ROM Hack Donkey Kong Country (GBA) Palette restoration

[marc_max]

Here it is: a real restoration project for the infamous Donkey Kong Country for GBA.
It wasn't a bad port after all, the gameplay was completely intact and also had the new Hero and Attack modes.

It's still a little behind from the SNES version due to the resolution reducement and soundtrack (which sounds worse, but still sounds good!). But it's an undeniable improvement.

This wasn't the typical SNES to GBA palette restoration. This was hell.
After Rare reduced all sprites and tilesets, none of the palettes matched so I had to repalette it manually using Photoshop and a custom tool made exclusively for this.

What's missing:
* probably a few bonus rooms
* all new palettes not coming from the SNES version (basically, minigames and map)


Needed ROM:
Donkey Kong Country (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).gba
CRC32: 41d277fe
MD5: c1fb9badf816b6d7836f4990f8119815
SHA-1: 8995f0be99a9cff66474a8975b8499bd69fb4c45

More screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/0eWkgaQ



I'll grateful if anyone is going to replay it and can post here all bonus entrances that are not restored yet.

 

[Deleted User]

Good job with this one. I can only imagine the hell it took to fix all the palettes, and the improvement is immediately noticeable.

 

[CoupureElectrique]

Thank you so much! I downloaded this off romhacking and I’m surprised how good it looks compared to the original. Didn’t know the GBA was capable of such great graphics lol

 

[Arnold101]

intro and map are still off

 

[Hanafuda]

Thanks for all the hard work, truly a labor of love. I've always simply shunned the DKC games on GBA, since the SNES versions are far superior and playable nowadays on everything from an actual SNES to a convenience store cash register. (that's a joke, not a challenge) Looks great though!

 

[SaulFabre]

Good work!
Do you plan to also restore colors in DKC2 GBA and DKC3 GBA as well in the future?

 

[Ligeia]

Looks really great ! If I replay DKC I might try this version (I always play the original SNES version).

 

[Metal64]

Great work

 

[duwen]

Just wanted to mention it (as no one else has), there was a very good reason why Rare went with the palette they did and that was because of the original GBA's non front or backlit screen. Try playing this restoration on an unmodded original GBA and you won't see shit!

That aside, this restoration is without a doubt the way to play the GBA version on anything other than an unmodded original GBA

 

[Trevor_2012]

Amazing work, thank you very much marc _máx.