awoolcott's Full Review: Classic NES Series: Donkey Kong for GameBoy Advanc...
When you look back at the early 1980’s, it’s widely known that Donkey Kong is the game that saved Nintendo’s American prospects and sowed the seed that led to the rebirth of the game industry in the form of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Donkey Kong serves not only as the first project from legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, but the very introduction of two of Nintendo’s most famous characters – Donkey Kong, and Jumpman, who would of course take on the name of Mario. With that in mind, it’s hardly unexpected to see this game as one of the flagship titles in the Classic NES Series on Game Boy Advance. A direct port of the NES version of the arcade classic, DK certainly shows its age with outdated sounds, visuals, and presentation…but 20 some years has not hurt the gameplay one bit. Deceptively challenging even today, the simple play of Donkey Kong is a reminder of how gaming was before the current era, and is an example of how great, simple gameplay never goes out of style.
The idea of Donkey Kong is very easy to grasp – the huge gorilla Donkey Kong has snatched Pauline, and it’s Jumpman’s job to climb up a game board and snatch her back before he…well, I really don’t know. It’s not as easy as it sounds however, as DK has an unlimited array of barrels and other nasty enemies helping him stop you from getting to the top and reaching her. Basically, the main idea is to merely get through as many of the different single-screen game boards as fast as possible, and without getting hit and dying. Thankfully, one of the small additions to the GBA version is the ability to save your high scores, meaning you can always come back and challenge your previous best if you save it to the battery. The GBA conversion also supports link play, though I really don’t understand why, seeing as DK is a 2-player take-turns kind of game, as many of the old-time arcade and early NES games were.
Effectively, there are three game boards to play – the famous main board, where you climb up ladders, leap over barrels, and occasionally find a hammer and whack the crap out of them like Jumpman overdosed on Ritalin or something (seriously, the whole hammer bit is hilarious, like it has a mind of its own and is leading Jumpman around while he hangs on for dear life). The second board is more a platforming puzzle, as you leap from platform to platform and avoid obstacles while reaching the top. Lastly, your third board has you running across it and taking out ‘supports’ to the area and dodging walking fireballs. Clear all the supports, and DK falls to his…uh…unconsciousness while Jumpman & Pauline are reunited. Then…you start again, because obviously Jumpman has a problem of keeping Pauline from getting kidnapped. DK is a bit smarter too, as each time you start over, the board gets a little bit tougher and more demanding. As long as you can maintain all your lives, it’s possible to get really, really far and rack up a monstrously high score. There’s no unlockable stuff, no hidden minigames, or anything like that – what you see is what you get; easy to grasp, yet hard to master gameplay. Unfortunately, as this is the NES conversion, the 4th board, the conveyor belt level, is nowhere to be seen.
Sure, sure, this is all so basic…the gameplay amounts to very little depth, the repeating boards concept is way outdated (yet Pac-Man perseveres with just one simple board), and the idea of going for the highest score is passé…but really, who cares? Donkey Kong, in all its outdated form, is still fun. Not only that, it’s still challenging, requiring quick thinking, fast reflexes, and the ability to do both at the same time. With just 2 controls at your use (A for leaping, and the d-pad to maneuver), the simple setup means you can concentrate on skills rather than hitting the right buttons. In an era where games use almost a dozen different commands at one time, having a game that only uses the A button in addition to the d-pad is a nice change of pace, and all is made up for in this area by the challenging gameplay. Sometimes the controls can lag (a trademark of the arcade original) and be a bit unresponsive, but 95% of the time, playing Donkey Kong is simple gameplay bliss. And if simple can be this fun…perhaps this whole gaming industry thing has a future somehow. Just as long as the DK series doesn’t fall into the whole 3D platforming revol…damn, too late.
Do we dare mention graphics and sounds of Donkey Kong? Outdated, simple visuals are the norm here, and really, I surely hope you didn’t buy this for next-generation graphics. Jumpman looks like Mario, as he should, and uh…Pauline moves around while stuff flies at Jumpman, and Donkey Kong actually looks pretty damn cool seeing as this was the primitive era of visuals. As this is a simple, one screen game, there’s nothing to go wrong with things like framerate, so in context, the basic looking game is just fine. On the other hand, audio is tinny, and has constantly repeating ‘fart music’ (as an old friend of mine used to call it back in the day) during the game, and of course, that insane hammer theme when you start whacking stuff with the tool (and yeah, I guess that sounds a bit dirty). Seeing as this was the era of blips and bloops, it’s not all too bad when, again, you put the era into context.
The Bottom Line
Far from the greatest game of all time, Donkey Kong is still huge, if not because of the birth of the character that became Mario, then because it plainly saved Nintendo’s behind. On the GBA, DK is still a ton of fun despite the limitations of the era in which it was created, and well worth your $20 for old-school gaming on the go. If anything, the simple, yet challenging gameplay of Donkey Kong is a great trip down memory lane, a great way of showing the youth of today that not only did we walk to school to 10 feet of snow dressed in nary our drawers, but we grew up on stuff just like this. Perhaps the notoriety of this Classic NES Series will convince developers to step back and remember that simple, challenging games can be just as good as complicated ones. If you’re starting your Classic NES collection, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start off.
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