Donkey Kong review: the climb that taught games to jump

A gorilla stands at the top of a half built steel frame. A woman waits beside him. A small man in overalls stands at the bottom. Barrels start rolling down. You knew exactly what to do the moment you saw it, and that clarity was new.

A game with a plot you could read in a glance

Donkey Kong told a story without a word of text: the ape carries Pauline up the building, and you climb after her. In those days the hero was called Jumpman, and he would later become Mario. Short scenes between stages moved the story along. For a machine standing in a row of space shooters, that was a startling thing to see.

It also happened almost by accident. Nintendo had a warehouse of unsold cabinets after its game Radar Scope failed, and Donkey Kong was built to fill them.

Everyone remembers the gorilla. The real star was the jump button.

Timing is the whole game

Here is the move that mattered. Mario could jump. It was the first platform game to feature jumping, and almost everything about the design is built around when you press that button. Jump too early and a barrel rolls under your landing. Jump too late and it takes your legs.

Then there is the hammer. Grab it and you can smash the barrels instead of jumping them, which feels wonderful right up until you remember you still have to reach the top.

What it meant back then

In the United States Donkey Kong became the highest grossing game of 1982, and you could feel it. It stood in mall arcades, pizza parlors, bowling alleys and the front of convenience stores, and there was a line in front of it more often than not. Kids who had never cared about space games stood and watched someone make it up the rivets. The music, the little walk, the way Mario spun and fell when a barrel caught him: it all got into our heads, long before anyone knew the character would outlive the machine.

Playing it today

It is harder than you remember. The jumps are exact, the barrels are unpredictable, and there is no second chance mid air. That is also why it holds up. Every death is clearly your fault, and every good run feels earned. If you want to understand where platform games came from, start at the bottom of that construction site and climb.