The Floofer Zone #20 | September 8th, 2024
Donkey Kong
How high can you get?
What is there left to say about Donkey Kong that hasn't already been said? If you're interested enough in video games to read a blog post about them, then you already know that it's one of the most important games ever made: it’s one of the pioneers of the platforming genre, it was Shigeru Miyamoto’s first game design project, blah blah blah... It's been talked to death, so what is there left to discuss? Not much, really, but that won't stop me from trying >:3
The NES version of the game is the one I’ll be talking about
In Donkey Kong, you play as Mario (yes, Mario, not Jumpman; even the game’s manual says so), who must climb deadly construction sites, jump over rolling barrels, and avoid sentient fireballs in order to save his beloved, Pauline, from her kidnapper: that big fat meanie Donkey Kong >:(
There are three stages in the NES version: the iconic first stage where Mario needs to climb ladders as Donkey Kong chucks barrels at him, the second stage where Mario has to jump on elevators & dodge a bouncing blue spring, and the final stage, where he’ll need to traverse the entire structure and pull out every yellow bolt to send DK plummeting straight to the ground, all the while being chased by fireballs.
bonk
The first thing I noticed when playing Donkey Kong is that Nintendo chose the most obnoxious sounds possible for Mario’s running and jumping. In fact, damn near every sound effect in this game is painful to listen to, especially that blue spring in stage 2 that never stops fucking bouncing!! It’s not like it makes the game unplayable, but the constant, loud, overlapping sounds are a little overstimulating. I had to turn my volume down a little lower than usual in order to tolerate it (×﹏×)
this is my own personal hell
The gameplay has a couple quirks, too: I noticed some instances where I wasn't picking up an item even though Mario’s sprite was clearly touching it, and the game seems to ignore your A presses sometimes, which led to a few unfortunate deaths in stage 2. I think you need to be careful not to push jump and a direction at the same time, or else the game will eat the jump input. Mario also can't fall very far without dying, which doesn't become that big of a problem until stage 3, where falling down any one of the empty holes left by the bolts means instant death.
Honestly, stage 1 and 2 are mostly trivial if you're careful and know the tricks to beating them: it's stage 3 that's the hard part. The fireballs sometimes chase after Mario directly, but their movements are seemingly random and hard to predict. I found the best strategy was to wait for them to approach me and then use the hammer to take them out, creating a safe path to the bolts. Easier said than done, though (TωT)
The game will loop after all 3 stages are cleared, and it gets harder every time; as far as I know there is no way to “beat” Donkey Kong (unless you count the kill screen), and no real ending to see. I challenged myself to get as far as I could, and in the hour and a half or so that I played, the farthest I could reach was the final stage of loop 5, with a score of a little over 100k! :D
I might be cracked?
The most surprising thing about Donkey Kong for me… was that I actually really liked it? Going into the experience, I wasn't planning on playing for more than an hour, and in all honesty I wasn't even sure if I was gonna like the game (it's a port of an arcade game from 1981; it's really old!) but afterwards, I was left with this all too familiar feeling of “maybe I’ll just play a little more…” that lets me know when a game has really sunk its claws into me. There’s a very cool satisfaction that comes from just barely making it to a loop you’ve never reached before, or practicing each stage to the point where you can beat it without dying. It’s a fun, satisfying little game :)
With how barebones the graphics and sound are by modern standards, and with all the jank that’s present in the gameplay, it’s wild to remember that at one point Donkey Kong was hugely popular—this is THE game that launched Nintendo into international stardom, and without it, we might not have had a Famicom, an NES, a Super Mario Bros… anything! The video game industry would look radically different had it not been for the success of this silly little game about a plumber and an ape. And to be that popular, it had to have been fun! Maybe Little Timmy also had that same “just one more game…” feeling when he first played Donkey Kong at his local arcade in the 80s :3
