Donkey Kong (Nintendo Game & Watch, 1982)



Donkey Kong was the most prized Nintendo Game & Watch in my collection that consisted of Octopus, Fire Attack and Parachute. What set it apart from the others was that it was one of the first dual-screen Game & Watch titles (and one of the earliest multi-screen portables). This meant double the screen real estate and therefore double the action played out across these two screens. They folded neatly together, where the influence of its clam-shell design is evident in the form of today’s Nintendo DS. 



As Mario the courageous carpenter your job was to rescue the girl held captive by Donkey Kong at the top of a construction site. This required you to destabilise the girder upon which Donkey Kong was standing, by lunging onto a moving crane, each successful leap of faith allowing you to remove the support wires. Sounds simple until you realise that there were a number of obstacles preventing you from doing this including an ongoing stream of barrels thrown with greater speed and frequency from above by Donkey Kong. There was also the potential to lose a life from hitting your head on moving girders or jump for the moving crane only to miss and therefore plunge to your death.



There were two modes on this game A & B, the latter being more difficult. As the game got faster and the barrels became a blur I would rely on the metronomic pulse of the barrels’ movement to help coordinate the jumps. This and the ever responsive santoprene ‘jump’ button ensured that on a number of occasions I was successful in achieving what every Game & Watch player aimed for – ‘clocking’ the game. In the case of Donkey Kong the score would reach 999, then without the capacity for any more numbers to be displayed it would start at 0 again. Given the limitations of these early liquid crystal displays all the movements in the game were pre-printed onto the screen.



While the Game & Watch Donkey Kong may not have the complexity of my niece’s Nintendo DS today, with its games that explore everything from cooking to car racing and functions that allow her to narrate stories, Donkey Kong will always be a classic both in the 80s and today.



Janson Hews