Donkey Kong is a very popular video game franchise released by Nintendo in arcades a really long time ago. I only really knew Donkey Kong for its NES ports years after the fact. But one of the ports of the original arcade series is called Donkey Kong Jr. and I used to play that game all the time on the NES and then a little while later in the arcades. But today we're not going to be talking about either of those versions. Today we're talking about something way cooler. So let's talk about Donkey Kong Jr. on the mini arcade.
This is the Donkey Kong Jr. mini arcade created by Nintendo of America in 1982. While technically produced by Nintendo of Japan this one here is the model we got in North America. This has the same kind of look as the other mini arcade systems that we’ve talked about in the past but the only difference though is games like the Pac-Man mini arcade and the Galaxian mini arcade featured vacuum fluorescent display technologies which pretty much glowed. It's a very different display than what this one's using. The way that Donkey Kong Jr. works is that there's an LCD screen on the top of the device that’s slightly transparent. When you're in a room with a light source like a light bulb or outside with the sun that light goes through the LCD and projects the image back onto a mirror that reflects back at you and then you see the screen. The only problem with this technology is that you really can't see it in a dark room. But on the plus side this saves a lot of money on battery power because this sucker never turns off. As soon as you put in the batteries it just keeps going because this is basically a Game & Watch device. You could set an alarm on this and stuff like that so you can actually wake up to this thing in the mornings if you wanted and play a quick game of Donkey Kong Jr. I don't know if you'd want to do that though because if I had that I wouldn't really want to go to school in the morning. I'd probably want to just stay at home and play the game.
This device has some pretty simple controls. There's a game A button, a game B button, a button to display the time, there's a very simple and easy to use joystick which is pretty responsive and a jump button which works really well. When you start the game it begins with a small clip of a classical composition called Toccata and Fugue which is the same song they used at the beginning of the Donkey Kong Jr. arcade release. In the game the player controls Donkey Kong Jr. and to the far right you can see that Super Mario has captured Donkey Kong and he's chained him to a tree branch. The objective of the game is to find a key than traverse a maze of branches and vines while avoiding birds. Once you've passed the jungle area of the level you now have to get your way across this little river and the only way to do that is to jump onto an umbrella and then a floating balloon. The umbrellas lower while the balloons rise and the trick is to make sure you get off the umbrellas before you hit the water or you get too high on a balloon and it gets popped by a tree branch above. This is probably the most challenging part of the game because as you're jumping between the umbrella and the balloon you also have to use the key that you got earlier on the stage on the lock that Donkey Kong is swinging up and down. This is where it becomes difficult because if Donkey Kong Jr. does not line up with the lock that Donkey Kong is moving up and down you will drop the key meaning you have to go all the way back to the beginning of the stage to get another one. This is the hard part of the game but if you're lucky you can do it four times in a row and free Donkey Kong from his captivity. The game really isn't super complex but it's pretty challenging. It's like a really good old arcade game. What I absolutely love about this display method is that it's in full color and it kind of looks almost painted which I really like. The big problem I had with vacuum fluorescent displays that you would have seen on the other mini arcades is that while they are very bright and you can play them in the dark they don't really have a lot of detail to them. Unlike this which has a heck of a lot of detail. In fact if you're going to play this I would recommend you try it with a flashlight just above it because that gives you the best quality image and that's exactly what we did.
So that's Donkey Kong Jr. which is a really cool version of the arcade original. It's kind of different, a little bit more unique and doesn't really have the same level as you would see in the original arcade releases but you know what it stands out as a cool little piece of history from Nintendo from days long past. So if you ever see one of these things out in the wild give it a play. You might really enjoy it especially if you really enjoy Donkey Kong Jr.
