Everyone’s really angry right now about game systems they’ve never played, huh? That’s lame. Let’s do something different and get all salty about one that’s been around for a few decades instead. I’ll say this for the second level of Donkey Kong Jr.: It does a much better job of being a second level than […]
After Donkey Kong exploded into what was the single biggest of success to that day for Nintendo, a company more than 80 years old at that point, a sequel became inevitable. Nintendo didn’t really know how video game sequels are supposed to work in those days, though, so they went about making a follow-up in […]
Here we are, already at the “end” of Donkey Kong: Its fourth screen. By today’s standards, DK is comically short, but four uniquely designed screens was nothing to sneer at back in 1981. Besides, arcade games weren’t after long-term immersive commitments. This was a light snack of a game to see how high a score […]
Yes, I know Donkey Kong is a gorilla. Whatever. If the cement factory stage represents Donkey Kong at its worst — and remember, “worst” in a game this well-designed simply means “OK but not amazing” — the lift level that follows it offers Donkey Kong at its best. While this screen may not offer […]
Donkey Kong‘s second level has become something of a legend thanks to its omission in nearly every home port of the game ever released. See, Nintendo (and ghost-writer development house Ikegami Tsushinki) went a little crazy with the game’s design, cramming four different stage layouts into the arcade board. While these mostly shared assets amongst […]
I had originally planned to follow up The Anatomy of Metroid with a series on Kid Icarus, but after thinking about it a little more I feel perhaps I’d be wise to go back to basics and look at some of the games I keep referencing in these features. The Anatomy series dissects the design […]
So that’s Metroid done the right way. Part of what makes Metroid so fun, though, is the way it lends itself to being played the wrong way. Like a lot of games at this sort of mid-grade 8-bit technology level, Metroid contains a fair few glitches and bugs that don’t render the whole thing unplayable […]
How unfortunate that the subject line of this post leaves so much open to misinterpretation. Alas. Anyway, it’s a little late, but The Anatomy of Zelda Vol. I now has a tiny B&W paperback counterpart for those who (understandably) dig the content but don’t want to shell out $40-60 for the large format. In its […]
With the Mother Brain defeated, Metroid ends up back again where it began. The final sequence of the game doesn’t involve combat or exploration but rather a tense escape sequence up a seemingly endless shaft — an echo of the game’s first sprawling vertical area, the one that definitively set Metroid apart from a legion […]
Tourian is as close as Metroid comes to having “levels” in the traditional video game sense. You make it through the gauntlet of Rinkas and Metroids a screen at a time and arrive at last at the boss. Even the doors in Tourian say “serious business” — they’re orange instead of red, soaking up ten […]
The player’s arrival in Tourian (the final zone where the Mother Brain awaits) is accompanied by a shift in tone. The visuals are stark and mechanical, a contrast to the natural formations and ancient constructs of the rest of Zebes’ underground. Even more strikingly, the background music ceases to be musical and instead adopts the […]
Most of Metroid centers on the process of exploration, eschewing the arcade-borne concept of difficulty (death and restarting as a penalty) in favor of something more esoteric. Samus certainly blasts her fair share of enemies en route to the end, but Metroid lacks bottomless pits or instant death traps, and the more gear you acquire […]