Donald Land/Walkthrough

Donald Land is composed of 12 stages, which the player must guide Donald through from start to finish. At the end of each stage, there is a boss fight. The player must help Donald defeat the boss in order to move on to the next stage. If Donald dies at any point in a stage, he must begin the stage over from the very beginning, even if he dies during the boss fight. There are no warps, and no way to skips stages (aside from using the ../Level select code/.) The following are a few tips to help you survive in the game.

Mastering Donald's jump
Donald can jump quite high. The longer you hold down the jump button, the higher he will jump. Donald keeps the momentum he had just before leaping as he jumps. If he is riding on top of an enemy's head and he jumps in the direction they are traveling, he will jump farther than usual. If he tries to jump against their direction, his jump will be shorter. You can use the direction pad to control Donald's jump, but the influence you have over it is pretty limited. Donald is fairly resistant to changes in direction, and any attempts to redirect his flight will have very limited success.

Understanding bombs
Donald's apple bombs also take some getting used to. Like his jumps, the arc that the bombs travel in are heavily influenced by Donald's momentum. You can use this to your advantage as a way to try and hit enemies who are far away. However, hitting enemies that are close up will typically require you to stop moving in order to improve your accuracy. Remember that you can kill enemies by attaching bombs to them, or simply dropping a bomb that will explode when they walk over it. One method to dramatically improve your accuracy is to jump in the air, and hold down on the direction pad while you throw a bomb. Instead of arcing, the bomb will drop straight down in a diagonal direction.

Don't always kill enemies
As you proceed through each stage, you may be very tempted to destroy all of the enemies that you encounter with bombs. However, in some cases, it's more advantageous to allow them to live, and to jump on their heads and use them for transport over difficult sections. In other cases, defeating an enemy can actually prevent you from safely crossing a chasm that is too wide to jump over. Always study a situation carefully and determine whether destroying an enemy will eliminate a chance to safely pass through a difficult section before throwing a bomb at them.

Don't focus on collecting items
Like many platformers, you will encounter a lot of item tiles scattered throughout each stage. However, in most cases, you should not make collecting them a high priority. Focus more on surviving difficult jumps, and only collect tiles if it is convenient to do so. The only tiles you absolutely should collect if possible are extra life tiles and hearts. Burger tiles can be found in abundance in the early stages, and you can only store up to 99 of them. So don't stop and think you need to collect every single one. In addition, only the first bomb tile that you collect has any value. Any subsequent bomb tiles that you encounter can be ignored until you lose a life or move on to a new stage.

Bonus stages aren't much of a bonus
At the end of every stage, there is a sequence of bonus stages where you can spend some of the burger tiles that you collected in the stage. However, you will quickly come to find that they are not much of a bonus. When you first arrive, you will be presented with a picture menu of five McDonald's items. They each cost either 15 or 20 burger tiles. Purchasing them will provide you with a few opportunities to play a card game. In the card game, six cards are placed face down. You can select three to turn over. The number of Donald faces and Hamburgler faces that appear in the cards you selected determines which bonus you earn, as shown to the right of the cards. After you have used up your chances in the card game, you are presented with a third screen, where you may directly purchase items that you could have won. Extra lives cost 40 burgers, Hearts cost 20, and Bombs cost 10. In essense, it is far better to skip the menu portion of the bonus stage by pressing and directly purchase any items you hoped to obtain through the card game.