The Greatest Game Music

Reviews of truly outstanding game music

Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack – Review

Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack

Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack, Grant Kirkhope / David Wise, 1996

When Donkey Kong Country was released on the SNES in 1994, it was hailed as a technical marvel that very few people would have expected to see on the ageing hardware. When Rare released a Game Boy port called Donkey Kong Land a year later, jaws hit the floor again. How could those Silicon Graphics workstations-rendered 3D sprites possibly translate to the monochrome Game Boy display? Turns out it was possible to bring those pre-rendered graphics to the 4-bit platform – although the result was visually overly busy and impacted gameplay.

One year later, Rare released Donkey Kong Land 2 – the Game Boy port of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. This time, the developers had figured out how to keep the visuals less cluttered and the game more playable. True, reviewers pointed out the lack of original content – DKL2 was more or less a straight port of DKC2. However, the SNES original’s outstanding gameplay qualities made the Game Boy version one of the system’s best platformers.

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Monster Max Soundtrack – Review

Monster Max Soundtrack

Monster Max Soundtrack, David Wise, 1994

Sometimes the universe (or at least video game publishers) work in mysterious ways. On paper, Monster Max should have been a success – not a million-seller (few isometric action adventures on the Game Boy were), but still a game that would deliver respectable sales figures. Its pedigree was impeccable – a collaboration between Rare and the duo of Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond. Both parties had created genre classics in the 1980s – Rare with Knight Lore, Alien 8 and Nightshade, while Ritman and Drummond (inspired by Knight Lore) were the men behind Batman and Head Over Heels. Ritman had just finished work on a development system that Rare used for many of their games and he decided to start work on a Game Boy title.

Upon “release” in late 1994, Monster Max then went on to garner outstanding reviews from critics, setting itself up for success as the Christmas season was approaching (Rare’s other contender for that period was of course Donkey Kong Country). However, there’s a reason for the quotation marks around ‘release’. While publisher Titus officially released the game in 1994, it only produced copies that would hit store shelves a full ten months later, effectively burying the game it was distributing for no discernible reason. By mid-1995, everybody’s attention had of course moved on to the new 32-bit platforms and Monster Max was largely forgotten – although its quality ensured it retained a dedicated, if small following.

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