2 where he can pick up things and toss them instead of the act of landing on top of them doing the damage.Īnd then there’s the game’s length. He still dies if he falls too far, though there’s considerable more leeway in that department, and his offensive capabilities are more in line with Super Mario Bros. They expanded his repertoire greatly for this sequel, but they did so without making him work like he does in the Super Mario games. Jumping over a barrel was about the extent of his physical prowess. See, if you aren’t familiar with the original Donkey Kong game, Mario used to be a pretty stationary guy. and Super Mario 64 actually started here. Mario’s basic acrobatic skills may be well established today, but things like the triple jump, handstand, and back flip that were popularized in games like New Super Mario Bros. And boy does Mario have some crazy cool new moves in this game. And what’s extra cool about them is that they’re all actually available right from the start, you just don’t know they exist until you’re taught how to do them later in the game, or if you pull them off by accident. This is the first of many cutscenes that teach you about all the new mechanics that have been introduced to the game. Mario crashes into the door, but then he spots a key which he carries over his head Super Mario Bros. What happens next is a quick cinematic of Donkey Kong running through a door and locking it behind him. But this time as Mario walks toward Pauline, the music cuts out as Donkey Kong stands back up, pounds the ground and to break the platform Mario is standing on, snatches Pauline, and goes on the run. Then there’s the lost Cement Factory stage, presented here in all its glory, and finally the last stage where you unlock the girders (or whatever they’re supposed to be) and make Donkey Kong fall on his head. The second screen brings you to the infamous “jacks” stage, and this time you actually get to see Donkey Kong himself throw the jacks down at Mario, which was pretty neat. Sure, it was easier than its arcade counterpart, but a solid conversion nonetheless. Mario had a little bit more aerial control, but the basic premise of Donkey Kong standing at the top of the screen tossing barrels down for Mario to jump over was intact. Still, the action was undeniably Donkey Kong. And I don’t mean shorter as in the game has fewer levels, I mean shorter as in the stage itself had to be shrunk down a bit to make it fit within the confines of the Game Boy’s meager screen real estate. The game starts out just like the original arcade Donkey Kong, albeit considerably shorter. As the first new Donkey Kong game since 1983’s Donkey Kong 3, Donkey Kong took what made the first two arcade games tick and expanded on it to an utterly genius degree. Launching mere months before the earth-shattering success that was Donkey Kong Country for Super NES, Donkey Kong ‘94 tends to get overshadowed a lot, even though it resurrected the character several months before Country got the chance, and it did so by evolving the existing DK gameplay instead of reinventing the property from scratch. This “Game Boy Sequels” series has been about how often-overlooked Game Boy sequels have influenced franchises going forward, and nowhere is this theory more obvious than in the form of Donkey Kong ‘94. I’m talking of course about Donkey Kong for Game Boy. But for my money, the best Donkey Kong ever made was the first Donkey Kong released in 1994. Heck, you may even find some old schoolers would toss some love in the direction of the arcade original. There are certainly plenty of die-hards who consider the original Donkey Kong Country to be the best, and there are even folks out there crazy enough to think Donkey Kong 64 is a misunderstood masterpiece. If you were to ask someone what they think the best Donkey Kong game was, chances are the responses you’ll get will include Donkey Kong Country 2, or Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. In many cases, the games we loved on NES got weird yet often very influential sequels on the Game Boy. As these titles continued to evolve over the generations, there was a common thread amongst them that seems to be often overlooked. Gaming may not have started with the NES, but many of gaming’s most prominent franchises and concepts did.
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