Donkey Kong

Perhaps the most harrowing and surprising thing about Donkey Kong for the Game Boy was, since its release, is that most people don’t know just what this game is for the DK series. It tricks you at the beginning by presenting the four levels from the original arcade in a gesture that makes you think “ok, so this is just a regular ass arcade port to portable gaming.” But then, after you crash Donkey Kong down a multi-tier building and saved Paulina, you actually don’t start over again in loop until the kill screen happens. Donkey Kong picks himself up and takes that brunette bombshell on a whole new game of cat-and-mouse with Mario.

If you’ve actually played the recent Mario vs. Donkey Kong series (or rather, the original one for the GBA before it became all about those Mario wind-up toys) you’ll immediately feel at home. Instead of taking the easy way out and making 100 new levels of the same shtick from the 1981 original, they made a whole new slew of levels that takes inspiration from numerous Mario games since then. They got the vine climbing of Donkey Kong Jr., the pick-up-enemies-and-open-doors-with-big-keys mechanic from Super Mario Bros. 2, and even has Mario pull off some acrobatic finesse with some back jumps that would later be used in Super Mario 64.

It’s a wonderful mixture of old and new (well, “new” in 1994 anyway), making for an incredibly fun old school platformer/puzzler that still holds up today. The original Mario vs. Donkey Kong added new stuff like colored switches, a countdown timer for how long the key can be left alone, and actual tutorials that shows how to work the tightrope. But the simplicity and variety of what was the developers had to worth with is something that makes me recommend this game over that one, no question.

In the end, the only problem I have with this 3DS Virtual Console release for its $3.99 price tag is that it doesn’t include the upgraded, colored visuals that was provided by playing the game on the Super Game Boy add-on for the SNES. But other than that, this is a fantastic – and sadly overlooked – gem from yesteryear that is absolutely worth the download.