Nintendo Game and Watch Donkey Kong

Nintendo Game and Watch Donkey Kong.  Donkey Kong is a Game & Watch game released as a part of the Multi Screen series on June 3, 1982. It is a dual-screen single-player Game & Watchwith an orange body. It opens like a compact, with an upper and lower screen. This game was also the first Game & Watch to feature a directional pad.

Donkey Kong has captured a girl and it is your mission to rescue her. You control Mario around the construction site to save the girl by knocking the girder out from under Donkey Kong. To do this you need to switch on the crane and jump onto the hook and catch it (Quite tricky). Watch out for the barrels that Donkey Kong throws in your way and also the iron moving overhead.

Game B requires more coordination, technique and timing. Don’t take too long reaching the top as the barrels will get faster and faster. Remember to keep an eye on the barrels on the top screen so you can plan what to do on the bottom screen. You can’t jump over barrels where the clearance is low or on a ladder. Don’t forget to switch on the crane. After crane has swung 2 times, it automatically switches off and you have to switch it back on again. When game starts, or after a miss, Mario appears automatically at starting point after 8 seconds. Don’t bother trying to get a good score just by jumping over the barrels as eventually it will get too fast. If you hold in Game A or Game B key the highest previous score will be displayed. If the unit is left as it is after game is over, time display will appear in about five minutes. A game is not interrupted even if TIME key or other game keys are depressed during game playing. Pressing ACL switch or removing batteries erases high score from memory.

Developed at the same time as Oil Panic but hitting stores a few weeks later, Donkey Kong was a port of Nintendo’s first mega-hit, something the G&W developers took seriously. Even with two screens, they knew they couldn’t perfectly recreate the arcade experience, so instead they ground it down to its simplest parts (dodging barrels, climbing ladders) and made it work in the G&W formula.

G&W Donkey Kong was also the advent of the cross-section D-pad we all know and love today. It was created for the pragmatic need for Mario to move in four directions, unlike the all the previous G&W’s that worked fine with moving in two. Gunpei Yokoi and his team made the D-pad with the impression in the center to make it easier for players to tell the direction and keep them from getting distracted by looking at their hands. When you look at the last three decades of controller technology, it seems the team’s solution was pretty good.

Classic handheld platformer.

Simple but so addictive!

Pictures for illustrative purposes only