The Donkey Kong Game was released in arcades by Nintendo in 1981. It contains the familiar characters of Mario, Donkey Kong and Princess Pauline. Donkey Kong was the first game produced with these characters. It is Platform Based Game, involving moving Mario (named originally Jumpman in this game) across some basic floors, jumping over objects and climbing ladders to reach the Princess.
The inspiration behind the design of Donkey Kong (made by Hiroshi Yamauchi) was from the cartoon Popeye and the film King Kong. This was the first game to use multiple stages in gameplay and also to use cut scenes to establish a plot.
The Donkey Kong game went on to become a massive hit in both Japan and North America. Many video consoles developed versions of the game for their platforms and Nintendo's success was epitiomised by a successful legal battle against Universal Studios who were claiming Donkey Kong was a copy of their trade mark King Kong.
In the game, Jumpman (Mario) is a carpenter (later changed to plumber) and his girlfriend (Princess Pauline) is kidnapped by Jumpman's pet Gorilla (Donkey Kong) as punishment for Jumpman mistreating him. Jumpman must rescue the Princess from the clutches of Donkey Kong. This classic 80's game was the first to use the scenario of the damsel in distress and has since been copied hundreds of times over by many other games.
Princess Pauline is hanging from a rope at the top of each level and Jumpman must avoid many obstacles thrown down by Donkey Kong to reach the Princess.
Jumpman was a struggle to design graphically by Nintendo and due to design limitations they couldn't construct a detailed mouth on Jumpman which is why a moustache was chosen instead! The programmers also couldn't pixelate his hair successfully so they gave him a cap.
Just listen to the sound effects that Donkey Kong makes at the beginning of a level after stomping the ground and changing the shapes of the ladders, it is meant to be a sneer but it sounds more like an old spectrum attempting to load a screwed up game.
Donkey Kong's gameplay is designed to be very hard and it succeeds in being so. The average game lasts less than 1 minute due to the difficulty in avoiding all the obstacles thrown down by the nasty pet gorilla. The timing to jump over these obstacles such as barrels and also to climb the ladders must be precise in order to avoid loosing. It only takes one hit for Jumpman to die.
The player can also score points by jumping over barrels, completing levels, smashing objects and by using power ups etc. After 7,500 points are scored the player is given a bonus. The player starts with 3 lives at the beginning of the game. The version above is a free online game which sadly only incorporates the first level of the original.
The highest score ever set when playing the Donkey Kong game was 1,050,200 points. Don't ask me how anyone could possibly achieve this playing such a hard game, but unsurpisingly it was set by Billy Mitchell, the game fanatic who also completed the PacMan Game with a perfect score. This record was only set recently in June 2007.
Donkey Kong has 4 levels for Jumpman to climb, each level goes up by 25m ending on a 100m climb! I wonder how a little fat carpenter actually has the endurance to last a 250m climb!
This copy of the Donkey Kong game seems to only have the first level on sadly enough, if we manage to locate the complete copy we shall update it here.