Donkey Kong Country 4 is a pirated port of Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, made by Hummer Team in 1997.
The gameplay, graphics and sound are similar to Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, albeit downgraded to work on the Famicom. It is considered to be significantly better than other pirates based off the series.
Overview
The player controls Donkey Kong and Diddy through numerous sidescrolling levels of many different themes. The two Kongs can be swapped around by hitting select, provided both are available.
Many of the bossfights are included from the original game. As opposed to the original game where you go to the map every time you beat a level, in this game you only go to the map after the title screen and after beating a boss. As well as this, the only map shown in the game is the world map.
The sprites are smaller than the original, most likely because of the Famicom's sprite limit. Nevertheless, there is still occasional sprite flicker in game. The animal helpers are completely missing, like many Donkey Kong Country pirates.
The save feature was removed, and replaced with a password system similar to Aladdin. The passwords are displayed whenever the player gets a game over as opposed to beating a level like in Aladdin. However, because the player starts off with 25 lives it takes a while (and possibly many intentional deaths) to reach this screen.
The ending was replaced with a simple credit sequence as well as a "The End" message.
Jungle Book 2's title screen
Variations
Common with other games released by JY, a number of variations are contained within the same ROM. This allows them to sell multiple different versions simply by soldering points on the PCB:
- Jungle Book 2 - A hack that replaces both Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong with Mowgli from the Jungle Book. It gives the player 30 lives instead of 25, removes the password system, and starts on the third level instead of the first.
- 2 in 1 - A menu that gives the player a choice to play either Donkey Kong Country 4 or Jungle Book 2
Bugs
- If you get hit and fall down a pit, there is a glitch where you will lose a life, even if you have both Kongs. This is similar to the glitch that usually happens in Donkey Kong Land when you get hit when there is no ground on the bottom of the screen.
Similarities to Donkey Kong Land
Despite being a port of Donkey Kong Country, this game also has a few similarities to Donkey Kong Land:
- Only one Kong can appear on the screen at a time. However, in the official port of DKC for Game Boy Color, which was released in 2000, this is also the case.
- The teleporting animation when breaking a DK Barrel, as well as the shrinking animation when switching a Kong, are both very similar to Donkey Kong Land's animations.
- When falling down a pit, you will restart the level with only one Kong, even if you had two before falling down the pit. This is also true in Donkey Kong Land.
- When pausing the game, all the sprites disappear. However, other Hummer games such as Somari (released before Donkey Kong Land) have this feature.
Connections to other Hummer Team games
- If the player jumps while carrying a barrel, they will slow down slightly, similar to Somari and Super Mario World.
- This game has similar graphical errors to other Hummer Team games.
- The NSF rip of this game includes the ghost house, castle and ending themes from the Famicom pirate of Super Mario World, suggesting that DKC4 was built off it.
- The sprites for the numbers are identical to the ones from Somari, albeit moved a pixel down.
- Earlier versions of some of the music tracks can be found in the NSF of Earthworm Jim 3, another pirate made by Hummer Team in late 1997.
Trivia
- The 4 on the title screen is seemingly out of place, similar to the 6 on Sonic 3D Blast 6's title screen, and is missing a tile.
- This is the only pirate of Donkey Kong Country to use the Western name rather than the Japanese name (Super Donkey Kong).
- The JY logo can be accessed by hitting Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Left, Right, Right on the title screen.
- Some versions of the cartridge art of this game (numbered JY013 and JY014) contain Super Smash Bros. Melee screenshots with Donkey Kong, Those were sold in Russia in late 2001 which would mean they got the cartridge very late. The JY-033 version uses SNES Donkey Kong Country artwork.
- One sound effect found in the ROM (which doesn't seem to be used in the game) sounds very similar to the jump sound effect from Sonic the Hedgehog, but it was not used in Somari or its hacks.
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