jwalkercat's review of Donkey Kong.

DK '94 is an interesting little game. I'm glad to say I own the original and played on gba sp, it's definitely the best of the mario gameboy games. Sometimes frustrating in its design, but overall pretty solid, esp given the hardware that it's working with. Interesting that mario had a triple jump and backflip here before SM64 (1996), it makes me sad that there are no other 2d marios where holding down and jumping makes mario flip on his head and plays a little squeaky sfx when handstand walking. Really my biggest problem is the hitboxes for things feel too large, esp given the screen, and also the varying fall damage. It's cool that small fall is nothing, medium fall is roll, high fall is faceplant and diving fall is instant death, but it leads to far too many instances of not being in control of mario as he rolls off an edge to his death. It definitely feels like a testing ground for mario's 64 moves though, which just makes me wish that new interesting mario games were still coming out. Last time that happened was maybe Super Mario Run in 2016? Which I honestly think is outclassed by this game from 20 years prior. At least I now have the rest of the Mario VS Donkey Kong series to play.