Donkey Kong (7800)

Ladders, barrels rolling from above, and a giant ape that has carried a girl off to the top of a construction site. Donkey Kong is the archetype of the platformer, a story where a little hero climbs upward against everything the opponent throws at him. On the Atari 7800 this classic gets a home echo.

The original Donkey Kong was created for Nintendo in 1981 by Shigeru Miyamoto, and it was the title that introduced the world to a character later named Mario. The player controls a carpenter who climbs the floors of a structure, dodges barrels and fiery obstacles, and tries to reach the captive Pauline. The conversion for the Atari 7800 brought this iconic gameplay to a console that could display more colorful graphics and a larger number of objects than the previous generation.

The charm of Donkey Kong lies in the tension between precision and speed. Every jump over a rolling barrel has to come at the right moment, the hammer gives a brief chance for offense, and the ascent upward is the reward for mastering the screen's rhythm. The game divided the challenge into several types of levels that repeat and speed up as difficulty grows.

The Atari 7800 ProSystem came out in the mid-1980s as a response to the rise of competition, and its strength was precisely the fidelity of arcade conversions. Donkey Kong on it was one of the proofs that the console could bring arcade hits decently close to the original.

Culturally, Donkey Kong is one of the most important titles in history. It laid the foundations of the entire Nintendo brand, gave rise to Mario and to Donkey Kong himself as lasting icons, and defined the platformer genre for the coming decades.

Why play: To play the roots of the entire platformer tradition where it all began - with barrels, ladders, and a giant ape.