Donkey Kong Jr. is the sequel to Donkey Kong, and for this review, I played the NES version. I wrote pretty extensively about the original game here, so if you're interested in a more detailed run through of the concept, you can check it out!
I played Donkey Kong Jr. because I was running through the games on the NES Classic that I wanted to beat, and it seemed like a quick and entertaining run through, and it delivered exactly that. The basic premise of the game is pretty clever. Following the capture of Donkey Kong by Mario in the original game, Donkey Kong is being treated cruelly by Mario, as he keeps him locked up in an astonishingly small cage and is cracking a literal whip at everything that moves! You take the role of Donkey Kong's son, Donkey Kong Jr., as he must navigate a gamut of obstacles to rescue his father from the villainous Mario. I do believe that this is Mario's only game as a villain, which is a great deal of fun.
The controls are similar to those in the original game, but DK Jr. has a few additional abilities that Mairo lacked. He can now climb up and down on vines, and this is where the real strategy comes into play. He can hang on to a single vine with two hands, enabling him to slide quickly down the vine and reduce his hitbox, or he can hang on to two vines with two hands, enabling him to climb more quickly, but also expanding his hitbox. Managing your positioning to enable maximum speed to avoid the birds and other creatures which Mario sends at you is really important, as you no longer have access to Mario's hammer, needing to resort either to avoiding enemies, or to drop fruit on them from above. The climbing mechanics are great amounts of fun, and give Donkey Kong Jr. a much more fluid and entertaining control scheme than the original. You can still die from falling from too high a distance, but for the most part, you'll be climbing or jumping on flat platforms, so that one irritant is not too big of a downside.
The music and sounds are pretty good, but not quite as iconic as in Donkey Kong.
The levels are far more varied than in Donkey Kong, and each one is fun in its own right.
The game is not nearly so innovative as the original, but definitely polishes off some of the rough edges of its predecessor. It still feels far too clunky in a post Super Mario Bros. universe, without the incredible leap forward of the game it follows. It feels a bit like Final Fantasy V compared to Final Fantasy IV. Final Fantasy V is, in my opinion, significantly better than Final Fantasy IV, but you the jump is small compared to Final Fantasy IV versus the field of RPGs to date before it. So I'd rather play Donkey Kong Jr., but I still have to marvel at Donkey Kong in a way I never will with Donkey Kong Jr. I'll give it an 8.5/10.
Up next is actually a game I teased months and months ago that I finally finished, so feel free to search through the archives to find a tease that I never delivered on. There's also another tease floating around that I'm still working on, so you can get a pretty good sense for what's coming in the next few weeks if you really care to!
-TRO
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