Donkey Kong

"The birth of two of the biggest video game icons and Shigeru Miyamoto's first masterpiece."

What would Nintendo be today if it wasn't for Shigeru Miyamoto? Without him, neither Super Mario or The Legend of Zelda games would have exist, and would Nintendo even be a company today if these two series never had be created? Before Super Mario Bros got released and made every other game look like brussels sprout, Nintendo wasn't a big video game company outside of Japan.

This all changed when Nintendo decided to create a new character instead of using a licence to use an already popular character, and they wanted Shigeru Miyamoto make the game. Donkey Kong was born, and so was the red plumber that would be one of the biggest fictional characters of all time.

Donkey Kong is Mario's (His name was Jumpman in this game) pet, but Mario doesn't treat him good so Donkey Kong once broke free from the cage Mario had him in and kidnapped Mario's girlfriend Pauline. Since Mario always have been a hero, he decides that it's his job to save his girlfriend and catch Donkey Kong.

This game have four different stages, where the goal in everyone of them except the last one is to reach Pauline. Since Donkey Kong don't want them to be reunited, he either have placed a bunch of fry guys (they would later appear in Super Mario Bros 2) or any other kind of enemies, and he will also throw barrels against Mario. To avoid all this, Mario has to jump over anything that prevents him to reunite with his girlfriend Pauline.

Another way to prevent the enemies and barrels to hurt Mario is to find a hammer that can be found on each stage. While Mario is using this, he can smash anything that stands in his way, but he can't jump while he's swinging his hammer.

As I said the final stage is a little different. Here you have to remove a few parts from 4 bridges so Donkey Kong will fall from them and then our hero will finally unite with his girlfriend. However since this is an Arcade game where you will start from stage one with the same points you had when you cleared the final stage. It's up to you if you want to get as high score as possible.

As you might have guessed, Donkey Kong got very popular when it got released and made Donkey Kong and Mario into the two icons they are today. Personally I would pay for 1 credit if I saw it in an Arcade Hall just to see how high my score would be, however I wouldn't pay to play it again. I'm a more fan of the Game & Watch version, but the Arcade version can be fun for awhile, no doubt about that.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/07/07