The portable classic originally put Donkey Kong’s adventures onto smaller screens back on June 26, 1995.

Yesterday, on November 22, Nintendo returned to Switch players one of the harder titles to grace green Gameboy screens everywhere: the first Donkey Kong Land entry.

What was thought of it at the time, at least by this writer, is that it was a smaller version of the Super Nintendo hit, Donkey Kong Country. In actuality, the portable game is supposed to act as a 1 ½ sequel to the SNES title.

As explained in the manual, even through all the trouble Donkey and Diddy Kong to get their banana hoard back from K.Rool and his alligator-like Kremlins, Cranky Kong still would not deem the duo heroes. So, what does he do? If you guessed hand back the hoard over to DK’s mortal enemy yet again for the boys to go recapture, then you win the prize.

As a kid, I couldn’t afford the SNES console, so Donkey Kong Land, and its sequels, were the closest I had to owning the more broadly-colored original entry. To Nintendo’s credit, port or not, DK Land kept all the aspects that made Country so memorable, and teeth-grindingly tough, in the Gameboy game.

The enemy sprites still moved at a quick pace, the environments, although caked in just subtly different shades of green, were varied, and the music was only slightly downgraded when being transferred between the two gaming systems.

Going through the first world, I immediately was excited that I was playing the game on a bigger screen, because one of the aspects that made the game hard was surely trying to concentrate on all the details on the small screen, or so I thought. No, the game is just hard.

Jumps are a must to be timed in certain sections, the button to launch the heroes out of the barrels needs to be hit just before the next one is lined up, and the invincibility of enemy wasps will forever be the bane of many player’s existences. The game itself can’t even be saved unless all of the letter coins (K-O-N-G) are collected by the end of the level, a brutal rediscovery, so don’t dare die in the next level.

However, even given all of this, I know that I loved getting through the challenges over each stage, always in hindsight. With the title, Nintendo pushed hard on what the bulky handheld could truly withstand by translating what made Country such a joy, as well as a trial, to take on possible while on-the-go.

As with the entire classics’ library, players need not have to sweat it out if the “N” or “G” were hidden super well on the stage. At any point, save-captures can be made for any particular tricky part of the game, just in case the number of lives on-hand is a bit low, or a jump feels a bit too risky.

Donkey Kong Land continues to stand the test of time by being one of the best games in the original Gameboy library. When comparing the two franchises, Land and Country, only the wealth of color is missing in an otherwise excellent, though punishing, follow up to what is now a SNES classic.

Donkey Kong Land is available to play now on the Gameboy App, provided for both basic Nintendo Switch Online subscribers and Expansion Pack subscribers.