Action/Platformer
June 1986 (Nintendo)
I can only imagine the horror that ensued when parents told kids they brought this game home. Especially if the parent couldn’t remember the full name of the game or was otherwise confused about it. For the past 7 months or so the only game with Jr. in it was Donkey Kong Jr Math. Donkey Kong itself had only been releases in June too, so if somehow a parent was cool enough to buy a game before the kid asked for it and just told them it was another Donkey Kong game there’s a chance the kid went berserk.
Let’s look at the game though. It’s another game that I’ll be coming back to because it’s fun and I’m not very good at it. The basic idea is that Mario has kidnapped Donkey Kong. Probably as payback for kidnapping the princess in the last game. There’s also a slight chance that this is the first appearance of Wario and everyone has missed that since he’s disguised as Mario. You are Donkey Kong Jr., whose job is to rescue Donkey Kong. Very original.
Lack of new plot lines aside, this is a good game. Climb up vines, chains, and what appears to be really strong globs of snot and avoid the enemies on your way to the stop of the screen. It’s more fun than I just made it sound.
There’s one thing though that still bothers me about this game. DK Jr seems to be made out of eggs. I fell off one of the platforms in the second screen and went down a total of Jr’s height. That’s a fall of about roughly 5 ½ feet1. Shouldn’t my character be able to handle a fall of his own height? The most careful rock climbers in the world don’t even wear any kind of safety gear if they’re climbing that high.
Despite the frailty issues, which I’ll blame on Jr being raised in captivity even though I don’t have anything to back me up on that, I just have to like this game. I prefer it to Donkey Kong myself. Not sure what the general consensus is about which is the better game though.
- Estimate based on Jr looking half as tall as DK and DK being twice as big as a regular gorilla. [↩]
