Donkey Kong (1994)

Happy Halloween! It's very fitting that I've finally finished this game on such a spooky day, I've been chipping away at this for months!

Entire nations have risen, fallen, new languages developed, and diseases cured, but I did it. Donkey Kong is dead. Slain! It's been a test and journey of patience but it's over now.

The sheer amount of levels here surprises me every time, they just don't stop coming! It's also one of the most difficult platformers I've played, partially due to the absolute fuckery that Nintendo pulls off with the level design. I've played previous Mario titles so I know they like to mess with you occasionally but I've had to look up guides countless times for this particular game. One level had me looking for a door that just wasn't there... bearing in mind the entire game is based around you carrying keys to doors this one was probably top of my "son of a *$%@!#" list. Other times there's ladders you don't realise you can use because floor platforms are in the way, ropes at funny angles you wouldn't assume you could use to swing off etc. etc... a lot of occasions where I felt like if the mechanics had been established better earlier on then I'd have more success at solving the puzzles with my own smooth brain.

The music is great and as mentioned before the amount of content is really nice if you're looking for something to last a while. Platforming feels nice with a few different moves to use to your advantage (crouch, handstand jump, backflip jump). It's never really the enemies or bosses that feel impossible to beat either, it's the damn level design. The difficulty is scattered pretty randomly throughout the game, sometimes you'll think it's all over, other times you'll breeze through three or four levels in a row. Take all of that as a positive or a negative depending on your perspective.

I have such fond memories of the DKC series on SNES so it was nice seeing the jungle world and characters that would later appear in the SNES series. Seeing as this came out early in 1994 I guess this would have been a little sneak peak of what was to come in the Donkey Kong franchise! Pretty neat!

The finale mixes things up which I wasn't expecting, definitely enjoyed sticking around for that and appreciated the tribute to the original release!

All around a really solid platformer with bitesize levels in huge quantities. Tons of fun here for platform enthusiasts, Mario and Donkey Kong lovers, and anyone else who loves punishing themselves with devilish level design!

Preliminary: Wait lol, so I'm surprised I got through the traditional Donkey Kong style levels and then all of a sudden I unlock a place and it says Stage 1-1?! That was just an intro?

These levels are neat, basically get a key and then go to the door? I was never in lovew ith the Donkey Kong premise/gameplay, and I wish they had added the ability to jump then cling on to a ladder wherever you are.

There is a sort of Super Mario Bros 2 type gamepaly with the keys. And the levels are short enogh (at this point) to get me to keep playing.

Day 1

Sure, I'm not a big Donkey Kong guy, and yea sure, the controls are quite slippery, and yea it's a GB limited platformer, but I'm oddly enjoying this. Solving the puzzles with the build a block thingies :-p And I like that it (seems to be) easing in/introducing new mechanics with each area by having Donkey Kong himself show it.

The world map could definitely be cooler, it just says "forest" but I don't see any forest vibes. And I never like one hit kills. But the levels are short and fun enough so far. I wonder how it'll go in mid and late game tho. (omg just read there are 101 levels... nope)

And each level seems to introducenew mechanics, so that's impressive if it stays that way for 101 levels. Also lots of replayability/optional items too. And I haven't felt compelled to mute it yet. Which I would've forgiven if so since it's a GB puzzle platformer with 101 levels...

I'll take a break for tonight but I am still enjoying this. I wish it moved a bit faster in the later levels and the animations after you fall a decent height didn't take up so much time. The collision masks aren't great, it's slippery, but here I am. Still playing lol.

Day 2

I know I've already said this but if this had the ability to jump to a ladder, this would be so so so good. I am surprised that I am still clicking with it. I prefer the more action/platform-focused levels and those keep me going, running away from those silly ear monsters etc lol

The Donkey Kong bosses along the way are quite easy/simple and redundant but I assume they will get tougher, especially if I went to 101 levels!

The gameplay hook that I'm having is really intense! And it makes me feel like it deserves a 5 star because of it, but the other part of me recognizes that usually I find these puzzle platformers tedious and the Look/Sound can't compare to its contemporaries. Still... Imagining having this at my fingertips as a kid with a Gameboy, that would've been cool.

It's pleasantly surprising how many new tunes I keep coming across. Not that any are absolutely amazing, but they're all catchy and nice. I kinda like Area 5's in-level tune :-p There's a lot of replayability to this too, if I wanted to get every one of the bonus items/bonus levels. It kind of reminds me of the Humongous Entertainment side games like Pajama Sam Sock Works and Putt Putt and Pep Balloon O Rama where there are so many levels that it's almost a negative, but that it is full of love and new tunes so it's valid.

Day 3

Ehhh i'm officially burning out in the latter part of world 7 but still imrpessed how much it keeps driving me to keep trying. These icicles keep despawning before my slow self, incapable of jumping to a ladder, can get to them! Gr! Ugh but I eventually got it and there are only 2 more worlds left...

The levels sandwiching the level I got irritated at (7-9 I believe), I was remarking in my head how cleverly they keep adding new mechanics. It's honestly quite wild for a Gameboy game. New icicle mechancis that are very intricate, the timing resets by collecting more temporary ladders/platforms, etc. Oh and using the Key as an essential weapon lol

Oooo I'm on the final area. Not impressed with the tune but it's a neat Look (and the tune is pretty neat)

I digged the tune in 9-5. And welp the ending solidified this as a likely 5 star, despite its flaws with collision masks and whatnot, with a cute ending and a great credits jingle!

And yesss an FF-style proper The End screen, I dig it

Look: 8/10 Nothing spectacular, but high quality for a GB game and some really neat world map screens (and a surprising variety of sprites... and no sprite slowdown moments that I can think of, which isr eally more of a Play/level design thing but)

Sound: 8.5/10 For the most part just pretty good but that ending tune gave it a boost. Plus I never wanted to mute it which is pleasant for a GB game.

Play: 9/10 As frustrating and flawed as it was, I was absolutely hooked. And actually played 101 levels of a game.....

Feel: 8.5/10 The hook is very very real.

Attachment: 8.5/10 Stands out for sure not only among Gameboy games, but also puzzle platformers.

Overall: 8.5/10 This is a fitting rating. In many ways it's really a 4 star, but that hook was so intense and undeniable. And a notable example for a genre I often don't click with.

Completion: Main Game

Playtime: ~5 hours

I recently finished playing through Donkey Kong '94, and I had a lot of fun. It's a really nice reimagining of the original Donkey Kong for the Game Boy that continues the story, and introduces a lot of cool new ideas. Unfortunately, I feel like the internet raised my expectations for the game a little bit too much. Yes, it's a lot of fun, but it hasn't aged the best, and left me wanting something a little bit better.

Developed in... well, 1994, Donkey Kong '94 is a reimagining of the original Donkey Kong arcade game. You play as Mario, trying to rescue Pauline from the clutches of the evil Donkey Kong. It's a tale as old as time, but after so many years of training, DK now has more tricks up his metaphorical sleeve.

This time around, he'll actually get up and run off with Pauline to a brand new stage every time you beat him. He'll actually do this for all 10 worlds and a total of 100 levels, so you better get ready!

But honestly? it's actually not that bad once you get into it. All levels present you with a very short platforming challenge to beat, and usually won't take you more than a couple of minutes. Yeah, it's a lot of levels, but it's really easy to blast through them once you get the hang of it.

Unfortunately, some of the later levels feel rather cheap and annoying. They don't appear hard at first, but you'll be constantly dying to insta-kill traps or to the game mechanics themselves, making you repeat these stages over and over. If you can, I'd recommend using an emulator with rewind, as it'll save you a lot of time backtracking.

Mechanically, the game is actually pretty impressive. It features a lot of cool movement tech, allowing you to do sweet tricks and move through the levels in very creative ways. Unfortunately, the Game Boy controls hold this part of the game back, making many of these special moves hard to execute and even harder to figure out Fortunately, these would later be reused for the Mario vs Donkey Kong series, letting you go back to your tricks and acrobatics... so silver lining, I guess?

Personally, I think the graphics are just alright. They're at its best when they're recreating the original Donkey Kong sprites, simplifying and adapting them for a new experience in a handheld console. However, most of the new, original sprites are very hit or miss, and a lot of them don't feel like they fit together in the same game. It's not bad, but not good either.

The animations themselves are pretty cool though, have you seen the flips Mario does in this game? That's awesome!

In conclusion: It's fine. I feel like everyone on the internet continues to praise the game for a lot of reasons: It's ahead of its time, it features cool movement, it's a remake of the original game... and while I do agree that it's a really cool video game, it doesn't really do the best job at it, and the very things people praise about it ended up falling short of my expectations.

It's definitely an issue with its age. Some consoles haven't aged as well as others, and it only becomes more noticeable as time goes on. Sure, I had a fun time playing through the game, and I can definitely see why nintendo keeps coming back to this gameplay formula for the Mario vs Donkey Kong series. But even with all the good ideas it has, as it stands... I wouldn't call it anything better than good enough. 7/10

Donkey Kong '94 is my first gaming memory. I remember, still, today, 30 years later, playing 7-7. I remember playing the level over and over again, unable to figure out how to get the key to the door. I remember finally understanding that I could throw the key underwater to knock out the fish only to run out of time. Beating that level on my next try felt like climbing a mountain. My love for games started here.

There's such a bigness to DK94 that I never got over. You beat the original four DK levels (kinda) l, and the normal arcade ending to Donkey Kong plays, but guess what? DK is not defeated and is ready for 9 more worlds of puzzle platforming if you want your cocktail-dress-wearing girlfriend Pauline back. And so much about it works! Still! Today! Thirty years later! The music is appropriately grand. The vistas are sprawling and inspired. Mario's options for movement are surprisingly robust. The game's visual language is communicative and clear (there's some lava that looks like water, but the game has a little cutscene that explains the next world is a lava place).

DK94 did have a gameboy blind spot which does weaken it for modern playthroughs; the game has some spots where the difficulty feels artificially increased just to add to the playtime. In my NSO replay, I was able to get through the game in under five hours. But when you don't have the rewind feature and the game hits you with an invisible door OR a section where you need to be nearly frame perfect in order to platform through OR you lose in the final boss fight if giant DK hits you once, it can feel profoundly unfair. Rewind does alleviate this issue, but using it reminds you of the game's (and your) deficiencies.

If you haven't played DK94, it is one of God's games. You'll be able to play it in Heaven. Is it played as frequently as Tetris? No, but God leaves a Super Gameboy* hooked up just so you can experience it in its original glory.

*I implore you to check out the screenshots on the Mario Wiki to see how nice this game looked on Super Gameboy. Perhaps the pinnacle of 2 bit design.

This game is awesome! I’d heard it mentioned as surprisingly great on several podcasts but wasn’t really sure why: I assumed it was just a very competent Donkey Kong game.

Turns out it pulls an incredible bait-and-switch, and after four classic Donkey Kong levels turns into a puzzle platformer and the spiritual precursor to the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games.

The game itself is a great mixture of (very deliberate) platforming and light puzzles (with the occasional devilish one), with some levels leaning more towards one or the other, and some just being an even balance.

Mario moves really quite slowly, as in the original DK game, but to counteract this he has a backflip and handstand that allow for some acrobatics to jump higher and further if performed well.

Things are fairly easygoing in the first portion of the game, but by the end I’d ended up burning through almost all of the 50-ish lives I’d built up, and the backflips and handstands moved from opening neat shortcuts to necessary to beat the levels. I’d recommend finding Pauline’s three lost items in each level as they are not particularly challenging to get, but collecting all three grants additional lives.

There’s a ton of content (round about 100 levels) and it feels very much in the spirit of the Game Boy: you fight DK and can save after every four levels, which feels like the perfect amount of time for an individual play session.

What works

• Lots of fun and perfect to play in short sessions
• Good variety of enemies and environmental challenges even right up until the end
• The graphics actually look really good as long as you use a good DMG filter like on the Analogue Pocket or an emulator (I found them quite blocky and not so great without)

What doesn’t

• Sound effects and music are repetitive and grating. Definitely the game’s sorest spot
• There is a fall/roll mechanic that, while very deliberately factored into the level design, becomes incredibly irritating in some of the later levels

I've been dabbling in a bunch of Game Boy games lately, and the one that stuck out to me the most was one simply titled Donkey Kong. It's not the arcade classic it shares its name with though -- it's an entirely new game that has you play through 101 different stages as Mario, out to rescue Pauline from the totally not King Kong ape.

Mechanically, this seems to be the perfect Game Boy game (other than Tetris, of course). Levels are short and sweet, perfect for quick pick-up-and-play sessions. The graphics are simple and easy to parse, even with a lot of different things moving about. It's actually a really nice-looking game for the system, with amusing cartoon-like animations for the characters. The sounds are also on point, using the Game Boy's limits to great effect. (Pauline's chirpy-distorted "Help! Help!" at the start of each stage is very funny to me.)

The game controls well too -- Mario certainly moves much more fluidly here than he (or, uh Jumpman?) did in the OG Donkey Kong. You can pull off backflips and extra-big jumps with a little practice, and some stages have you picking up and throwing things in the style of Super Mario 2 ("the greatest game ever!"). And though most of the game is skill-based, some stages have a bit of a puzzle platformer feel to them, requiring you to work out what switches to pull, where to place ladders and springs, and so on in order to get a key to bring back to a door safely, etc. The game does a good job introducing new gimmicks to work with in each "world," and this added variety helps keep the game from feeling too monotonous.

The only downside I think for this one is that it still does end up feeling pretty monotonous after a while. There's a samey-ness to it all, and the gimmicks can only shake things up so much. (I was feeling "done" by world 6 or 7, out of 9 total.) To some degree I probably just prefer the style of regular Super Mario games, having you platform about a longer scrolling level. But for what "Donkey Kong 94" is going for, it does a really solid job and I strongly recommend it for anyone wanting to give the 'ol Game Boy a go.

For me, this game was a massive surprise.

I remember getting this cartridge in the mid-'90s. I booted it up and saw the first level of the DK arcade and thought 'oh... this again?' I figured I'd wasted my scant pocket money on yet another DK port. I left it alone and played Contra and Castlevania for a while before I revisited it much later on a boring afternoon.

After clearing through the first few stages, the game turned everything upside down and introduced the all-new mechanics that we'd not see again until Mario vs Donkey Kong on the GBA many years later.

So after those initial DK stages, you have one of the finest 'puzzle/action/platformer' games created.

If you're fortunate enough to have a SNES/SFC handy and any iteration of the Super Gameboy you can enjoy what was basically Nintendo's tech demo of what the SGB could pull off. Nicer colour pallets, a full custom border etc. Pretty neat!

I spend months playing through this title and it holds fond memories of a time long past, the gameplay hasn't aged, maintaining a pretty fresh feel even today.

An exemplary title on the Gameboy that reeks of polish, and one of the finest games on that system, well deserving of 5 stars.

Wasted potential. Not sure if the Game Boy had enough power to program decent physics and weight for its avatars, but what is seen here is not enough to make enjoyable environments. An interesting moveset one could say, yeah, and some interesting gimmicks, yeah yeah, but is it fun to solely move Mario? I don't think so.

Too gimmicky. Too versatile if that's even possible. Too many levels that are not sustained by these systems.

History:

I've played the original Donkey Kong, but never this version of it.

Expectations:

I can't tell whether I'm excited for this game, or dreading it. It looks like it's potentially going to be a lot of fun, but at 100 stages I think it's going to be level length that will make or break this one for me...

Day 1:

Hey I remember that game!

As expected the game starts off on the familiar side, save for an array of new abilities we definitely didn't have in the 80's original. After the fourth stage, however, things take a big turn, and you're playing through level and level variably challenging stages. Every fourth stage, you again square off against DK himself.

Every so often you'll also be introduced to a new mechanic which you'll be expected to make use of in the future. The first of these are horizontal and vertical structure creatures, which create bridges and ladders respectively.

Everything in the game handles pretty good, but I can't really say I'm having fun with it. I've cleared the first world and am now in the Forest. Not really sure where the disconnect is for me, every stage just feels more menial than it does fun...

Day 2:

The Forest world had me riding on lady bugs and flipping switches to open and close gates to navigate levels. The one pictures above gave me the most headaches at first, until I realized how simple the solution actually was. That seems to be par for the course in this game, and I find that just winging it until a solution appears is generally the easiest way through a level.

The confrontations with DK in this world were definitely on the easy side as well, with the latter one simply involving catching and returning barrels at the big ape.

World 3 has pirate ships...

...

Conclusion:

Okay, I can't take how mindless this game is and that's why I'm calling it here. I find that this may be the perfect travel title, or something to keep by your bedside for when you can't sleep, but sitting down to play it deliberately is just too much. Every level just kind of blends into the last, and after a while playing the game feels more tedious than rewarding. There's nothing bad I can really say about it on a technical level, it plays nearly perfect. The game is just not set up in a structure that, to me, makes it appealing to sit down and play for any real amount of time.

I've cleared about a quarter of the game, and I couldn't really pick out anything memorable about it aside from the very first stage.

Liked:

- Tight controls made the platforming enjoyable.
- Fair difficulty kept the game moving at a steady pace.
- Fights with DK were easily the stage's highlights. I would have taken significantly fewer stages where they were all DK confrontations!
- Fun seeing the origin of the triple jump and backflip jump that would be seen again in Super Mario 64.
- Good game to play in very short bursts, like on a bus, or in a meeting...

Disliked:

- The game starts to feel tedious when played for more than a few minutes at a time.
- Help! Help! Help!

Personal Score: