Today's game is Donkey Kong for the Atari 800.
My dad and uncle bought about a couple dozen Atari computer games but most of them stayed with Uncle Buddy. Donkey Kong was one of the few that we kept at our house. I still think it's the best of the home versions.
As you can see the sprites are all squashed and a little fat. The barrel level only has four floors. The cement mix level doesn't have retractable ladders. The game also has less color and has a blueness to it. (I never noticed this at home because I could never get color with our crummy game switchbox.) You'll note that Pauline is a brunette, like they made her in the last Donkey Kong DS game. It has all four levels, which makes it better then the NES version and the levels are in the proper order, which makes it more accurate then the Donkey Kong 64 version.
What makes this game great is that it's really fast. Mario is really quick and Donkey Kong can throw several barrels down at you. I love the arcade game, but it is slow compared to this version.
One funny thing about this game is that it has rubber walls. You can actually jump at a wall and if your toe touches it, you'll jump backwards and land safely. You can avoid a firefox this way. I forget if this is in the arcade version, although I wouldn't waste a quarter to find out. Other funny things include the fact that you could steal rivets by touching them slightly with your feet on the right side and the fact that you could score poins by jumping up and slightly missing the spring.
The instruction manual mentions that this was the brief time where Mario was a carpenter. It also mentions that you should be careful climbing ladders because the barrels have a mind of your own. When I was a kid, I took this literally.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this game a ranking of "Desert Island Game."
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