It took three games, but I finally got something going on my final attempt. Didn’t quite make it to 100,000, but I got close and made it through several pretty hairy situations to get as far as I did. All around, it was satisfying and enjoyable – the whole point of all of this, eh?
One thing a lot of people struggle with (me included) until you play a bunch of Donkey Kong, is ironically Jumpman’s jumping. I now have a pretty good feel for it, but until I got to this point, I would fall just a teensy bit too far and end up dead way more often than I would like. Keep in mind that Donkey Kong was a very early game and jumping was far from locked into anyone’s muscle memory. If this was the first time you’d ever jumped in a game, it might feel just the way you would expect. I certainly can’t remember what my first jumping was, but it was probably Pitfall which is also pretty strange, really.
To help people adjust to this new, strange “jumping” thing in an arcade game, Nintendo provided some tips on the instruction sticker. I’ve cropped out the section about the jump heights here since it’s the most troublesome part. It all makes sense and has logic to it when you see it this way. Maybe it’s not intuitive or natural when you use it, but if you were to design the first ever video game jumping, I suspect this would make a lot of sense.
Maybe this little visual will help you the next time you play and avoid some frustrating deaths. Personally, I just got a feel for it over time, but if you tried to think it through, these instructions might help too.
As a bonus, here’s a gremlin playing the Coleco Donkey Kong. Uh oh... he has a mohawk...
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