Released in 1982 Donkey Kong Jr. is the sequel to Donkey Kong. It’s the first time Jump Man in DK is named Mario and the only time he was a villain in a game. Shigeru Miyamoto designed the game and the graphics were designed by him and with Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto. The music was by Yukio Kaneoka who also did Donkey Kong.
DK Jr. was chosen as one of the five games used in the first Video Game Championships at Twin Galaxies in 1983. It was televised on That’s Incredible. Here’s a video clip. DK Jr. starts at 5:00 minute mark.
In this video, it looks like every game has been altered for the championships. Maybe it’s just editing, but it seems like the order of the stages is rearranged in DK. Jr..
DK Jr. also got his own cereal in the 80’s.
Yum, bananas and berries!
Mike Kasper, according to a Nintendo Life article from last year holds the current world record score of 1,349,000 points. Suck it Billy Mitchell!
DK Jr. was ported to just about every system of its day. I played the ColecoVision version and thought it was excellent. As you will notice with this Classic Game Room review, this version is missing the Sparks level.
There are two Game & Watch versions of DK Jr. for on-the-go gaming in the 80’s.
The NES version is the one that’s bandied about today. It was put on e-Reader, Virtual Console (which I bought), an unlockable in Animal Crossing (good luck getting the code), and on the 3DS e-shop. Here’s another review from the excellent Classic Game Room on youtube.
You’ll notice the cut-scene after stage two is absent and the one after stage four is abbreviated. Otherwise, this is a near perfect port of the original. For the perfect port, you can find a ROM and play it on the MAME emulator on PC. I showed the video of that in Part One of this article.
Now the character of Donkey Kong Jr., you would think, should be the young monkey that pals around with DK in Donkey Kong Country right? But no. That’s Diddy Kong, a “wannabe nephew” of DK, according to the DK 64 manual. Apparently Rare wanted to make Diddy Kong DK’s son but Nintendo wouldn’t go for it - yet another instance of Nintendo protecting their properties to a ridiculous extent. I mean, how cool would it be for Diddy Kong to be DK Jr.? Then Donkey Kong Country becomes a father and son game and Diddy Kong Racing becomes Donkey Kong Junior Racing. Geeze Louise! That’s a no brainer to me. I guess the next best thing is to play DK Jr. as a character in Super Mario Kart. That’s about the last appearance of that character in games as far as I can tell.
Whoa! He's a big boy.
I forgot he was in Mario Kart and I played that a lot on SNES. I don't know what it is with me and forgetting about DK Jr., but a new game with him would be cool. Who knows, maybe Retro found a way to put him in Tropical Freeze.
That's what I was thinking since they used Cranky Kong but for some reason Nintendo has tried to distance themselves from Jr. and use Diddy and DIxie instead. Maybe because they don't want people to remember Mario as an antagonist like he was in DK jr. or maybe they don't want a father/son thing going on because then people ask, "well, who's the mother then?". It's weird, but I'm sure they had some board meeting and carefully thought it through.
I used to think that the current DK was actually DK Jr. just grown up, especially since I read somewhere that Cranky Kong was actually the DK that appeared in the arcade game. Then I read somewhere else that it wasn't true.
Yea, I don't think there's any continuity between the new and old DK's. It seems like with DK Country, the current characters were set and not much of a backstory has been given regarding how they all relate to each other. Somehow I think Nintendo did that on purpose.
Don't forget about DK Jr. Math on the NES. And DK Jr. had his own cartoon in the second season of Saturday Supercade. And Super Mario Kart wasn't DK Jr's last new appearance. He was also in the Game Boy Donkey Kong game that I raved so much about in my blog.
Ha! DK Jr. Math. Didn't see that one. Cool. The cartoon I'll have to watch later 'cause it's late, and DK Game Boy did come out a few years after SMK, so you're right there, and I should've known that 'cause I just read something you wrote about that. Ah, facts. There's so many of them and so little time to find them all.
I almost picked up Donkey Kong Jr. from the eShop with my points until I realized I already own it. LOL
It wouldn't be the first time I've done that.
Me too.
With a couple of seconds of looking, I found this for you: Om3BS5@5%OgB9L MK3ISFRLZJ%wr2. That would be the code for DK Jr in Animal Crossing.
Wow. Cool. The wiki page suggested it might be difficult to get, but it was wrong.
It was right there on gamefaqs.
Donkey Kong Jr. was actually a playable character in Mario Tennis for the N64. I don't know if he appeared in anything later than that, though.
Ah yea, I see him there as an unlockable character. Mario Tennis then, released in 2000, would be the most recent new game with DK Jr..
I looked up Mario Tennis Open (2012 3DS game) and they put in Diddy Kong in that one.
I think at some point I must have eaten that cereal because I would pick cereals based on the toy in the box, and that one came with baseball cards.
I don't remember eating any novelty cereals. Maybe my parents refused to get them. You're kind of stuck as a kid if your parents don't get it for you. Later I was into Captain Crunch, but that was when the Coop kitchen I was a part of in College had it. I was into strangely healthy stuff in High School like Total and Grape Nuts. Frickin' Frosted Mini Wheats were the McShizzle though.
that's odd. I thought cranky kong was suppose to the real DK in DKC and Jr was actually the main character all grown up next to this Diddy Kong that's the new Jr but not the Jr from this DK Jr game?.
Wait did I read that blog posting right?
I heard something about that too, maybe on Retronauts, that DK in DKC was Cranky Kong. How can that be? Then who's the aged Kong with the cane?
I like the idea that DK in DKC is DK jr. grown up. Diddy is supposed to be DK's nephew, though, from what I've read.
IT'S ALL TOO CONFUSING! AHHHH!