We’ve made it this far into the blog series and have given Nintendo nothing more than lip service! I suppose it’s only respectful to check in with Big N while I’m on my Sega/SNK kick… fine let’s bang out Donkey Kong real quick.
It’s odd to think of Nintendo as an arcade developer, but the early 80s saw them making a notable indent in the scene. The home console landscape was dominated by Atari, Mattel and Coleco at the time, seeing Nintendo take the odd role as a third-party licensor of their beloved properties. Yep, the same Mario Bros and Donkey Kong playable on the Switch 2 today saw official (but shoddy) ports on the Atari 2600 decades ago.
So as Nintendo was developing their own home console, they needed to establish a benchmark for power. They knew they would blow the prior generations out of the water, but how far should they realistically go? The answer, interestingly, was Donkey Kong. That’s right, the NES was conceived as a console designed to play the most arcade-accurate yet financially viable version of Donkey Kong possible. Anything more advanced the hardware could do was gravy. Seeing it that way, the NES is a miracle system for what it was able to perform beyond its most basic launch title.
The NES port of Donkey Kong is nearly arcade perfect, barring a few small things like a smaller color palette, differently-pitched music, oh and the entire second stage being removed! For whatever reason, the four-stage arcade loop is only three, and it’s arguably the most interesting stage. But most importantly, the signature arcade gameplay is there, the running, jumping, and climbing all feel just like the original cabinet. That’s not to say that gameplay is particularly good, but it is arcade accurate.
Hear me out. I fully recognize 45 years ago Donkey Kong felt more advanced than anything that came before. It basically invented the platforming genre, included multiple stages, and featured graphics that actually looked like what they meant to depict. Mario (er, Jumpman) looked like a man, Donkey Kong looked like an ape, barrels looked like barrels, I know it sounds silly now but graphics at the time were more interpretive. No imagination was needed to make out what was going on. It was a revolution.
But as the years pile up, Donkey Kong’s gameplay gets harder to stomach. Mario is slow, his jump has no height, and the hitboxes are suspect. Every game after this refined the platforming mechanics we take for granted today, and it makes going back to the origin even harder. The game does work around its own physics, which makes it possible to lock in and effectively play it, but it doesn’t make it more fun. I’ve played this game for decades now, so my complete playthrough for this series was more courtesy than anything. I got up to the third loop before game-overing, and admittedly it came from sloppy boredom that I’m sure I could’ve pushed through in future runs. But I’m simply not interested in being any better at it.
Donkey Kong is that geriatric in the nursing home you were forced to volunteer at. He’s a diminished shell under his blanket but he still wears his veterans cap, and you can tell he lived quite a life in his prime. He’s respected, adored, full of stories, still has his humor, and is still fun to spend a few moments with. You wouldn’t be living in the world you do today if not for him and his peers. You want him to stick around forever even if you don’t go say hi every time you see him. This game absolutely deserves its spot in the NES Classic lineup, and you’d miss it if it wasn’t there, but spend the 10 minutes you will with it and you’ll never feel the need to fire it up again.
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