Description of Donkey Kong Jr. ROM - MAME

Enraged by the events of the previous encounter with the Kongs, Mario trapped the big old Donkey Kong into a huge cage and wants to punish him for kidnapping Pauline. Luckily enough, the big old ape isn’t alone in this one, and his toddler ape son, the Donkey Kong Junior, sets out to rescue him.

Now, as you can guess, the gameplay has somewhat changed from the original Donkey Kong; this time it’s as much jumping and climbing as running and avoiding obstacles. The game is split into four vertically oriented stages, with Mario and father Kong resting at the top of the screen, and you, the Junior standing at the bottom. Your task in each stage is to climb up while avoiding obstacles Mario is throwing at you, and to get the pink key, that unlocks the cage in which the Donkey Kong’s locked up. Through stages 1-3, though, Mario always just moves the cage away, and only in the final fourth stage Junior actually gets to rescue his father, who then kicks Mario (what a Jerk, this guy) of the screen, sending him to the appropriate places. After that—no, if you were expecting the game ends then, I’m sorry but no—the games starts again at higher difficulty level.

Depending on the DIP switch settings, you start with 3-6 lifes. A life is lost each time you: a) fall down or b) come into contact with any of the Mario’s obstacles, namely birds and snakes. Additional lifes can be obtained by reaching certain score, though. And to do that, you not only have to rescue your father, but you also have to pick up little cherries and bananas scattered around the screen, which grant you some four hundred bonus points each.

But if you’re just thinking of becoming a high scorer in this game, I’m really sorry to rain on you parade, but it’s pretty unlikely you’d pass the current world record. And should you be wondering how much that exactly is, it’s exactly 1,270,900 points, and the record is held by Billy Mitchell, a famous no-lifer from Holyoke, Massachusetts. *flies away*

The controls are simple: an eight-way joystick and a single button. While the joystick obviously controls the Junior’s movements, the single available button triggers the jump action.

Anytime you are hanging on a rope or a chain, if you just tap the joystick left or right, Junior reaches out in that direction and should there be another rope or chain in his reach he’ll grab it, enabling you to jump onto that other rope. But some of the ropes that appear to be close enough might actually be too far, and if you tap the joystick the second time in that case, Junior will just fall down and die. Additionally if the Junior is holding two ropes at once, he can climb much much faster than he would if he was holding just a single one.

And that’s pretty much it, I guess. Donkey Kong is simply a classic and a must for any video game enthusiast out there…