Donkey Kong (Game Boy) Review

I could review this game in eight words—this game is amazing, go buy it now—and that would be that, but honestly there isn’t anything else I need to say, it’s as simple as that. It’s an amazing game and everyone needs to play this just to understand why it is so. That said, I guess the point of a review is to tell you why a game is amazing (or crap), so here goes. Back when this game came out in 1994, I’ll admit I didn’t really pay it much attention. I’m not really sure why I overlooked it, maybe it was due to the fact that it came out around the same time as Donkey Kong Country, which overshadowed it. Maybe it was when I looked at the game, I thought it was nothing more than a Game Boy port of the original Donkey Kong arcade game. Whatever the reason was, it wasn’t until many years later that I gave it a look and, boy, was I surprised and annoyed at myself for overlooking what is without a doubt one of the all-time greatest games ever made.

Donkey Kong takes the core elements of what made the original Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. such amazing games and builds upon them. As you start the game you play the original four Donkey Kong levels and everything feels very samey bar the look of the game. Once you pass those levels though, you soon begin to see how big an adventure is ahead of you. Instead of the measly four levels repeating over and over again as in the original Donkey Kong, Mario now has 101 different stages to traverse, spread over nine worlds. Each world has its own theme, ranging from Big City, to Rocky-Valley, to an Iceberg and even one set on an Airplane. Each new world brings in a new element to the game to make things fresh. The Iceberg stages, as you would assume, have lots of slippery surfaces. On the Airplane you’re constantly battling the wind as it tries to blow you off course.

The goal in each stage is to grab a key and carry it to the door on screen, which will give you access to the next stage. Once you pick up the key it’s yours to carry around and you can throw it as a weapon, should any of Donkey Kong’s minions try and stop you. However when you let go of the key you will only have a few seconds to go and pick it up again before it vanishes back to where it came from. This brings about some very interesting puzzles such as ones that require you to throw the key onto a conveyor belt where it will go under some spikes that will kill you if you touch it, so you have to hurry from one side of the screen to the other and grab the key on the other side of the screen before it vanishes. The level design is without a doubt some of the best of any 2D platformer. Every level is well thought out and feels unique.

Within each world there are eight or twelve stages (with the exception of the first and final two worlds). At every fourth stage you have a quick showdown with Donkey Kong which sees you trying to reach Pauline at the top of the screen and almost in your reach, only to have Donkey Kong grab her and go off to the next area. After each showdown you’ll be greeted with a nice little animation that introduces a new gameplay element; for example, the aforementioned windy stages, a new enemy who will try and impede your progress (such as Donkey Kong Jr.), or the ability to do a handstand and jump really high. As the game goes on it will keep mixing up the various elements, making it so each stage feels fresh and new. At the end of every area you have a battle against Donkey Kong which involves you using the barrels and other objects he hurls at you as a weapon to be thrown back at him. After you’ve hit him the required three times, off he goes with Pauline and the chase continues.

The controls are incredibly tight and just what you would expect from Nintendo. Mario plays like a cross between the way he played in Super Mario Bros. 2 and the original Donkey Kong (as Jumpman) with just a hint of Super Mario 64 put in for good measure. He doesn’t move as freely and fluidly as he did in Super Mario Bros. 2 but also not as stiffly as he did in Donkey Kong. His jumps don’t feel floaty and he’s not sliding all over the place. He also has a whole lot of nice little additions to his moveset like in Mario 64, such as the aforementioned handstand jump, backflips and so on. Controlling Mario is an absolute joy; I’d go so far as to say that this is the best controlling of Mario out of any game he has been in. Not once did I feel like I wasn’t in total control, even in the stages with wind blowing you all over the place. Every time I died it wasn’t due to the game being unfair, it was because I didn’t think things out properly and tried to rush through it.

There’s not much to be said about the look of the game; it’s pretty much on par with the quality of games Nintendo was putting out on the Game Boy around the time. All the sprites look as detailed as you’re going to get with a monochrome Game Boy game. Characters are well defined and easily recognisable; Mario and Donkey Kong look pretty much as you would expect them. The inter-level cutscenes are heaps of fun and nicely animated. This is about as good are you’re going to get graphics-wise for a classic black and white Game Boy game. For a game of its time you really can’t fault the look and presentation.

As much as I love this game I’ll admit it’s not 100 percent perfect. The music, while not bad, doesn’t really have any stand-out tunes. All that really stands out are the occasional musical hints that allude to the original Donkey Kong. Nothing else is memorable in the way you’d expect a Mario game to be; it’s kind of just…there. Another thing that annoyed me is just how ready the game is to hand out free lives. By the time I’d gotten halfway through the game I had already maxed out at 99 lives. While this doesn’t really make the game any easier per se, it does take out a lot of the risk of dying as you’ll pretty much always have a ready supply of extra lives to back you up. Having said that, some of the later levels are devilishly hard and those lives really do come in handy. The last little gripe I have is the way Nintendo has ported the game as just the original monochrome Game Boy version. While there is no true colour version of the game, when you played the original on the SNES via the Super Game Boy, you were able play an enhanced version with a faux colour palette that would match the theme for each level. It’s a small gripe, I know, but it’s an example of Nintendo not putting in a little bit more effort where they could have to enhance the game and make it a little more enjoyable for all.

Part of me is annoyed that I overlooked this game when it came out, but then again if I played it back then I wouldn’t have had the joy of discovering it all these years later. Donkey Kong is Shigeru Miyamoto at his finest, it’s him going back to what made him a star and building upon it. The game just oozes creativity and it is without a doubt the finest example of 2D puzzle platforming on the Game Boy, maybe the greatest example of the genre ever. As I said at the beginning of this review, this game is amazing and you need to buy it—no ifs, buts or maybes. I feel, like myself, a lot of people may have overlooked this back in the day and this is what’s so great about services like the Virtual Console. It not only allows us to play the games we loved, it allows us to discover the gems we may have overlooked. Donkey Kong is one of those gems I urge you do pick up—you will not be disappointed.