My Top 100: #99 – Donkey Kong Classics

 

Before I delve too deep into the legend that is Donkey Kong, let it be noted that this is the only game on my countdown that is *technically* a compilation.  A game is a game, and a game with a bunch of games on it is not the same.  Right?  Right.

Anyway, who knows where gaming would be now if Donkey Kong never saw the light of day.  Nintendo’s original plans were to have a game based on the Popeye franchise, a pretty decent game that was eventually released…  but would it have launched Shigeru Miyamoto’s career the way the “big, stupid ape” ended up doing?  Would he still have come up with those same iconic characters some other way, destined to change the industry forever?  I guess we’ll never know for sure, but by some stroke of genius, Hiroshi Yamauchi gave Miyamoto the go ahead for his idea to use original characters.

I never quite got a grip on how popular DK really was until we rented Donkey Kong Classics at a local grocery store, a little while after Super Mario Bros. 2 had come out.  I knew the game had something to do with a giant ape, but what the heck was Mario doing on the cover?

 

 

It was a bit of a step back from the platforming genius that was Super Mario Bros., but I liked it.  Where Donkey Kong focused on well-timed jumps through a construction site, Junior‘s jungle-inspired themes had the little ape climbing vines to rescue his pop from imprisonment by an evil Mario.

It was simple fun, and even though both games lasted no more than a few minutes each, I always like going back for a quick game or two.  To me, the original DK games (even Donkey Kong 3, to a certain extent) are the pinnacle of early arcade gaming.  The Virtual Console split them up, but I’ll always remember going back to that original Orange Box as a kid.