Donkey Kong (GB) Playthrough Part 1 (Classic Levels & Big City)
5This is the beginning of the playthrough of Donkey Kong for the Game Boy. First, it seems like it is simply a port of the arcade game classic before D.K. won't take it and steals back Pauline as we follow him to the Big City.
Opinion:
Donkey Kong for the Game Boy is no doubt, one of my favorite games on the system. Instead of going the easy route for this by doing a point-to-point arcade port, they did something truly beyond that and it works really well.
The game looks visually impressive for the Game Boy. Working with the limitations of the monochrome palette, there are great looking backgrounds and sprites with great personality and animations, especially Donkey Kong and Mario, though a few like Pauline has only a few frames of animation that's noticeable. With the use of the Super Game Boy (as seen here), it does give the game a slightly higher color count for its palette and it helps make the game look a little better like with color in the map screen and slight color in the in-game screens notably on the HUD.
The gameplay at first seems to play the same in the classic levels, reach up to Donkey Kong while dodging and jumping any obstacles that stand in your way but you are given updated abilities include a handstand, jump high backwards, the triple jump etc. After that, it goes for a more puzzle like gameplay of finding the key and make your way to the door to move on. Throughout the levels, the game introduces other mechanics throughout little cutscenes in-between 4 levels like switches and blocks that create things depend on the picture on it anywhere you want to place it on screen. You could also collect the 3 objects scattered around the level to go to a bonus stage where you will receive 1 to 5 lives depending on either a slot machine or a roulette. Every 4 levels that's not the final level of the stage, you will confront Donkey Kong and you'll have to reach him while dodging the things he throws or falls when he stomps on the floor. In the final stage, you will battle him as he will throw barrels or baddies at you, and you have to hit him 3 times to finish him off... for now.
The level design is great with a lot of clever ideas with difficulty that stays progressive and never feels like it throws a curve ball at you. The first stage is pretty easy, but things do get difficult as you reach the later stages in the game though it never gets too frustrating. If there was anything that bugged me about the gameplay, it's the fact that the save feature doesn't record the amount of lives, but considering the amount of possibilities to gain lives and the save feature... it's more of a nitpick than anything else. This is essentially the thinking man's version of Donkey Kong, while keeping the arcade feel and gameplay at the same time.
To add to the great gameplay is tight controls with the normal movement and jumps, and even the additional moves is easy to perform, but you have to determine when is the appropriate time to do so.
The game also contains one of my favorite soundtracks on the system with a lot of great tracks, some of which really shows the sound capabilities of the system. The sound effects are quite good and respectable (some of which is from the NES Donkey Kong).
Donkey Kong for the Game Boy is one of the best games on the system, yet it seems to be typically overlooked by some of the more popular Mario titles (Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 etc.) and deserves more recognition than it receives. In fact, I even prefer this game over Mario vs. Donkey Kong (I still like that game, too), a more recent game with similar mechanics to this game.
Grade: A
Developers: Nintendo EAD, Pax Softnica
Publisher: Nintendo
Year: 1994
Platforms: Game Boy, 3DS Virtual Console
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