Comparing the Boss Battles of the Donkey Kong Country Trilogy Part 1: Donkey Kong Country

When Rare ported the Donkey Kong Country trilogy to the Game Boy Advance in the 2000s, they made a number of changes, including the boss battles. A couple of new bosses were added to the series, while a lot of the existing bosses were given new strategies or made slightly tougher. I have decided to take the bosses of all three games, compare the strategies between the SNES and GBA versions, and give you my thoughts on which version of the fights is better. I shall divide it into three parts, one for each Donkey Kong Country game. This first part will compare the bosses found in both versions of the first game. I will include the Game Boy Color version in some cases, as some of its fights were somewhat altered, as well.

Very Gnawty: As far as first bosses go, Very Gnawty is quite pathetic in the original version. You will need to hit him on his head five times, and he speeds up as he takes damage. However, he really isn't very hard to hit, and he goes down in mere seconds. This went unchanged in the Game Boy Color version, but in the Game Boy Advance port, Rare gave the beaver the ability to jump to either side of the arena after every hit. Even so, he still was not very tough at all. It should be noted that, for reasons unknown, Very Gnawty was green in the original game, but inherited his relative Really Gnawty's brown color in the GBA version. As for the battle, I prefer the GBA variation, if just barely, on account that Rare at least tried to improve the fight, but did not make it any more difficult.

Master Necky: This giant vulture's attack is spitting nuts at Donkey and Diddy Kong, and the only way to stop him is to bounce off of a tire and strike his head five times. The nuts are simple to avoid, and Master Necky can easily be defeated with the same strategies both here and in the Game Boy Color version. You could even attack him while he was spitting a nut. The only real changes in the Game Boy Advance version is that Master Necky is red before spitting out a nut, indicating that he's invulnerable at that time. After he fires a nut, then you can hit him. I reckon the SNES version is the best one here, as you can finish off the vulture a bit faster than in the GBA version.

Queen B.: The gigantic bee flies towards you, but takes damage once you throw a barrel at her. Then she turns red to indicate that she is temporarily invincible and flies around the arena in an attempt to sting you. She is simple to avoid, though, and once again, she is unchanged in the GBC version. The battle is drastically different in the GBA version, however. As before, you hit Queen B. with barrels, but after each hit, she surrounds herself with other bees in various patterns. These bees must be eliminated before the queen becomes vulnerable again. As usual, five hits is all it takes to finish her off. The Game Boy Advance variation is quite a challenge since it can be tough to avoid the queen while she is protected by other bees, and thus I like that battle better than the one in the original version.

Really Gnawty: This beaver was little more than a slightly harder version of Very Gnawty. After each hit, he would jump extra high (one jump was added for every hit), and then he would hop normally, speeding up as the battle progressed. The Game Boy Color version did add one new element: whereas in the original version Really Gnawty would hop in whatever direction he was facing after he landed from his last high jump, in the first hand held version he would jump towards you even if he was facing the opposite direction. This boss was toned down quite a bit for the GBA port. With every hit (five in all, of course), he would jump to a far side of the arena, and the force of the landing would cause stalactites to fall from the ceiling. However, it was very easy to avoid them, and thus Really Gnawty, which I should note is green instead of brown here, is now a pushover. For once, I shall consider the Game Boy Color version of the fight as the best in this case, as the slight variation can keep you on your toes a bit more.

Dumb Drum: In the SNES version, you never physically attack this huge barrel, which initially tries to crush you underneath it. After doing this once at the start of the battle, it sends out a pair of enemies to try and destroy you. Defeat both enemies, and Dumb Drum will try to crush you once more. With every enemy wave defeated (and they get a bit harder as the fight continues), the barrel will have one extra attempt to squash you. The boss simply explodes after all five waves of enemies are defeated in the SNES and GBC versions. The GBA remake starts out the same as in the other versions, but after the first wave of foes has been dealt with, a TNT barrel appears. While avoiding Dumb Drum's attacks, you must hit it with the barrel to cause damage. It will continue to try and crush you until it is hit or you miss with the barrel, and in the latter case, you must deal with the same enemy wave again. For having fewer crushes to avoid, I say that this version is a bit worse, and the SNES variation is the superior battle here.

Master Necky Senior: Master Necky's father (I guess he's his father, anyway) is yet another recolored and slightly harder variation of a previous boss battle. The same basic strategy applies, except that with every hit (until the fifth and final hit, that is), he spits out more nuts. Still, as long as you are good at avoiding his nuts, this penultimate boss is a pushover. The same applies to the GBC version, but not the GBA version. In that version, Rare has you fighting not just Master Necky Senior, but also Master Necky, in the same battle! Each vulture spits out a single nut, and are invulnerable until after they do so. Then, you bounce off a tire to attack one of them. Five hits will take out a single vulture, but the surviving one will then spit out four nuts before you can hit him again. Therefore, it is best to alternate your attacks between the two vultures so that you only need to deal with four nuts a single time. The GBA version is the winner here for making the battle tougher on account of having two vultures to deal with instead of one.

King K. Rool: The only boss to take more than five hits (ten in all, to be precise) begins his assault by tossing his crown at you. You must jump over it, and then whack the Kremling leader on the head. He will run to the other side of his ship deck, and repeat the process. After the first three hits, he will make more passes, speeding up as he goes. Once he has been hit four times, he will jump to the other side of the ship, causing increasing numbers of cannonballs to fall from the sky. Three more hits will defeat K. Rool and prompt the credits to roll...only they are false credits, and suddenly, K. Rool is back on his feet and now possesses a jump attack. He makes two large jumps that you must avoid by running underneath him, and then you will need to leap over his crown and whack him on the head again. K. Rool will make smaller jumps as the battle progresses, and after a few more hits, he will be defeated for good, or at least until Donkey Kong Country 2.

The Game Boy Advance version does not change this strategy very much, and actually tones down the fight a little. On the one hand, the cannonballs are slightly tougher to avoid, but doing so is still not very hard. He jumps at the end are changed a bit, but they, too, remain easy to avoid. In fact, the GBA version includes a check point, in which if you die after the fake credits, you will restart at the final part of the battle instead of having to start the fight over again. The Game Boy Color version, however, is a pain. It is the same as the original, except in the last phase of the battle, K. Rool's jumps are harder to avoid, and they do not change at all. It is tougher to run under him without getting hit, and safe spots where you can avoid getting hit are too few and far between. Lose a life here, and the battle restarts from the beginning. Since the GBA version is a bit too easy and the GBC version is very cheap, I prefer the SNES version of the battle with K. Rool since it offers the right amount of difficulty without making it fell dumbed down or incredibly cheap and frustrating.

By a final count, I prefer three of the bosses in the SNES version, three of them in the GBA version, and a single boss in the GBC version. Those battles were chosen due to such factors as which ones were more exciting, which were more challenging, and whether or not any altered strategies were worthwhile. I commend Rare for trying to make the battles better for the Game Boy Advance version since they wanted to make it seem like a somewhat different game. While they were not entirely successful, they at least bothered to make many of the strategies different. When they moved on to port the other two games to the GBA, what changes were made there, and were they better than those found in the SNES versions? I will have plenty to say about all that in Parts 2 and 3, which I shall write soon.