The name of this game is technically Donkey Kong, but it’s a remake of sorts of the original, so I like to use its prerelease name just for clarity. If you’ve never played Donkey Kong, the story can be summed up thusly: A big monkey kidnaps a damsel, Mario scales a construction site in an effort to save her. Let’s suppose for a moment that after scaling the four sets of scaffolding that the big ape decides to rekidnap the damsel and run off. What’s Mario to do? Rescue her, I suppose.
In the first Donkey Kong game, you had to get to the top of the screen, then Donkey Kong would grab Pauline (the damsel) and climb a little higher. In this game, after every stage, Donkey Kong grabs Pauline and runs off through something like 100 stages across a variety of locations, each much more complicated than your vanilla Donkey Kong experience. Not to worry, though, Mario has a plethora of new moves to help him along. Your goal in each stage is to find the key, avoid the enemies, and carry the key to the door before the time runs out. It starts out pretty easy, but gets a bit tougher as the game wears on.
This is definitely one of my favorite Game Boy games. Not just because it’s the first game I bought that was compatible with my Super Game Boy, but because it’s a fantastic package. It’s fun, controls well, and is easy to pick up and play for a few minutes at a time (you get to save after every 4th stage). The game is also extremely lavish with the amount of extra lives it gives you. If you’ve never played this game, then I weep for you.
Secretly… on the inside.
[...] pretty significant to me since I hadn’t seen a Donkey Kong game in quite some time, (except that one). But this one was completely different from any Donkey Kong game that I had ever [...]