I Really Kind of Hated That Stinking Game

This reminds me, for obvious reasons, of the Super Mario Brothers movie.



Of course, I played the original Donkey Kong a fair bit, seeing as how there was an Atari 2600 version of it (as I've mentioned quite a few times, I played Atari games more than just about any other kind as a kid-other than a year or so when I had access to my older brother's NES [with only two cartridges] and my cousin's SNES a few times, I basically didn't have any other video/computer games until we got our first computer, which was rather late in the '90s). And it was one of my least favorite games, because I always made it up to the last level of the tower, grabbed the stupid hammer... and couldn't climb the ladder until the hammer was gone.

And then, if you get up to the top, you have to play through the second tower.

And then the third tower, which is really just the first one repeated. And then the fourth, which is the second one repeated. (Not that I ever got that far; even if I had been better at it, I wouldn't have kept playing through the endless repetition. There was a game called Vanguard that gave you indefinite continues through the first segment and then no more through consecutive segments; I'd always play through the first segment, which ended with one of the easiest "boss fights" ever, and then quit because it felt like a proper ending to the game. There was another game, Phoenix, where I did the same thing. In fact, I think most of the Atari games I played a lot could be played that way.) And so on.

What's sad is that, while I think I'm a strategically stronger player of games now than I was, my hand-eye coordination is probably actually a lot worse now than it was, so I probably wouldn't get anywhere.

If they really wanted the movie to accurately reflect the game, it would probably be ten hours long and would involve "Mr. Jumpman" falling back down to the bottom of the stairwell every five minutes. That would evoke the gameplay pretty well, I think.

My, that was a bit of a diatribe, wasn't it?

(Protip: Don't blog about something you thought was funny if you've just been looking at something that you found much funnier. It takes a little of the funny away.

And if you're wondering, I'll probably mention the funnier item tomorrow or Friday.)

-Signing off.