The Panda Prince (called 熊貓太子 on the unused Chinese title screen) is a pirated Donkey Kong Country port made by Shin-Shin Electronics in 1996.
Overview[]
Screenshot of the first stage.
The Panda Prince plays similarly to Donkey Kong Country, but with a different story of a queen panda getting captured by a wasp (who looks like the Zinger enemy species from Donkey Kong Country). The intro has some original graphics, but the game borrows several tracks from the Donkey Kong Land pirate and Donkey Kong Country.
The gameplay and graphics are mainly based on Donkey Kong Country, but the third and fifth levels are slightly more original. The game's bosses (Very Gnawty and Master Necky) are also faced outside, rather than in front of a hoard of bananas, and have minor graphic edits such as backpacks and moustaches. The word KONG from Donkey Kong Country was replaced by GOOD. There are two bonus rooms in the game, one placed in the first level, and another in the third. If the player is able to match up three Expresso tokens in the first, providing they entered with two tokens already collected, they will be sent to a bonus level where they control an ostrich with unlimited flight ability gathering bananas. Regardless of succeeding or failing in either the slot or Expresso room, the player will be sent back to the beginning of the first level. The bonus room in the third stage is reachable, but the Rambi bonus room afterwards is inaccessible because the game takes away the Rambi tokens upon finishing the slot level, thus preventing the player from picking up all three tokens. Like in Donkey Kong Country 4, the save feature from the original has been replaced with passwords, which are given after every level.
Super Lion King 2[]
Super Lion King 2's gameplay.
A hack of this game, published under Ka Sheng's other name, NT, in 1997 was released titled "Super Lion King 2". It removes the opening storyline, replaces the Panda Prince with Simba, and changes the levels. The first level is a different mine cart level, and the second and third being done from scratch before the final boss against the Necky from the original game. Despite that there are only three levels in this hack, much of the original game is intact. After the final wasp boss, it sends the player to the first level of The Panda Prince and allows the player to play through the levels of that game. The passwords from that game work as well.
"Plug & Play" variants[]
Several hacks of The Panda Prince were created in the 2000s, featured as built-in games on "plug-and-play" Famiclones. While information on these releases is largely unknown, the confirmed hacks of this type include:
- Jungle Adventure - Features all of the boss levels from the original Panda Prince, including the otherwise unused wasp; the ostrich boss (seen in level 2) is extremely glitchy in Jungle Adventure, to the point of being nearly unplayable. The player controls a grizzly bear modified from the original panda sprites; the music is taken from Boogerman II.
- Survival of the Fittest - Begins with a water level, the player controls Simba; further details are unknown.
- Pit Boss - Begins with a mine cart level, the player controls what appears to be a pig; further details are unknown.
Virtually all of these releases are incredibly uncommon. While Jungle Adventure is known to appear on several handheld devices (such as the 100-in-1 "D-CAT8 8-bit Game Console"), the other variants have only been seen on an obscure variant of the FC Pocket. Notably, a game titled "Lair's Secret" seen on some consoles (including the D-CAT8) is a hack of Sachen's Rockball with music taken from The Panda Prince.
Unused content[]
Graphics[]
There are unused graphics, such as a Panda Prince 2 title and map screen graphics, even though the game lacks a map screen. There are also several sprite tiles from The Dragon, such as ones for the bomb and crate, suggesting this game was built from it.
Levels[]
The Panda Prince also has a few unused levels, with almost all of them appearing in Super Lion King 2. One that goes unused in both games is a red and yellow underwater level with slightly faster music. There is also a wasp battle that you never encounter in the game, despite the story mentioning a wasp stealing the princess. Another interesting thing about the battle is that you can pick up barrels to throw at the wasp. Beating the wasp brings you to a glitched up title screen when playing The Panda Prince, but beating the wasp in Super Lion King 2 causes you go to The Panda Prince's first level instead.
All of the unused levels can be accessed by pressing Start in the bonus room (with the 3 barrels), then pressing Up or Down to choose what level to go to. Pressing Start selects the level, and Select lets you choose the banana rooms and bosses; however, you can only cycle through the levels by pressing A or B. If you wait a while on the selection screen, it sends you back to the intro.
Chinese mode[]
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The unused Chinese title screen. The pandas themselves animate and scroll across the screen horizontally.
The Game Genie code AANGAIPA changes the game to Chinese mode where the intro and menu are in Chinese and the title screen is different with scrolling pandas going across. This can be seen as odd, since there is no known Chinese version of this game.
Trivia[]
- This game contains copyrights for Shin-Shin Electronics, Ka Sheng, and Family. To access them:
- Title screen: Up, Left, Down, Down, Right, Right, Left, Up (Copyrights for Shin-Shin Electronics, Ka Sheng, and Family)
- Main menu: Left, Up, Right, Right, Down, Down, Left, Up (Copyrights for Ka Sheng)
- This game appears to predate Super Donkey Kong due to The Panda Prince's title screen music appearing in Super Donkey Kong's sound data. It is also worth noting that Super Donkey Kong uses some updated versions of two songs that appear in this game; the Temple theme was given another audio channel, and there is a complete version of the Jungle theme (Which ends and loops halfway through in The Panda Prince.)
Gallery[]
!["Panda Prince of Disneyland" cartridge - identical to the regular version without Shin-Shin copyrights[1]](/wiki/File:68050136.jpg "68050136.jpg (31 KB)")
