DKC Atlas Forum

[Gaz]

Surprise! I have found beta-related content in Donkey Kong Country GBC through an ECTS YouTube video. This build appears to be completely different from the final version. Here's the YouTube video link (DKC GBC's footage starts at 8:50 and ends at 10:11):


-Differences-
8:50-10:11 - The music is much more low key than in the retail version.
8:50 - Different title screen based on DKC SNES's!!! You can see it in the North American manual of the game, however. It also doesn't appear to have KONG letters flipping frontward and backward saying "PRESS START". Is this an earlier build than the one used in the manual?
8:59 - The DK Barrel is on the right side of the screen.
9:05 - When a Kong is defeated, you see the TNT blast sprite, and the other Kong emerges from the left-center of the screen, as opposed to the DK Barrel icon.
9:15 - When you jump from a height onto the tree platform next to the letter O, a banana bunch doesn't come out.
9:29 - The bananas are organized via three per row (the retail has four in a row). Refer to the gameplay screenshot.
9:44 - The Bitesizes seem to have a light-green belly, not a pink one.

By the way, it looked as if in the gameplay footage of Coral Capers that Diddy was going to swim to Enguarde's crate, but he didn't...

- Screenshots -

vlcsnap-2014-05-24-13h53m55s112.png (106.3 KiB) Viewed 13962 times

The magnificent beta title screen!

vlcsnap-2014-05-24-14h07m18s195.png (100.26 KiB) Viewed 13962 times

Different banana array in Coral Capers!

-Download Video-
In case the YouTube video goes offline, here's a backup link of just the DKC GBC gameplay footage:

DKC GBC Footage Beta.zip

(3.29 MiB) Downloaded 1004 times

Qyzbud
Simion32
Blaziken257
Mattrizzle

[Geno]

Neat!

Oh, also it's not just the music that's lower pitched and slower, EVERY SOUND EFFECT is also like this.

Well, except for the KONG letter and Army sounds, mind you, those are the only two ones shown in the video which were brand new for DKC GBC...

I'd say that the low pitch and slowness would be because of an error with porting those DKL assets over, but that wouldn't make much sense because the title and minecart themes are new for DKC GBC, but they're still slowed down and pitched lower.

Unless there's the possibility that DKC GBC was first only a modified DKL, and maybe when they decided that DKLIII would be a better base for their remake, they just ported whatever they already had, and when that footage was took, they hadn't fixed up all the audio they ported from the hypothetical DKL modification build.

Maybe I'm over-thinking, but this would be cool if it were true, as it'd clear up the reason why there are tracks from both DKL & DKLIII in the game.

[Blaziken257]

The slower and lower-pitched music is quite odd. It seems that the entire game is slower, actually. Why is it like this? The only thing I can think of is that the final game does take advantage of the GBC's double speed mode (where it uses a processor that's about twice as fast as normal), and for whatever reason, it isn't used here. Well, it's the only thing I can think of. Whatever the reason, the slower music sticks out like a sore thumb.

I also noticed that at around 10:01, when Donkey is launched from the barrel to the mine cart, there is no sound effect.

In addition, the explosion sprite that appears when one of the Kongs takes damage from an enemy actually reminds me of DKL2 and DKL3. In those games, when you got hit, there was an explosion sprite there too (except it looked smaller).

And yeah, I do agree that DKC GBC was likely built off of DKL and DKL3. The music from both of these games (both used and unused) is proof of this. A lot of the sound effects in DKC GBC are also taken from the DKL games too! So it wouldn't surprise me. Though DKC GBC's code, in general, is very different from the DKL games, so a lot of it appears to be coded from scratch. Still, the borrowed music indicates that at least some assets were taken from the DKL games.

By the way, I looked at the Banjo-Tooie footage there, and I have to say... did anybody besides me notice that when Mr. Patch talks, his icon is actually Gobi's? Very odd.

[Mattrizzle]

I think the slowness is a problem with whatever Rare used to record the footage of the game, not the prototype itself.

Interestingly, that's Gobi's icon from the first Banjo-Kazooie. The icon is different in the final version of Tooie, as he had a beard. Old King Coal also uses Gobi's talking head, and Mr. Patch's hit counter is Croc Banjo. This is all likely them reusing stuff from the first game as placeholders.