![]() ![]() The ColecoVision “Donkey Kong,” was a valiant effort, and a far superior version of other ports built for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. ![]() Instead players received three separate versions of the arcade game: Each off in certain ways, notably similar in others, the way you might recall a memory by the stories others have told you. What has become somewhat taken for granted today–a port being more or less the same between different systems–was not the case then. Because Nintendo did not yet have their own home console in 1982, they licensed the game out to Coleco to make for the home systems of the time. The same can’t be said for the first time we saw “Donkey Kong” at home. Zoom in closely enough and you realize, nearly forty years later, not much has changed. The groundwork had been laid for games to be more than score-chasers your protagonist, more than simple geometry zapping or chomping foes. That these elements repeat ad nauseam was simply a requirement of their platform: No more game meant no more quarters. And so it followed a narrative arc, requiring new locations, an evolving conflict, and an ending. While many earlier games relied on a single-screen playfield, a kind of digital board game where you moved pieces around and tried racking up a high score while destroying an abstract threat, “Donkey Kong” was built around a story. “Donkey Kong” is the ur-game for our modern industry. In many ways, DK and his evolutions have been a bellwether for the larger gaming landscape. With “Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze” getting a second chance on Nintendo Switch after releasing to critical acclaim but muted sales on the beleaguered Wii U, it’s high time to reconsider the agile ape and his legacy of games that are constantly reconfigured for a new audience, platform, or playstyle. But more interesting are those ports that result in fundamental changes to the game itself, providing new life to what had become just another old thing on the growing heap of history. Games are often moved from one platform to another because there’s money to be made when a title, already designed and completed, can be released to an audience who hasn’t had a chance to play it. ![]()
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