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Kong a Day #5 - Watching My Stories


On 02/05/2014 at 11:07 PM by Travis Hawks

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Linked to Article Series: Blog a Day (BaD) 2014

Well, today I had a completely average outing. I hit a top score of 92,500, which isn’t great, but isn’t irritating. I got stopped at the third elevator screen again, but I did try out a technique from YouTube that seemed to have promise. I only had one shot at it, though, and didn’t quite do it right. Anyway, since I was staring at Donkey Kong, thinking about Donkey Kong related things, I realized how many times you have to see the conclusion of the game’s “story.”

I might not have considered it a story at all had it not been for Chris Kohler’s Power Up book wherein he uses Donkey Kong’s proto-narrative as the basis for an expansive thesis on the Japanese cinematic video game. It’s a pretty well-written book that I’d recommend even if you aren’t interesting in Donkey Kong. He gets into Final Fantasy and other series to show the evolution of movie-like story telling in Japanese games. It’s a pretty interesting and justified thesis. The book sort of falls apart once he starts discussing shopping for games in Japan and other side topics that feel like filler to get up to some page count. That’s alright; the rest of it is still worthwhile.

As you might have noticed when I laid out the screen ordering for the game, each of the games “levels” ends with the blue screen (a.k.a. rivet screen). On all of the other screens, when Jumpan reaches the top, Donkey Kong picks Pauline up and takes her off once again. At the end of the blue screen, DK falls to his painful, temporary doom -- which appears to be a serious concussion. After that, he recaptures Pauline and everything starts anew, but cramming any sort of story into such an early game is quite an accomplishment. Let’s give Miyamoto a little bit of credit for this one. There’s a chance he might have some sort of talent for making games.


 

Comments

Ranger1

02/05/2014 at 11:51 PM

I wonder if my local library has that book...

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/06/2014 at 12:53 AM

I do too, though I doubt it. Worth a look. 

I often watch speed runs to get a sense of how to most efficiently beat a game. That guy was nice to slow it down and explain it. 

KnightDriver

02/06/2014 at 04:23 PM

I listen to Chric Kohler every week on Wired's Game/Life Podcast. He's a great guy. I'll read his book sometime. 

NSonic79

02/25/2014 at 02:22 PM

It sucks that I can't books like these from my local rural library. It takes forever to get a Larrel K. Hamilton book.

I can't belive I just typed that.

Travis Hawks Senior Editor

02/25/2014 at 05:24 PM

Ha!

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