Why do you play?

[dollopuss]

So what's your story with playing DK?

I'm 41yo and I never had an interest in playing CAGs really until I gave DK a go in April of this year. Reason being I was hearing stories of a certain person getting their scores revoked and thought "Oh yeah, Donkey Kong. I wonder if it's fun." I had a Retropi and gave it go. And it was unbelievably difficult. It made me wonder how people were able to get so good at it! Then I got the bug once I hit the pie board and realized how it's one of the best games I've ever played. It's deeply satisfying and frustrating to master.

I assume a lot of DK players here are avid CAG players in general?

[homerwannabee]

My main reasoning for playing Donkey Kong was a screw you to those who think Donkey Kong is the end all, and be all, and take a dump on Donkey Kong Junior and Donkey Kong 3.  So basically if someone talks trash about the game, I can think, "Well screw you, I have a higher score than you in this game, and I still like Junior and DK3 over Donkey Kong."

Yes, I am 73rd in the high score list, but the way I look at  it, if you have a higher score than me, then yeah, you took this game somewhat seriously, and earned the right to talk trash on DKJr, and DK3.  Ironically, the people who usually talk trash on the game are people aren't that good at Donkey Kong either.

[YesAffinity]

For the challenge.  Donkey Kong is one of those games, that I would argue, is not like riding a bike.  If you're not playing regularly, skill level dissolves pretty quickly.

I play a variety of games - a lot of different iterations of street fighters, racers, any number of console games.  Street Fighters I can walk away from for months at a time, and within a couple hours be back to 90-95% of peak performance.  Racers, the same thing.  Heck, I gave Madden 99 on N64 a try, a couple weeks ago, which I used to play daily with friends back in...well, '99...but havent' touched in almost 20 years.  The mechanics came back pretty quickly, and by the second game against the computer, I dominated.

Donkey Kong, however, not so much.  I haven't focused on it in a couple months, sat down committed to having a solid run last weekend, and came up just shy of 300K.    If I played every day for the next 2 weeks, I could probably scratch out a 700k+ game eventually...probably.  Days/weeks vs. hours.  It's both challenging and infuriating at the same time.

Maybe it's different for the 1M, 1.1M, 1.2M players.

[Flobeamer1922]

I was completely out of the loop when it came to the game's score history until I saw Summoningsalt's Donkey Kong World Record Progression video last year (which is no longer viewable, as he had taken it down in the wake of the fiasco). That video was the catalyst for everything for me; I discovered Wes, Wes led me to DKF, and I also began playing DK. I started off on the NES version, but thankfully, I graduated to the arcade version soon after. I guess my primary motivation for playing back then was that I simply wanted to achieve a couple of small score goals (100k, 200k, 300k, etc.), and I thought the game was fun enough, challenging enough, and engaging enough, so I've stuck with it after all this time.

[Mitch Mitchell]

    Well it was the first arcade game i ever played, i could barely reach the 1p button at 3yrs old even with a chair; I was at an auction in Uxbridge Mass (Whitey's) with my father and grandfather, it was on freeplay i now understand. I stood there the whole time we were there (hrs for sure it was so boring), anyways i never got up the first ladder LOL But my Pop's saw i was able to be sucked into games so later that summer he got me my first game an orange table top dkjr (i still have it!).
    Anywho, we went to NH to ski starting that winter after my 4th birthday in sept of '83 which continued as a family tradition until i moved out at 21. Well i stayed away from DK at Funspot every year because i had a limited supply of tokens in my pocket and it was a waste of money being so hard so i played other games there for yrs and yrs like Crossbow, Stocker and Star Wars.
    I saw the DK film a bit ago and have always enjoyed watching world class gameplay and well world class performances in anything so i started watching the WR's i could find online and eventually started playing DK on mame and im building a DK cab right now.
    So, why do I play? I dont know, its a fun game even though its hard as nails, it has great level design, logic, color schemes, replay value, skill growing value; its a game that refuses to be conquered, and that makes it enjoyable to me I suppose.
    Oh and its a Nintendo game designed by the invincible Yokoi and Miyamoto team haha.

[bradtech519]

I watched King of Kong around August.  Then started watching gameplay & thought it looked fun. The movement/physics of the game was ahead of it's time. It makes it enjoyable.  I had wrist surgery on my right wrist years ago and pretty much gave up gaming. It was just too painful.  I still get inflammation & need another surgery to clean up the last one.  I used to be into competitive quake in the late 90s and 00s. Along with repetitive injuries due to sports.   My wrist still bothers me when I use a traditional mouse & vertical mice aren't that good for first person shooters on PC.  I found that playing Donkey Kong is easy on the wrist. I'm mainly using left hand for movement and pressing one button.  So it basically let's me get back into gaming & try to push my limits without using a mouse.