Mario vs. Donkey Kong

Screenshots

Notes

MvDK is a puzzle platformer, It's something of a spritual sequel to the Donkey Kong games, particularly the title of that name for the Game Boy.

In it, Mario's toy factory, which has been producing tiny clockwork versions of himself, is raided by Donkey Kong who steals them for some reason. So Mario chases after him to take them back. You really can't make this stuff up.



Each level has two parts: in the first part you find a key to unlock a door, and in the second part you just get to the trapped mini-mario to rescue them. Repeat 6 times in each world, and finish with a Lemmings-esque stage guiding the mini-marios around and a boss fight with Donkey Kong. In each level you have to navigate various obstacle, like pressing coloured switches to activate corresponding platforms or climb across vines. I enjoyed this a bit, but ultimately found in unsatisfying. I think the problem is the game is split between two worlds, puzzle and platformer, and satisfies neither.

Compared to other 2d mario games, I found the platforming lackluster. Mario has momentum, like in the 3d series, but this doesn't work well in 2d. You have relatively little air control, which is annoying, and can bonk on the ceiling which is obnoxious. There's fall damage, which kicks in from a relatively low height too. Also, some of the obstacles seemed slightly buggy. The rope climbing controls took some getting used to and I had some issues with moving ropes. Everything moves slowly and you often end up waiting around for moving platforms or enemies to walk to the right position, making it boring (and frustrating if you die at the end of a stage and have to replay it). You have some "advanced moves" like a backflip, which can be used to skip through some early platforming sections quickly.


Meanwhile, the "puzzles" are rarely vary puzzling. Usually it's just a case of pressing switches in order while avoiding a stupid death to a platforming mistake. Only one or two of the last stages required real thought.

Each stage has 3 presents you can collect, in slightly hard to reach places, and if you do you can play a minigame at the end of the stage. However, there are only 2 minigames which cannot be skipped and take quite a bit of time. These got very wearing after a while. You can also get stars with high scores to unlock bonus stages after beating the game. This seems to mainly revolve around time attack as you get a lot of bonus points for time left on the timer.

One trend I've noticed in several GBA game is weird assignment of the available buttons. MvDK provides a good example. There's a button you can press to pause the game and pan the camera around to view the stage. Very handy for planning your solution. To get this mode, you press L+R simultaneously. Meanwhile, Select, and L/R individually are *totally unused*. I find this baffling. I had to look up this control online, because I wasn't even aware the feature existed. It's somewhat reasonable to put an optional control like this on a button and expect players to find it, but putting it on a button combo which is mentioned nowhere in the game, while other buttons go unused, is insane.

Graphically, the game uses a pre-rendered 3D style, like Donkey Kong Country or Golden Sun (both games we'll be getting to in the challenge). I've never been a big fan of this style, I think it looks awkward and messy compared to nice pixel art graphics. (It could be better if done at high resolution, but the GBA can't achieve this). The graphics are functional however, there are no problems understanding what things are supposed to be.


Overall, Mario vs Donkey Kong is not the worst game I've player by far, but I'm not a fan of the direction it has taken, compared with other Mario platformers.