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The original Game Boy was home to a great library of beloved titles, like Pokemon and the Super Mario Land series, which spawned the Wario Land subseries of games as well.
A certain set of titles, Tetris and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, got their initial release on the Game Boy, but later on, they both got subsequent releases, receiving a new "DX" suffix in their title.
Tetris DX and Link's Awakening DX released as new Game Boy Color compatible games, adding an entire colorization for each game to take advantage of the Game Boy Color's new hardware, which allowed for a full set of palettes, even more than those of the original NES. Some even got added content, like in the case of Link's Awakening, which got a whole new dungeon based on the entire "color" gimmick, and awarding Link a new colored tunic with a special ability once completed.

Since then, many fans have dreamed of how their favourite monochrome Game Boy titles could have looked like if they got the full "DX" treatment back then, with some getting mockups online, and others getting only brief images of planned DX ports, like Metroid II: Return of Samus, but never seeing the light of day. However, in the past decade, the homebrew and hacking community has taken it upon themselves to fulfill these long-life dreams of fully colored Game Boy titles into a reality, and some renowned hackers, like Iván Delgado (toruzz) and Marc Robledo (marc_max), colorizing some of the most beloved titles of the library, like Super Mario Land DX and Mega Man World 5 DX.

This time, a user by the name of kkzero in Romhacking.net, decided to take it upon himself to give the full DX treatment to one of the most liked and charming titles of the original Game Boy library, Kirby's Dream Land 2. kkzero showcases just how a well done colorization can bring such a title to new lengths, giving it new life with vibrant and carefully selected colors for each stage and asset. He worked on this project for over a year, on-and-off on, colorizing this title, and his hard work has come to fruition, realized in a fully fledged and beautiful colorization, to which he expressed the following:

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Never would I have thought that butchering the text of Metroid Fusion with Google Translate five years ago would throw me down a path to colorizing one of the Game Boy's best games. This is undoubtedly the biggest project I have ever undertook, and it's finally available in a complete form. It's bound to make a lot of people happy, and it could very well change a part of my own world. I sincerely hope you enjoy what I've done for Kirby's Dream Land 2.

This isn't the first time kkzero has worked on a colorization project, as he has previously done other DX colorizations, like Faceball 2000 DX, King James Bible DX and even another Kirby title for the Game Boy, Kirby's Pinball Land DX.

Those interested in trying out this lovely DX hack, can download the patch on Romhacking.net and patch it over their Kirby's Dream Land 2 ROM.
As always, links to ROMs are not allowed, so users must rely on their legally (or dubiously) dumped copies to play this hack.

Kirby's Dream Land 2 DX release page on RHDN

 

[SylverReZ]

For god's sake please guys, stop with that DMCA nonsense below each romhacking post.
Romhacks will never be DMCA'd, especially since they are not shared pre-patched (which would include the original rom). You have to source the rom yourself and patch it. Absolutely legal. Romhacking.net does exist for a reason.

And this guy is from 2008, looks like he hasn't learned from using his overused "jokes" on every ROM and/or console hacking thread.

 

[Ligeia]

Beautiful! Back it up before it gets stricken down!

It won't Romhacks are legal.

 

[sonictopfan]

This looks beautiful, I’m glad they kept the original art style when doing the colorization, I didn’t like how Mario Land DX changed Mario’s sprites and made them ugly, I heard there was a version that didn’t replace the original sprites but I couldn’t find it.

 

[Ligeia]

This looks beautiful, I’m glad they kept the original art style when doing the colorization, I didn’t like how Mario Land DX changed Mario’s sprites and made them ugly, I heard there was a version that didn’t replace the original sprites but I couldn’t find it.

The latest patch on romhacking has both sprite versions combined and you can toogle the new sprite on/off on the ingame options.

 

[daddu3]

Impeccable colorization hack right here, with just right amount of flair and QoL! Kinda weird how long it took to see a game kinda revolving around on color to take this sort of leap decades later.

Can't wait to go replay this one again on my Clear Orange Q5 IPS GBC...

 

[StrayGuitarist]

It won't Romhacks are legal.

It hasn't stopped Ninty from taking down successful ones before, unfortunately. Legality doesn't play much into how they swing their hammer around.

 

[Ligeia]

It hasn't stopped Ninty from taking down successful ones before, unfortunately. Legality doesn't play much into how they swing their hammer around.

You're mixing up romhacks with fanmade remakes etc, it's not the same thing.

 

[StrayGuitarist]

You're mixing up romhacks with fanmade remakes etc, it's not the same thing.

Ah, guess you're right. The modification of a pre-existing game vs making something new using a pre-existing IP.

 

[Rya687]

Worth noting that this ROM hack does have a minor downside. Most people probably aren't aware of this, since only a few SNES emulators support this feature, but when the original is played on a Super Game Boy, it has a few extra sound effects played by the SNES' sound chip. This obviously can't be done on a Game Boy Color, and no emulator supports it either.

 

[Jayro]

Can someone patch this to a .pocket ROM? (No ROM linking allowed here, patches only)

 

[LukeMans]

Awesome, I'll probably go play it sometime!

 

[Shin Akuma]

I wish he could do Gargoyles quest aswell, its a great game in the GB collection