It’s on like Donkey Kong! If you’ve never played it before, Donkey Kong is one of the most famous games of all time. It took Nintendo from being a toy company that was dabbling in the world of arcade video games and catapulted them into being the industry leader, overtaking the likes of Atari, and gave the world the household names such as Donkey Kong, Super Mario and Shigeru Miyamoto. It’s absolutely fair to say that if it wasn’t for this game, the video game industry as we know it may be very different now.
But whilst this review will look into the history of the title, it is not just a history lesson, and we will review whether the game is fun to play and worth playing today! And just so we’re clear, the way we’ll just this or any classic game here on the site is a combination of factors. The most important of these is whether a game is fun to play. The historical relevance and nostalgia of a game will also be contributing factors, but ultimately a game was made to be played and if it’s not fun, we can’t recommend it. That said, we’ll also take into account the era and hardware that a game was designed for. This is important as it wouldn’t be fair to judge what we’d call a 5 star PS5 game as meaning that an NES or Amiga game as being unable to also being a 5 star game. Final scores will be based what what we judge the individual game’s merits to be, and not on whether the Megadrive could do ray tracing or not.
Anyway, now that’s out the way, let’s get on with the game!
Donkey Kong was an arcade game which got ported to every system under the sun during the early 1980s, and whilst it would be easy to assume that when Nintendo released it on their own home console, they would give an arcade perfect version. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case!
This version of the game only features 3 levels of the arcade game’s original 4 levels. Maybe it was that Nintendo didn’t want to give you the whole game at home, so you’d still have a reason to play their arcade machines, but whatever the reason this release was cut. As a port of what was already a very short game this definitely does knock being able to say it’s the perfect release, but then again, if you’re happy enough to play a 4 level game, I’m sure you’ll still have fun with the 3 level version.
In the game you play as Super Mario, but he’s not completely Mario as you’d expect him today. His onscreen graphic is close to what he appeared like in Super Mario Bros, but isn’t exactly the same. Also if you look at Mario’s design from the arcade cabinet, he’s almost unrecognisable, and much closer to looking like Waluigi then modern Mario. This game also predates when Mario was called Mario, and as a sign of how early this was in the world of video games, he was simply known as ‘Jump Man’ as a video game character that could jump was enough of an innovation that such a description was seen as enough.
Mario could indeed jump, but one thing you’ll discover almost immediately when playing the game is that Mario does not have the same jumping ability as he would in Super Mario Bros. Mario’s jumps are not very high, not very long and if you try to jump from even a slight height you will die when you land. Mario was far from super at this stage. It’s also worth noting that Mario does not yet have the ability to kill enemies by jumping on their heads, not that there are much in way of enemies in this game.
The big bad is this game isn’t Mario’s later foe in Bowser, but is instead the titular ape himself. Donkey Kong has kidnapped Mario’s girlfriend Pauline, and just like King Kong, has climbed up tall structures with the damsel in distress.
As Mario you have to climb up ladders, and avoid barrels that DK throws at you, and a few baddies as you try to reach Pauline to save her.
You are able to grab a hammer in a couple of levels which give you the ability to hit the little flame bad guys that case you around levels on the head. The hammer can also be used to break the famous barrels that DK throws at you in the opening level. The bad news is that the hammer only works for a few seconds, and whilst you’ve got it, you are unable to jump. This often means that it doesn’t feel worth grabbing the hammer unless you’re specifically trying to rack up points.
And of course, getting the high score for the leader board is what this game is all about…although as Nintendo hadn’t invented battery back up to save games on the NES yet, there is literally no way to save you high scores in the game.
This said, here’s a quick hack for some modern gamers. If you were to play this game on a Nintendo machine – Wii U, 3DS, Switch that features save states you could in theory always keep the game thinking it switched on for a single play session by updating the save state and continuing that one session every time you load up the game.
If however you don’t want those extra steps, or are in fact playing the game on original hardware you will not have the ability to retain your high scores. This is a huge blow on the value of the game as the true fun an replay value comes from getting the high score. As mentioned this game only has 3 levels, and once you’ve completed the third, you will just start the first level again and play the game in a loop over and over as you attempt to build up points and get the highest score.
The game does add challenge though and every new run through of the 3 levels makes things slightly more challenging than the last. Just as with Pac man and other games of the era, the focus was on getting you to master the few levels on offer and see if you could beat them with tough baddies to get past.
The first level of the game is the most famous, where Donkey kong continuously throws barrels at Mario and he must jump over them as he scales the girders to reach Pauline. Occasionally barrels will tumble down the ladders at unexpected points and take you by surprise and if you’re really unlucky this can result in there being two barrels next to each other that you have to jump over at once. Also DK can throw barrels that bounce down the platforms in a zig zag pattern which can be a pain to avoid. The start of the level also features and oil drum which is where the flame baddies will come from and you’ll have to get through the level before they chase and catch up to you.
The second level doesn’t feature barrels coming at you, but the is a weird springy thing that always bounces across the level in a set pattern that Mario will need to dodge to get past. This requires good timing and the gamer doesn’t give you huge amount of room for errors. Also, whilst the first level only had you need to jump over barrels, the second level requires you to jump between platforms and across moving lifts, which is where you’ll quickly learn that Mario will die from even a tiny extra height.
The third and final level is all about climbing, and gives Mario a different objective to complete the level compared to the previous two which were all about climbing up to Pauline. This level features 8 connectors on the platforms which you have to run or jump over to remove. Once all 8 have been collected it will cause the structure to break and Donkey Kong will fall, defeating him and leaving Mario having rescued the girl and saved the day. As far as video game stories go, this is as simple as it gets, but one that Nintendo uses in every Mario game. Big baddie takes a Princess and you have to save her.
The music on the game is simple, and serves it’s purpose. As a big fan of the Donkey kong Country series, I got a kick out of hearing the familiar DKC theme on the opening screen here. Of course, it was the theme for this game first, but is just a good tune regardless.
This isn’t a game which modern players will probably play as obsessively as people back in the 1980s would have, and the lure of getting the high score is stunted by the lack of battery back up. That said this is a game which I have played pretty much every year since I first played it in the 1990s, and one of the reasons for that is because it is so simple to pick up and play. I will often find that I want to play a game, but realise I’ve got limited time, or just want a quick play of something before I go to bed, and so just as I’m about to load up Final Fantasy or Resident Evil I look at the clock and realise I don’t have the time to play them. That is where Donkey Kong comes in! A game like this or PAC Man or Tetris is perfect nowadays for a quick play, or a play session where you don’t really want to have to think about battle menus or listen to minutes of voice acting in cut scenes. If you just want to play a quick game for fun Donkey Kong is perfect for that.
