Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong is a licensed conversion of Nintendo's original arcade game, which Atari released for its eight-bit home computers as one of the key titles that helped found the platformer genre. The player controls a character trying to rescue an abducted character from the top of a structure, dodging barrels, flames and other obstacles hurled by the giant ape guarding the top of the level. Each of the four classic arenas offers a different layout of obstacles and a different way to progress, from jumping over rolling barrels to knocking out support columns.

The Atari 800 conversion tries to stay as close as possible to the original arcade template, which on eight-bit home computer hardware required compromises in the number of levels or animation detail, depending on the specific version and the machine's memory size. Despite these limitations, the game retains the key elements that defined the original arcade title - tense jumps requiring precise timing, recognisable characters, and a gradually increasing pace of moving obstacles. The sound effects accompanying jumps and falling barrels help the player feel the game's rhythm even without looking directly at the whole screen.

Donkey Kong is one of the most significant titles that helped establish the platformer as a genre in its own right, and its presence on the eight-bit Atari let many players experience this classic at home without visiting an arcade. Even today the game reads as an example of clean, purposeful design, where each level teaches the player a new enemy behaviour pattern and the reward for mastering it is progress to the next, harder floor. It's precisely this structure of gradually escalating challenges, where the player first observes and then reacts, that became a template for a whole generation of later platformers, and Donkey Kong remains one of the most often cited examples of how a simple concept can endure for decades.

Why play: For anyone who wants to experience at home, without an arcade, the classic that helped establish the platformer as a genre – clean, purposeful design where every level teaches a new enemy behaviour pattern.