Donkey Kong '94 DX Reaches the Wonderful Milestone of Having No Grey Pixels Left

ROM hacker marc_max achieves a major milestone for Donkey Kong '94 DX, completing the first full Game Boy Color playthrough without a single uncoloured pixel.

One of the Game Boy's finest games is another major step closer to receiving the Game Boy Color treatment Nintendo never gave it. ROM hacker marc_max has assembled the first complete beta build of Donkey Kong DX that can be played from beginning to end without encountering an uncoloured pixel.

The project transforms 1994's Donkey Kong — often called Donkey Kong '94 — into a native Game Boy Color experience designed to work on real compatible hardware. Artists kensuyjin33 and Jorge2D have contributed graphics while marc_max handles the considerable technical work required to assign colour intelligently across a game originally designed around monochrome hardware limitations.

Reaching a fully colourised playthrough does not mean the patch is ready for public release. The developer plans a complete testing run, additional fixes and palette adjustments to ensure stages feel artistically consistent rather than like several dozen people attacked the cartridge with different boxes of crayons. Donkey Kong '94 is an especially worthwhile candidate. What begins as a recreation of the original arcade game quickly expands into a huge puzzle-platform adventure whose ideas later became the foundation for Mario vs. Donkey Kong. The original Super Game Boy offered limited enhanced presentation, but not complete native GBC colourisation. More than thirty years later, the final grey pixels have apparently received their eviction notice. Public release still has to wait, but this is the clearest sign yet that Donkey Kong DX has entered its finishing stretch.