"Donkey Kong" - NES/Famicom

Ah, Donkey Kong. What's new to say about that, you wonder aloud as you read that I'll be playing and reviewing Donkey Kong. "I don't know," I respond to you, in a soothing and somewhat saucy tone, whispering into your ear from behind you, "but I'm going to write it anyway." Your skin crawls with fear.

So, anyway, Donkey Kong. I guess now's a good time to figure out what the structure of this blog is going to look like. Here's me improvising a starting point:

Introduction

I'm probably not going to look up that much information when I write these articles so prepare for some serious knowledge gaps.

Donkey Kong was an arcade game that came out in 1981, a result of Nintendo's efforts to get some business in the American market. It turns out that it was awesome, and everybody loved it, and you played it, and so did everyone else, and they made a documentary about it that one time. You know exactly what Donkey Kong is.

This probably isn't shaping up to be very good content for a first run.

Anyway, when the Famicom came out in 1983 in Japan, Nintendo was riding the wave of their success with arcade games, and what else would they possibly want to do but bring ports of those arcade titles to the home that you could play for free (after purchase)?

Who wouldn't want that? Arcade games were awesome. So they did it.

The Family Computer released in Japan on July 15, 1983, and with it came home ports of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Popeye, successful arcade hits that were established to some degree by that point.

Playthrough

Alright, so let's actually play the game.

Doo doo doooooo, doo doo doo doooooo~

Man, I could hum that theme all day.

I'm realizing in about one second I don't know what to write about a beloved classic like Donkey Kong that would do it any justice, but let's just jump right into it. Let's pretend we've never played this game before.

Wooow, what is thiiiis game? How totally original and neeeeew to me!

You start out as a little red suited man on the bottom left side of the screen, and it's relatively straight forward to see if you have the intuition of a 5 year old that your objective is to run up the scaffolding (or whatever) to the top of the screen. It's also made clear rather immediately that your nemesis must be this giant monkey who's rolling barrels down the scaffolding-- more like he just wants to make your day difficult than that he really wants to hurt you in any serious way.

He kinda just looks like he's having a bad day too, honestly.

Once you get up there, ol' Donkey takes your sweet little thang up to the next floor with him, and adopts his next strategy-- standing there while springs bounce past him at you. Once you get past THAT, he takes her yet again up to his final trial for you: another set of scaffolding. With fireballs.

To be frank he's really not a very creative monkey.

Eventually, you pull all the plugs (?) out that are holding the scaffolding up, and Donkey falls four floors downward and lands on his head, pulverizing his skull and adding a physical element to his emotional suffering.

"Why...? I just needed someone to talk to..."

And congratulations: you beat a run of Donkey Kong. That killed a good 3 minutes.

It's worth mentioning the iconic hammers located on the sides of the 1st and 3rd stages, which can be picked up to hear that one song from Super Smash Bros. and let you smash some barrels and fireballs.

Subsequent playthroughs introduce a few new elements and patterns, and the game gets harder as you continue looping it, to a point. Mostly though, it remains the same general experience.

Review

The criteria for these reviews is probably going to change wildly in the coming posts, but here we go anyway:

Intuitive Design: Yes

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

Donkey Kong does a pretty good job of telling you what to do and putting you on the road to doing it. You turn it on, there's your man (your jumping man-- your Jumpman one might say), and there's a monkey rolling barrels. You hit the A button and you jump. You move left and right with the d-pad. It doesn't get more intuitive than this, folks.

Satisfaction: Yes

How rewarding does playing the game feel?

Donkey Kong is pretty satisfying to play. Controls are simple. Challenges are easy to understand and frequent. Reward for good play is nearly instant (100 points! Boodly-doo!~).

Game Depth: Shallow

How deep is the gameplay?

There's plenty here for a fun arcade game, but for a home game, there's not that much content. Three levels and a game-time of a handful of minutes doesn't make for much repeat fun once you've completed them a few times over, and it's hard to imagine playing Donkey Kong for more than an hour or so in 2019. It's still fun, though.

Sound Design: Minimal, Fine

How's the sound?

There's mostly bleeps and bloops here. The opening title theme is catchy and fun, but the gameplay sound, while iconic, gets annoying rather quickly. The background music loop is about 5 notes repeated ad infinitum. Mario/Jumpman's walk has a squeaky-squooky sound that particularly annoys me. Despite being simple though, it's fairly effective stuff. Different actions have different sounds and there is a good audio reward cue (100 points! Boodly-doo!~).

Graphics: Fine

How's it look?

Simple, but good enough. The sprites on the black background pop out well. All the characters in the game look fine. Levels in the game are unimpressive looking but do the job.

Personal Chord: Yes

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

Donkey Kong is a classic so it's hard to separate group nostalgia from personal nostalgia, but I didn't really play much Donkey Kong as a kid, even on my NES where we had a copy available. Still, the game is iconic, and everyone loves it, and your dad probably loves it, and there's a reason for that. It's hard not to love Donkey Kong. It's definitely a personal dong expander.

Play or Cray: Play

Should you waste your precious time?

Yes. Why would you even ask me that? It's Donkey Kong.

------

I hope you like saving princesses, big guy, because I got news for you--