Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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But... like... celebrating Mar 10... with... ... ... a game called... just... "Donkey Kong"?

...Mario's name isn't even in this thing!

He's also like... black and white and some weird orange color. Are you sure this is even Mario? (He's just some... Jumpman!)

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Incidentally, this Donkey Kong design is itself the most... refined as yet of its original concept. It's particularly interesting, since it would be all but entirely supplanted for decades to follow without question scant months later with Donkey Kong Country.

And now, we find ourselves upon the eve of such as potential comprehensive redesign almost as sweeping, the confluence of film and the oncoming headlights of go-karts...

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For extra funsies, how's about playing the thing WITHOUT the parts that ostensibly make it "Super" and not just "Game Boy"?

To get down to just the pixels and utterly defeat any purpose to playing it like this at all, try here:
youtu.be/5LKn8bnZERg

I think it's pretty fun that the border is mocked up in the style of an old Donkey Kong arcade cabinet... although the details are a bit... strained... in order to fit within the limitations of the Super Nintendo video output with any degree of clarity.

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Happy March 10 regardless!
twitter.com/yuugijoou
discord.gg/bKT9pRW

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Anyway, without further ado, I present... Mario's first ever video game.

...or the enhanced remake thereof. Thirteen years in the making!

And I do mean ENHANCED.

What do you mean you can't tell, they're such tiny little pixels blown up too many times even when they were on the absolutely minuscule SNES native resolution, then bordered to oblivion to make them seem even smaller?

(You wouldn't be one of those pscyhos who would prefer to stretch the whole thing out regardless of screen ratio, right?!)

Anyway, the arcade original is, at best, four stages. Sometimes some of them cut for technical constraints when ported over to other platforms.

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25m

By far, among the most well-known and celebrated of vintage arcade platformer stages. It's... actually kind of annoying when you get down to it, though. I mean, who ever heard of barrels rolling down ladders? At their own randomized volition?!

That said, there's no better nor more familiar stomping ground upon which to highlight the improved faculties in Mario's arsenal. He's some kind of miraculous gymnast! Acrobatic privileges heretofore unseen and unimagined, at least not until two years later when he would prance about in three dimensions for unprecedented mobilities to revolutionize the platformer all over again as we know it.

To wit: he can no longer simply subsist on Jump, man! He can handspring! He can backflip! He can toss a hammer skyward and collect it once more as it descends! Most significant of all, he can fall an entire height of his own without instantly perishing! Remastered, indeed!

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50m

For my money's worth, this one is the most particular fever dream stage of the lot, since I mentioned that compromises notably had to be made to make the whole surely massive game that is Donkey Kong fit on other formats.

It's notable that Nintendo itself commissioned a variant of the NES port for its Virtual Console purposes in anniversary celebration that reinstated this one... to unusual technical dismay, but surely technology has advanced far enough to permit such hackish measures?

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75m

I would say, in modern days, perhaps among the most infamous of stages, perfectly preserved for the ages... much to the ongoing suffering of the newly exposed.

It's historically fascinating level design, to be sure... but not exactly well-suited to being used in a quasi-competitive brawler context.

And don't even get me started on completionists of yonder newfangled three-dee collect-a-thon platformers the likes of which Jumpman himself eventually unleashed upon us all... the confluence of the subgenre and Donkey Kong's own lineage! ... ... ...and all for a paltry token with Nintendo's own mark emblazoned upon it?!

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100m

A strangely open-ended and, dare I say... proactive... stage? No longer content to present you an obstacle course from point A to point B, Jumpman is presented a task: walk across these... floor bolts... and they disappear. But whatever would happen to this structure if they were all removed?

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And there you have it. The classic tale. The origin story. Never has it been so utterly... palatable? Jumpman gets the girl and all is well! We can once more bury this dusty old relic in the annals of history from whence it came.

... ... ...

Surely!