Donkey Kong Jr. is a 1982 arcade platform game from Nintendo, and the NES port is the version most people have actually played. It reverses the roles of the 1981 original: Mario is the villain, and the ape in the cage is Donkey Kong, held captive while his son climbs vines to set him free. The premise is simple. The controls are simple. The game is short.
Mario Is the Villain Now
Donkey Kong Jr. arrived in arcades in 1982 as the sequel to Donkey Kong. Nintendo developed and published it. The game was principally designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and his co-worker, Nintendo chief engineer Gunpei Yokoi. Miyamoto also created the graphics with Yoshio Sakamoto. Yukio Kaneoka composed the music, as he had for the first game.
The arcade version carried the title Donkey Kong Junior in North America, and so did several conversions to non-Nintendo systems. Nintendo later ported the game widely, including to the Famicom and the Nintendo Entertainment System. On the Famicom it was a launch title in Japan. It also reached the Family Computer Disk System, the Wii, the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS. The Nintendo Entertainment System version is one of the most recognizable, re-released and ported many times over the decades.
The roles reversed. In Donkey Kong, Mario chased an ape who had kidnapped his lady friend. In Donkey Kong Jr., Mario has captured Donkey Kong and put him in a cage in a forest. Donkey Kong Jr. follows Mario to free his father. Mario moves Donkey Kong to his hideout by helicopter, then takes the keys to Donkey Kong’s chains and scatters them around the building.
Enemies attack the younger ape. He escapes them, reaches his father, and releases him from the chains as Mario falls to the ground. The two kongs set off together. Mario pursues them, then flees after Donkey Kong knocks him back.
Four Stages and a Key
Donkey Kong Jr. is a platform game, like its predecessor. It has four stages, each with its own theme. DK Jr. can run left and right, jump, and grab vines, chains or ropes to climb higher on the screen. He can slide down a vine, or climb faster by holding two. That is the entire move set, and it does not grow.
The enemies are specific and memorable. Snapjaws resemble bear traps with eyes. Nitpickers are bird-like creatures, and some of them attack by dropping eggs. Sparks roam across the wiring in one of Mario’s hideouts. DK Jr. can jump over these enemies while on platforms, switch from one vine or chain to another to dodge them, or knock down pieces of fruit. A falling fruit destroys every enemy it touches before dropping off the bottom of the screen.
The first three stages end the same way. DK Jr. reaches the key that hangs beside his father’s cage, and Mario runs off, shoving the cage out of view as he goes.
The fourth stage changes the job. Six keys must go into six locks on the topmost platform before Donkey Kong is free. A brief cutscene follows, then the player is sent back to the first stage at a higher difficulty.
A bonus timer runs throughout each stage, and whatever points remain on it are added to the player’s score on completion. DK Jr. loses a life when he touches any enemy or projectile, falls too great a distance, falls into water or off the bottom of the screen, or lets the bonus timer hit zero. The game ends when all lives are lost. Donkey Kong Jr. has a kill screen at level 22.
The Port That Carried the Game
The Nintendo Entertainment System version is the most recognizable port of the arcade original, and that is not faint praise. It is the version that carried the game into living rooms and kept it there through re-release after re-release. It also gives the game its cleanest presentation: the four stages, the vines, the keys, the fruit, all of it intact.
What the port does not do is soften the game’s central problem. The difficulty curve is steep and unforgiving. The bonus timer pressures every stage. One touch from a Snapjaw, one egg from a Nitpicker, one misjudged fall, and a life is gone. The controls are precise enough to support that, but precision is not the same as generosity.
The kill screen at level 22 is a fact worth naming. It is also a reminder of what kind of game this is. Donkey Kong Jr. is not built to be finished. It is built to be played until the player loses, and the loss is always the player’s fault, which is either the mark of a good arcade game or the reason it can feel like work.
Cubed3 scored the game 6/10. That sits about where this paper would put it: a well-made arcade game with a strong central idea and not much underneath it.
Vines, Chains and Ropes
The vine mechanic is the game’s best idea. Grabbing two vines to climb faster, switching between vines to dodge an enemy, sliding down to escape — these are small choices that add up to a real vocabulary of movement. The fruit is a clean solution to a common problem: instead of giving the player a weapon, the game gives the player gravity. Knock the fruit loose and let it do the work.
The enemy design holds up. Snapjaws, Nitpickers and Sparks each demand a different response. Snapjaws sit on platforms and punish lazy jumps. Nitpickers drop eggs and punish players who camp. Sparks run along wiring and punish players who treat the vines as safe ground. The four stages use these enemies differently, and the fourth stage — six keys, six locks, the topmost platform — is the strongest of the bunch.
But the game is thin. Four stages is not much, and the loop after the fourth stage is the same four stages again with the difficulty raised. There is no new mechanic, no new enemy, no new idea waiting deeper in. What is there is good. There is just not enough of it.
A Sequel That Reverses the Roles
The role reversal is the smartest thing Donkey Kong Jr. does. Making Mario the villain was a genuine swing in 1982, and it gave the sequel its own identity instead of re-running the first game with a new maze. The story is told in a handful of screens and a brief cutscene, and it lands. Donkey Kong in a cage, his son climbing to reach him, Mario shoving the cage further away every time the younger ape gets close — that is a clear, wordless premise, and it works.
The game’s place in the lineage matters too. Donkey Kong Jr. is the middle chapter between Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong 3, and it is the one that took the biggest narrative risk. A sequel, Donkey Kong 3, and a spin-off, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, both followed in 1983. The spin-off is a curiosity. Donkey Kong 3 is a different game entirely. Donkey Kong Jr. is the one that stayed close to the original’s structure while flipping its meaning.
What the Port Gets Right
The Nintendo Entertainment System version is the one to play if you want to play Donkey Kong Jr. at all, and that is the strongest argument for it. It is faithful, it is widely available across Nintendo’s later platforms, and it preserves the arcade game’s four stages without cutting them down.
It is also, at this distance, a short game with a punishing curve and a hard ceiling. The mechanics are tight. The enemy design is sharp. The premise is better than the original’s. But four stages, a repeating loop and a kill screen at level 22 describe a game that was built for quarters and has been sold back to us many times since as a piece of history.
That history is real. Donkey Kong Jr. is one of the most recognizable ports Nintendo ever shipped, and the Nintendo Entertainment System version is why. It is a good game with a good idea at its center, and it is not a great one. The vines and the fruit and the reversed roles deserve their place in the record. The thinness deserves to be named alongside them.
KEY FACTS
– Release: 1982 (arcade); Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System port followed, a Famicom launch title in Japan
– Developer and publisher: Nintendo
– Designers: Shigeru Miyamoto, Gunpei Yokoi
– Graphics: Shigeru Miyamoto, Yoshio Sakamoto
– Music: Yukio Kaneoka
– Stages: 4
– Kill screen: level 22
– Platforms: Arcade, Famicom, Nintendo Entertainment System, Family Computer Disk System, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS
– Modes: Single player
– Score: 6 of 10 (Cubed3)
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