This Week In Retro: Donkey Kong Junior (Patreon)

June 1982: It's PECULIAR like Donkey Kong JUNIOR

by Diamond Feit

I wonder how many of us appreciate the oddity of Nintendo's rise from a playing card and toy manufacturer to a global video game powerhouse. Before Super Mario Bros, before the NES, Nintendo's entire identity as a game developer rested on the broad, hairy shoulders of Donkey Kong. In case you've never heard the story of DK's path to stardom, here's the short-short version: in 1980, Nintendo of America had thousands of unsold arcade cabinets and desperately needed a new game to move that hardware, so HQ turned to a young artist named Shigeru Miyamoto for ideas and he came up with Donkey Kong.

Miyamoto's concept of an everyman forced to outwit a giant gorilla quickly became a worldwide success on the strengths of its core gameplay loop and appealing characters. Most arcade games before Donkey Kong featured abstract, faceless entities like spaceships, aliens, and robots. Regardless of his depictions on the side of the cabinet, Pac-Man lacked any human features on-screen beyond his flapping maw and he still had more personality than every hero that preceded him. Donkey Kong gave us two legitimate, identifiable characters to root for/against: Mario, a lowly carpenter, and Donkey Kong, a disgruntled ape, feuding over a lady named Lady.

With a massive arcade hit and a pair of brand-new superstars to their name, Nintendo had both an opportunity and a challenge on their hands to produce another winner. I say "challenge" because developers rarely made straight sequels in the early days of arcade games. It wouldn't be much effort to draw four new levels for Mario to clear and release it as Donkey Kong 2: Die Konger, but would that even work in a marketplace where clones ran rampant?  Yet with both Donkey Kong and Mario appearing on everything from cereal boxes to pop albums, Nintendo couldn't just let those characters sit idle. Furthermore, in creating Donkey Kong, Miyamoto and his collaborators had plenty of ideas that couldn't fit into the original 1981 release. A return to the well looked increasingly sensible.

Enter Donkey Kong Junior, a Donkey Kong sequel in name only, as the player controls neither Donkey Kong nor Mario. Instead, the hero of the first game has become the tormentor, as Mario (and a second Mario, his brother perhaps) holds Donkey Kong prisoner after defeating him in the first game. The ape's offspring, Junior, takes over as protagonist to rescue his father from captivity. Our new leading man primate can run and jump, but he excels at climbing, so the levels of Donkey Kong Junior feature copious amounts of vines and chains to allow for maximum vertical movement.

Donkey Kong took place in a construction site made up of half-finished iron girders and ladders, creating the modern "platformer" as Mario scaled his way to the top of each screen. The four levels of the original arcade game presented a very loose journey of Mario's adventure to the top of the site, with the first stage being ground level and the last being the building's unfinished peak, where Mario can remove the loose bolts and collapse the structure from under Donkey Kong's paws.

Donkey Kong Junior tells a different tale, outlining Junior's trek from the jungle to the city in pursuit of Mario and his caged prey. The all-natural first stage allows players to explore the climbing mechanic, with an abundance of safe spots from enemies. The second stage introduces mechanical elements and a risk-vs-reward shortcut via a springboard; players can attempt to jump extra high and grab a moving rope, but if they miss Junior will fall to his doom. The third stage, set inside "Mario's hideout," leaves the wilderness behind for an all-neon cyber nightmare, forcing players to brave a gauntlet of electrical hazards. The fourth and final stage offers the most freedom with rows of screen-length chains and no platforms to guide or restrict Junior's movement; he can climb and descend all he wants but only by pushing a series of keys up the chains to the top will he free Donkey Kong Senior and K.O. Mario.

From a narrative standpoint, Donkey Kong Junior compliments Donkey Kong nicely, directly following the events of that first game and offering a twist on the outcome by turning the everyman hero into a cruel villain. Whatever mistakes Donkey Kong made, he is still an animal and not necessarily conscious of his actions. He never directly harms Mario in the game, either; he throws barrels and starts a fire but any injuries Mario sustains can be viewed as accidental. However, Mario is a human being and presumably knows right from wrong, so his mistreatment of Donkey Kong and attacks on Junior must be deliberate. Today everyone around the world knows and loves Mario but I laugh when I think about how Nintendo turned their only leading man into a monster in his second-ever video game.

So while I have no complaints about Mario's surprise heel turn, the gameplay changes made to Donkey Kong Junior do give me pause. Mario isn't the most athletic man alive in Donkey Kong but he does three things well: he walks, he jumps, and he climbs ladders. All of these actions feel good, especially the jumping. In his debut game, Junior has the same three verbs in his toolbox, but his skills are unbalanced. He walks on all fours, so he takes his time when moving horizontally. He can't jump as high as Mario, who on a good day can leap over multiple barrels in a single bound. Junior excels at climbing, but even then only when he can pump his fists and grab two ropes at once; otherwise, he slinks his way upwards at a snail's pace. In other words, of his three possible in-game actions, only one offers any satisfaction to the player while the rest barely work. Even with levels built around vertical movement to highlight Junior's lone strength, having two of his three actions feel sluggish stands as a significant downgrade from Donkey Kong.

Of course, these criticisms come with four decades of hindsight. Back in 1982, Donkey Kong fans like me eagerly lined up for this sequel and I remember having no complaints. I'm sure it helps that whatever its faults, Donkey Kong Junior carries over the appealing aesthetics from the first game: Junior himself is adorable, with his expressive face and his cute little onesie. The hazards in Donkey Kong had no personality, just barrels and flames, but in Donkey Kong Junior Mario mobilizes a small army of crocodile-like Snapjaws and flying Nitpickers to torment a scared ape-child (for real, Mario, what the hell).

We know Donkey Kong Junior accomplished its mission and generated profit for Nintendo, though I don't think it ever reached the heights of the first game. Ports of the sequel appeared on every possible platform, and Junior as a character showed up alongside his poppa on merchandise and Saturday morning cartoons, but we never saw a Donkey Kong Junior 2, nor did Junior return in Donkey Kong 3. He's shown up in a few games since his debut in the spotlight, and theoretically he grew up to become one of the characters in the Donkey Kong Country series (which one I couldn't possibly say), but given his absence from popular catch-all titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Smash Bros Ultimate, I'd say Junior has faded from the public view. I just hope he and Mario found reconciliation at some point, because if the abuse Junior suffered at Mario's hands remains unaddressed, the next game starring Nintendo's flagship character might just be Mario is Canceled.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.