Donkey Kong

"Hey look, Mario isn't wearing a shirt. How Obscene."

Ah, Donkey Kong. One of the few games I've played that was created before I was born. Considering I was born in 1984 I don't suppose this means much, but oh well. For whatever reason, Donkey Kong was ported to all the ancient systems (Colecovision, Intellivision, Atari, and Commodore 64). None of them can compare to the NES port, as the other ports, well, pretty much suck. Even so, it is Donkey Kong, graphics and sounds or not, so it's not that bad. Even so, the odds are 93% of gamers haven't played this version.

Story: 7/10
You know the story. Mario falls down a pipe, his girlfriend gets kidnapped by a giant ape, he runs around trying to save her, blah blah. Nothing new or interesting here.

Music: N/A
Is there music here? The only thing that really counts as music is the 3 notes you hear when the level begins. That's pretty much it. Though, if I recall correctly, the NES and arcade game didn't have much that counted as music either, so I guess this is no great loss.

Sound: 9/10
Considering how old and apparently not very good this system is, the sound quality is a very nice recreation of it's arcade counterpart. Everything sounds like it should. Walking, jumping, death, intro music, whatever. No problem here. Hell, it's much better then Atari's 3 tones of beeps.

Controls: 4/10
One complaint I've heard about this system is weird and bad controls. Even in emulation that's true. The controls are fairly unresponsive and a pain to use.

Graphics: 8/10
Again, for it's day, the graphics are very nice. 8 colors are used per level. Now this may not sound like much to you, but considering Atari used about 3 per level, it's a whole damn lot of color. The result, however, is making Donkey Kong look like a shade of poo, Peach all red and pointy, and Mario looks like he's wearing purple pants and no shirt. Ah well.

Gameplay: 4/10
The major difference from the Atari version is the variety of levels. Atari has 4 levels, and indeed each one is different. Intellivision has 4 levels, but it is simply the same level done over and over. This leaves for no change, no motivation to play, and just a feeling of blah after playing it for a while.

Conclusion
Not a very good version, but scores extra points with better graphics and sounds (remember, relative to it's era).

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/13/03