Donkey Kong

Introduction

You people disappoint me! To have this wonderful site before you, and to not even have a review for this classic game. Guess I have to give it for you guys… Here’s my review for Donkey Kong for the NES.

Story

There isn’t much storyline. Princess Toadstool has been kidnapped by Donkey Kong, so Mario, the heroic plumber, must save her!

Gameplay (7/10)

This game is incredibly short. There are only three levels that you play.
One is the classic tilted hallways with ladders and barrels. This is the easiest one, because it is the same as the arcade one. Climb ladders and jump over barrels. This time, however, you have hammers that you can collect to smash barrels for points. While using the hammer though, you cannot jump or climb ladders.
The second level has platforms, a spring that jumps around trying to kill you, and a purse and an umbrella. The purse and umbrella aren’t mandatory; they give you extra points. Fireballs prowl the ladder area, so be wary of them. You have to jump onto the platforms, but you can’t fall from a height more than about half of yourself, so you can easily die by trying to jump onto a platform. This made the game annoyingly hard, because Mario is so weak.
The third level, different music is played, and Donkey Kong is at the top of the easily reachable tower, but if you touch him you die. There are yellow boxes throughout the floors that you must run on to collapse them, along with enemies on the floors to jump over. Once you collapse all of the boxes, Donkey Kong will fall, and you will be reunited with the princess.
The gameplay in Donkey Kong is incredibly easy. You run, climb, and jump. You do go painstakingly slow, though, and your jumps aren’t very high. The game still is beatable, because I am not the best at video games and I’ve beaten it several times. I liked it, but it got a bit boring after a while.

Graphics (6/10)

The graphics are as good as Mario Bros. Donkey Kong was clearly a giant ape, and the enemies were well-defined. Sadly, this is an old NES game, so the graphics are not very good. Mario is no more than a few pixels, but amazingly you can still tell what things are.

Sound (6/10)

The arcade version has better sound, for sure. In the NES, DK makes no Ugh! Ugh! sound when you beat a level. Mario’s running is a ton of bing-boing-bong, and his jumps sound like high-pitched farts. The music was a few beats, nothing too simple but nothing too good either.

Replayability (4/10)

You could play this game over and over again, because there is no saving in this game. There is no saving needed. Personally I think this game is good a few times around, but there are no extra levels, no extra routes to take, no extras at all. If you’ve played it once, you’ve played it 100 times.

Challenge (7/10)

The challenge in this game is not only timing the jumps over barrels, but Mario’s overall slowness. Plus, enemies kill you in one hit, so it’s not like you have a lot of stamina at your disposal.

Frustration (9/10)

Just like the challenge, the frustration is Mario’s slowness. It makes the game hard and the short levels tedious to complete.

Value

Well, you can get this on the Wii’s Virtual Console for $5.00, (rip-off) and probably the cartridge itself for $1.50 or so. I do not know. Oh yeah, when I say dollar, I mean American dollars, so you Canadians (sorry Joey) will have to find out how much it costs for you on your own.

Overall (6/10)

This game was not the best game. It was one of the worse ones, but I’ll cut it some slack since it was one of the earliest Nintendo games. Plus, the NES is old, no matter how much you want to admit it’s still the best. This game is okay for a few plays, but don’t buy it.

Conclusion

Donkey Kong was a nice game to relive (well I can’t say relive, this game is older than me), it was a nice game to see what gaming was like in the past. Thank G-d for new consoles.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! Good night!
*Applause*