And that’s a shame because, although DK ’94 isn’t better than COUNTRY in my opinion, it’s a tremendous interpretation of the Donkey Kong games that came out more than a decade before. DONKEY KONG (1994), mostly referred to as DONKEY KONG ’94, came out just a few months earlier in the same year as DONKEY KONG COUNTRY, and as such, the Game Boy game is often overshadowed by the groundbreaking, franchise-evolving Super Nintendo game. DONKEY KONG JR., even by the relatively static terms of early platforming controls, just feels a bit more fluid, and its whole escalation of the first game’s concept is so clever, that it almost takes the cake as the best game from Donkey Kong’s original run. The little guy’s shimmying up the vines, which can be sped up by grabbing onto two at once, is such a satisfying gameplay concept that JR. The four stages are more jungle-like than city-like, complete with little snapping crocodiles and other enemies, as Junior traverses vines and grassy platforms. takes the central concept of its predecessor (climbing up to the top of a structure and reaching the villain) and twists it so as to make sense for a primate protagonist. In any event, Nintendo also wasn’t just quickly following up their massive hit with an unoriginal clone. For example, the original Donkey Kong might be Cranky Kong and Junior the protagonist in the Country games. The character has been the source of great discourse and theorizing over the years when it comes to the A.C DK world. So the ape’s son, Donkey Kong Junior, has to rescue his father. Here, Mario is the villain (the only time he has been such), kidnapping Donkey Kong, presumably as some kind of revenge. But with DONKEY KONG’s sequel, Nintendo was already flipping the idea on its head. Donkey Kong is kind of obvious: he was a villain originally, and although the series was named after him, DK was the antagonist facing off against Mario, who would have his own series in a few years. It should be noted that a central way in which the B.C. DONKEY KONG is a perfect example of the “easy to learn, difficult to master” design ethos of early arcade games, and leaping across barrels, climbing up ladders, wielding hammers, and saving Pauline from the clutches of the villainous ape is still as fun as it is iconic today. The single screen layout is given depth across four increasingly difficult stages, which loop until you get as far as you can (not much farther than the first four, in my case). Even still, its home console version is quite fun and a comparable experience, but the arcade version of DONKEY KONG is the original thrilling platforming experience. It was brought to the NES in a notoriously abridged form, notorious because it was often the only officially available version of the game brought to later platforms. DONKEY KONG was a huge success, and can still be used as a sort of shorthand for even non-gamers who grew up or came of age in the ’80s. DONKEY KONG is an early, pure, and effective example of icon Shigeru Miyamoto’s game design prowess, and Nintendo’s ability to develop groundbreaking gameplay concepts and visually powerful, if “simple,” aesthetics. There are wide arrays of stories documenting its development, some of which were already mentioned in the introduction of this article. Rightfully revered and considered one of the best/most important games of all time, DONKEY KONG is what set Nintendo up for the massive video game industry- and medium-shaping success it would gain in the mid-1980s. games.Īll games developed and published by Nintendo. Hence this piece, which ranks those five B.C. While the original Donkey games are in fact platformers, they are of a different era and kind, and so removed from the “canon” (insofar as there is a cohesive story to the Donkey Kong saga), characters, aesthetic, and gameplay of today’s series that they deserve evaluation on their own, more specific terms. also in 1994, DONKEY KONG COUNTRY totally reimagined the character and franchise into the incarnation its been ever since. In the series’ original run, players never actually controlled Donkey Kong himself in any one of its five games, released in the 13 years from 1981 to 1994. And of course, DONKEY KONG was the introduction of Jumpman, the carpenter who would soon become known as Mario the plumber. The change to an original character didn’t prevent Universal from suing Nintendo for infringement on the “King Kong” name, however. The Donkey Kong series had its origins in the arcades, with the first game releasing in 1981 on hardware scraped together from the commercial failure RADAR SCOPE (1980), with a concept spun up after a Popeye license was lost. When it comes to Donkey Kong, Nintendo’s empire-founding ape, there is a B.C.
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