Retro Showdown Mogtones VS Alana: Donkey Kong

Mogtones

I was talking with a colleague of mine about retro games and collaborations and decided to challenge her to a series of classic title playoffs. Being totally down with the idea, she chose Donkey Kong for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Here was the challenge: who could get the higher score on their first set of lives. No matter how rusty we were, the first attempt was the only one that mattered.

I fired up Donkey Kong on Nintendo Switch online and gave it my best. Turns out my best was only 13,000 points, ouch. Picking up old titles such as this for the purpose of competing makes one want to approach it differently. Do I sit there and jump barrels for 100 points a piece, or do I just rush the stages and get the stage bonus? To redeem myself, not for the contest but for my own shattered ego, I gave it another go. I beat the first series of levels, and almost made it through the next set as well and made a lot of silly mistakes on level six which ended my run and left me with a score of 34,700. Which was still less than hers, it was a huge improvement on my first run and made me feel a bit better about my epic gamer skills as they were.

The magic of playing old games like Donkey Kong is they get you in the mood to keep playing titles from gaming’s great past. I dove into some other titles on Nintendo Switch online like Dr. Mario and Excitebike to quench my thirst for this nostalgia bug.

I suppose since I lost I get to issue the next challenge and I have the perfect adventure in mind, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. The challenge: Get as far as you can in the game without using a continue on hard. If we both make it to the same level, the score will be the tiebreaker.

Alana

Alana here and I figured it was only fair that I add my commentary. When Mogtones asked me what game we should use for the first challenge I was thinking it should be something classic and well known so I chose Donkey Kong. I have multiple versions of this game on the original Nintendo Entertainment System and the Famicom but I figured I would use the version on the Switch.

It ended up working out well since it is the exact version we both used but I can't help but feel the Joy-Con thumbstick just is not as good as a traditional d-pad for controlling Mario. I died a few times just for silly stuff and in the end managed to get a score of 47,500 which is decent but I am definitely nowhere near as good as I have done in the past.

No matter, now I can focus on the next challenge, TMNT Turtles in Time! Definitely pulling out my Super Nintendo for this one!

Mogtones 0 RetrogamergirlAlana 1