkey Kong Land as well as several other helpful or appreciated features.
Names for levels on the world map have been added according to their names in the instruction booklet, as well as a timer that counts how much time you take to complete a level, which is shown on the Select menu on the world map, and the ability to customize the Kongs' color to your preference.
Note that Rareware originally coded the game for the Game Boy or Super Game Boy, and not the Game Boy Color. Due to oddities in how they coded the graphics routines, all these games have issues with how sprites are drawn when played on a Game Boy Color in its backwards compatibility mode with original Game Boy games, and these issues are retained even when playing the game patched into Color mode.
These issues were finally fixed in the Japanese Game Boy Color version of Donkey Kong Land 3, but have not yet been fixed in this game's patch as of this video's posting. This causes accurate emulators and real hardware to show these glitchy-looking sprites at times, which you can see in the video.
If you want to play this, and the graphical glitches are something you actively want to stop seeing, use an older or less accurate emulator for the moment or Virtual Console injection on a 3DS, and wait to play this on real hardware until the graphics issues are fixed in a possible later update to this patch.
The link to the patch for this hack can be found here:
romhacking.net/hacks/6076
Note that it is of course possible for the patch to be improved and for overall colorization to become better and more specific, similar to Land 3's official Japanese GBC version. I'd recommend keeping up to date with the patch link above.
