Jekyll and Hyde, Taylor and Dr Zaius — the struggle between man and his savage self has struck a chord with anybody who has suffered internal conflict between the repressive demands of civilised society and the often times unbearable urge to immediately satisfy oneself. Hence, playing any game that pits man against monkey is always a morally ambivalent experience.
Who among you can say that, if given the chance, you wouldn’t tear off your clothes, drop down to all fours, grab a girl and some bananas, and climb the nearest tree or skyscraper?
The two-decade feud between Mario and Donkey Kong, begun when the two self-destructively vied for the cross-species affection of doe-eyed Pauline, not only addresses the conflict between ego and id, but it is what the modern platform game has predicated
itself upon.
The latest chapter in their quarrelsome saga begins when Donkey Kong, possessed by TV-induced consumer rage, breaks into Mario’s toy factory and steals dozens of little wind-up Mario ‘bots. The erstwhile kidnapper-turned-kleptomaniac absconds with said toys, and Mario has to track the bad, bad monkey through factories, jungle lairs, spooked houses and volcanoes while avoiding traps that the guileful gorilla gleefully sets.
The game is a synergistic gene-splicing of classic Nintendo side-scrolling platformers with strands of recent fare as Mario can wield a hammer as he did in the original Donkey Kong, herd Pikmin-like mini-Marios through jigsaw environments, climb and slide along chains and vines like Donkey Kong Jr, and take occasional breaks for Wario Ware-style five-second mini-games. But for all the genre-requisite spike avoiding, platform hopping, and ghost dodging, the stars here are the levels themselves. They are, in essence, entire puzzles to be solved by leading Mario mites into toy chests, finding keys, and
backflipping onto triggers that make some walls or walkways materialize from the ether, and others magically disappear. We like.
Mario vs Donkey Kong
Requirements: Gameboy Advance
Rating 89%
Contact: GameStop
27/09/04
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