Related Games > Donkey Kong Junior

I've decided that I like this game

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ChrisP:
I'm starting to really like Jr., even though I didn't enjoy it so much at first. (I was expecting that to happen though, I've learned over time that I don't really start forming an attachment to *any* of these games until I've dug a groove in my brain for them and am good enough to feel a certain degree of power/control over them.)

Some random thoughts:

Vines and hideout are basically a gimme when you figure them out. Once you know when to wait for the snappers to get out of your way (vines), and when, how, and which sparks to pop with the apples (hideout), it's almost impossible to die on those boards unless you screw up.

I dislike the springboard screens. A lot. Missing the superjump is obnoxious and (apparently) random, and even though I basically know what to do about the birds at the top, they're still a pain in the butt and everything is too "tight" and stressful. Boo.

The keys board is really, really cool and is the real victory of the game's design. It's hard, probably consistently harder than anything in any of the DK games including D2K, but it's hard in a "fair" way. I really like that when you die on one of those boards it's almost always your fault (ie, you weren't paying enough attention, got impatient, etc.) A far cry from the merciless assassinations you have to regularly put up with in DK. Of course, maybe my opinion of this "fairness" will change once I get further than L4.

Making all of this harder on my machine is the fact that I have the elusive "P-kit" romset. The main differences are that the birds on both the springboard and chains fly one "notch" lower than they do on the standard romset. This one seemingly minor difference makes both boards a lot more challenging (at my current level of skill at least, maybe a better player would feel otherwise).

You have to hold the chain lower on the springboard screen when you're waiting to cross over to the safe area, which means it takes you longer to climb up, which means that you can get "egged" if you get bum-rushed by an eggdropper. So you have to look up at the "bird spacing" and be more discriminating about crossing before you do anything.

On keys, there is NO safe spot in the top flightpath area. When you combine that with the fact that the birds can go lower on their initial descent, getting the rightmost key in place can be a real bitch. You're almost forced to save it for last.

I also have a sense that the birds (and possibly the snappers) on the P-kit "seek" you in a way that they don't on the standard ROM. When I'm climbing up, they always seem to try to descend lower. When I stay still, they're more apt to take the upper flightpaths.

The good thing about the P-kit is that it makes the standard version feel a lot easier when I play it in MAME. It's kind of like getting used to running with a weight-vest!

I really want to get this kit to the MAME developers somehow so that all of you (and everybody else in gaming-land) can try it. But I can't justify buying an EPROM reader just to do that one thing. They're bizarrely expensive (hundreds of dollars). It would be cool if I eventually managed to killscreen this version. I couldn't submit it to TG, but I'd be the first, so what the heck!

I've now just barely missed 100K. I will definitely cross it soon.

ChrisP:
It's interesting to see how little information there is out there on Jr., relative to DK at least.

I had to go digging just to find someone asking how many boards there are (George at CAG) and his answer seemed uncertain. I had to save-state through it to confirm that it's 80 boards + the kill screen board  (;)).

The weird quasi-hexadecimal level counter is funny. The fact that the indicator simply goes blank from L10-16 has to be annoying when you're playing through and trying to keep track of things. Why didn't they just give the counter 2 digits and count in base 10 like the original game??

Speaking of which, there seems to be nothing out there in the way of calculating pace, per screen averages, etc.

I will admit that I'm not digging too hard, but Jr. is definitely not as well-documented as DK.

marinomitch13:
I agree, I've really grown to like this game as well, in all honesty, I find the same thing as you, once I start to understand a game better and get good at it, then I enjoy the challenge until it starts to become too easy. I think it's cool that you get to play on that harder romset. If you end up going to the next Kong Off, you should bring your roms along, and I'm positive that some of the people at the 1Up would be able and willing to make some copies of the game for you so that you have duplicates as well as so they can have some to start circulating and maybe even send to the MAME programmers for you. Just an idea, if you really wanna share them with the world. Although, then Brian Allen would have another random DK game to get a score on and post on Marp... :/

Jonesy:
I also have to agree, I really love this game!

I started properly playing this in November last year. The keys/chains level for me is where I lose my lives still on later levels but when I succeed it's a always a relief! The Hideout I was finding boring but the ' Dean move ' for point pressing does make the level a lot more enjoyable instead of just mundanely jumping sparks to the left hand side of the first chute.

Good to see you're enjoying it & good luck!

ChrisP:
You could think of this P-kit as being analogous to the TKG-4 romset on DK. Nintendo updated the DK program because the ladder cheat made the game too easy, and they sent out this Jr. ROM update for the same reason.

Thing is, the "official" TG-ranked romset for DK is the TKG-4 update, the "final" version of the game. And by that logic, the Jr. P-kit is the "final" version of Jr., meaning that, technically, there's a case for TG starting the Jr. scoreboard from scratch!

Which would be hilarious.

In all seriousness though, there have to be more of these kits out there than anybody realizes, and it's almost certain that some of the scores on TG's scoreboard were done on this kit (not to mention the Easy kit that also exists in the wild).

The fact is, there's no way to know which scores, especially BITD scores, were done on what romset. Some could be "easy" boards, some could be "hard" boards. Maybe even... Calvin Frampton's score??

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