My favorite bit of trivia about Mario Brothers is that apparently Mario surviving from falling from the platforms was considered a “super power.” I don’t know, I think it’s just charming that their line of logic in that period of time and development followed that dying from missing a jump was the assumption. Miyamoto thought the game would be too easy and had to be convinced otherwise.

Thank god he was, because fall damage on top of the awkward controls and slippery momentum would have made this already very frustrating game unplayable.

Donkey Kong could have been so good had it been born on NES. As it stands it comes off as an awkwardly ambitious arcade game that really wants to be something more. Compared to Namco’s early 80s classics Pac-Man and Galaga, which are as fun now as they were when they came out, Donkey Kong is a neat novelty that wears off quickly. It’s all Shigeru Miyamoto’s fault, visionary and genius that he is.

Miyamoto’s name these days is associated with a strict dedication to formula and emphasizing gameplay over story, and I find that ironic: Miyamoto is essentially the man behind contextualizing and integrating story into gameplay in the first place! Miyamoto developed Donkey Kong from the perspective of an artist, not a programmer.

And it’s pretty obvious that game mechanics were based on the story concept, not the other way around. For a 1981 arcade game, the characters and the construction site setting are coherent and identifiable. To this day I don’t know who Pac-Man is or what he’s supposed to be doing, but DK himself sure is a big scary gorilla who wants to kill you. Jumpman is virtually identical to the Mario we know and love today.

It’s not as though the concept is wholly original: King Kong is obviously a massive influence, and originally the game was going to star Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl. That said, Donkey Kong at least as far as I know is the first game with a fully realized story. The context of Donkey Kong dragging Lady to the top of the construction site is animated and even the level design layout is contextualized when he stomps his feet and sets the girders to a slant. The gameplay mechanics are intuitive too: climb the ladders, jump over the barrels that are rolling down on the now slanted girders, save cute girlfriend. The fourth stage involves removing the (nails? stakes?) that support the platform, and bring Donkey Kong crashing down.

Miyamoto wanted his players to focus their goal on completing the story instead of chasing a high score, a philosophy that he used to guide development on Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda a few years later, on the NES.

Maybe you can see the problem. Donkey Kong’s levels do loop, but the same four stages made more challenging just does not make for the addicting formula other arcade games have mastered by this point. Donkey Kong was of course obviously a massive hit, it pulled Nintendo out financial troubles after all, but I suspect this was for the ambition and gravitas of the project: judging by the four-man team of programmers who gave a lot of blowback for Miyamoto’s design ideas, it was a technical marvel.

To give credit where credit is due, Donkey Kong is more than playable, and as I said earlier, intuitive and easy to pick up. As someone who’s introducing to platformers was New Super Mario Bros for the DS, however, I have completely different expectations for how Mario should move and control. To me Jumpman feels too slow, the response to my input a little laggy, and much too prone to dying when I fall any vertical distance. From a modern perspective, these aren’t exactly nuanced criticisms to make, however. And it’s not as though it isn’t easy to adapt: play Donkey Kong for longer than five minutes and you’ll get used to it.

My one major criticism is the hammer, which in my opinion badly disrupts the flow of the game. The ability to destroy obstacles is nice in concept, but when it robs you of the ability to climb ladders and locks you in the same animation for the duration you’re holding on to it. Also, at least for me, it created a Mandela effect where I made a leap in logic and assumed the way you defeat Donkey Kong is beating him up with a hammer. I think this was one of those “cool cinematic” concepts that just didn’t synergize well to the gameplay mechanics.

Donkey Kong falls awkwardly between the couch cushions of too cinematic and ambitious to be an arcade game and too short and simple for an NES game, while games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Frogger and Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda sit comfortably on either side. It’s loved as a novelty and a stepping stone, at best a distraction for a few minutes before playing a more enduring game.

Some are content to leave it there but I’m really disappointed that Donkey Kong has been pigeonholed like this. I think of future entries of other NES games that modernize their original concepts and fully realize them: Super Mario Bros 3, A Link to The Past, Super Metroid, Castlevania IV, Mega Man X… the list goes on. These games are to this day called some of the best ever made and even later entries tend to have trouble escaping their shadow.

Donkey Kong had two arcade sequels, but Donkey Kong Jr changes quite a bit about the core gameplay, and 3 is barely recognizable. I’ve heard Super Mario Bros called a spiritual sequel to this game, and it is to an extent, but I’ve always seen them as two sides of the same coin: vertical vs horizontal. I love Donkey Kong Country, but let’s be real: Rare used Donkey Kong’s name and virtually nothing else from the game they’re using to market their new series. Donkey Kong himself is redesigned and declared their original character, before being shoved aside in favor of Diddy, the real main protagonist.

Donkey Kong never got to grow up with all those other crusty old Nintendo games, and I’m pretty disappointed with all the ports and rereleases it got, no effort was made to improve or modernize it. All I can do is recommend Donkey Kong ‘94 for the gift of god it is, and lament what could have been.