Donkey Kong

"A professional in an ape mask is still a professional."

Fate certainly has a funny way of playing itself out. This particular example begins with an early space shooter called Radar Scope, a game whose legacy lies almost entirely in the fact that it didn’t sell at all well.

It also happened to be Nintendo’s very first arcade effort; more importantly, Hiroshi Yamauchi - the company’s often shrewd, always iron-fisted, and occasionally stark raving mad president - was displeased. Turning to Scope’s hitherto little known artist, Yamauchi challenged the young man to design a replacement that would run on the failed game’s hardware; thus Nintendo could easily convert the unsold boards and hopefully recoup their losses. The artist in question was (of course) named Shigeru Miyamoto and his subsequent offering, Donkey Kong, was somewhat more of a success – assuming that by “success,” you actually mean “exceedingly popular runaway hit.”

Even if Miyamoto’s premise – a short and squat carpenter hurrying up and about various construction sites dodging barrels in order to rescue his girlfriend from the clutches of an oversized ape – was probably enough to send his employer reaching for the sake, it proved to result in an undeniably addictive title thanks to its inexplicably charming gameplay and diversity. While a seemingly mandatory feature by today's standards and easy to take for granted, in 1981 Donkey Kong was in fact the first arcade game to truly feature multiple stages, not merely challenging its players with four screens that looked unique from each other but that also boasted different methods of play.

Take the seminally famous first level, which sees Mario scaling a veritable mountain of crooked steel girders by way of ladders while avoiding the endless series of wooden barrels that roll toward him and occasionally even descend one of the ladders, a mere brush causing our hero to spin about and perish comically unless he can jump over them or grab a hammer for about a half minute of bonus smashery. The comparatively less interesting pie factory, however, sees our hero scampering across a conveyer belt while leaping the odd freshly baked pastry and snagging Pauline’s (said girlfriend) mislaid trinkets for bonus points before proceeding up the constantly folding and expanding ladder at the top.

Surely enough, the third site presents our hero with a new set of hazards – quickly moving lifts and a series of short jumps while an array of deadly springs constantly bounce across and plummet down the right side of the screen - until everyone’s favorite Italian carpenter (well, everyone switches careers now and again) finally catches up to the oddly named gorilla himself as he sprints across a tower of girders plagued by an ever-increasing number of wandering fireballs on the last stage, removing each floor's supporting bolts and sending the meddlesome primate plunging to the earth.

And then you’ll do it all over again, each round gradually increasing Mario’s time limit as well as the game’s speed to frightening levels as per the usual way of things. Oddly enough, however, the domestic version doesn’t quite follow the familiar level progression seen in the Japanese board or its ports; initially revealing only the first and fourth levels, it then adds one more with each successive loop, which is something of a trade-off as this allows players to possibly conserve their lives early on yet prevents them from practicing the missing screens on a more manageable level of difficulty.

. . . oh, or was that the point?

Sure, Donkey Kong can be annoying - one quickly learns that Mario will expire if he falls from all but the tiniest of drops, and it can be practically impossible to make it through later rounds without a healthy dose of luck – but unlike a number of ancient relics it still makes for a perfectly enjoyable if categorically simplistic bit of entertainment despite being older than dirt itself. Besides, I’d rather not even contemplate what the video game industry would be like had Radar Scope been more popular, or Nintendo less cheap.

How high can you get?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/03/03