Donkey Kong turned 40! So for fun, Kris dove into his collection to take a look at some of his favorite Donkey Kong stuff including a board game, a rather rude plush, a shot glass, and of course, GAMES! 

Transcript of the video

Hi, everyone. Kris from Stone Age Gamer here, and welcome back to Stone Age Gaming. This guy right here, Donkey Kong, the big ape with the monogrammed necktie, he just turned 40 years old. Can you believe that 40 years of Donkey Kong? Goodness, no. There's no arguing that Donkey Kong is one of the most influential games in the history of the video game industry. It brought us, Mario, and introduced so many people to the very concept of platforming. I mean, there's so much good in that original dotcom game and it spawned like crazy interesting franchise for for years and years and years. 

Now, unlike my Zelda and Bubsy videos, I don't have a complete collection of Donkey Kong. I don't even have a "complete" collection of Donkey Kong games. But I do have a lot of games and a lot of cool Donkey Kong stuff. And I thought as a way of celebrating his birthday and to a degree mine, I was only a month older than Donkey Kong. I should go through my collection and just kind of take a deep dive into some of the my personal favorite Donkey Kong things that I have. Let's take a look. 

All right, let's talk about some Donkey Kong. Yeah, I mean, look at this guy. He's great. This is this actually is it actually is one of my favorite Kong pieces. It's a relatively recent one, but it was bought for it was a gift for my son when he was a baby. And I love this little guy. I mean, look at him. He's great looking. He's got a necktie and everything. 

But anyways, let's get to work here on a on some of my favorite pieces. So now I'm well aware that Donkey Kong is started off as an arcade game. So I don't have the first Donkey Kong game of the most importance, but I do think I have the next best thing. And that would be this guy right here. This is effectively what the Famicom was built for. This is the original Famicom version of Donkey Kong. I couldn't say for sure if this is an original release. I'm no Famicom expert, but I don't know if this was what print run or whatever it is like that. I don't really understand a lot of that, but it is a complete and box copy of the original version of Donkey Kong and it's got some pretty snazzy looking box art. You know, I've always loved that that particular drawing of Donkey Kong and Pauline and Mario looking at all weird and stuff. So let's see what's inside this this fun little box. 

So here's a here's the cartridge. You can see there's not even any box art on this thing. It's a it's just awesome looking. I mean, look at this. There's this crazy design. It's wacky to think there were Nintendo games released in these big, colorful cartridges that didn't even have artwork on them. But then you have the instruction manual, which is also fairly simplistic. But, you know, you've got a little sketchy drawing of the cover there. And then you've just got a bunch of Japanese text that I can't read, which is fun. The title screen there, Famicom Controls. And you've got this awesome. I love this Super Mario Bros. instruction. I had the similar situation where they had these cool, like, you know, victory drawings of the the actual Sprite work from the game. They just look so, so darn awesome. The pictures that look like they're weird. I well, you can see that like negatives or something like that. They look so, so wild like that. But yeah, that's pretty much all there was to the original instruction manual for the old Donkey Kong for Famicom. 

This is one of my favorite things just in my entire collection, just because of its historical significance. You know, I mean, this is the Famicom was made to to be the system that played the best version of Donkey Kong. And this was pretty close to Arcade perfect, minus that that missing level. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, we have this guy right here. This is Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 video computer system by Coleco. This is this is quite an interesting portion of Donkey Kong. I didn't play this. I started out gaming on the Atari personally, but I didn't have this game until after I had played Donkey Kong on the NES. The NES version was the first version that I played. So going back to this was jarring. 

It was certainly an interesting experience. I mean, look at that screenshot. Not that this is an actual screen shot. This is an artist's rendering of a screenshot, but it's it's pretty similar to what it actually looks like. It's the Atari twice Senate version of Donkey Kong is is really, really special, but especially special looking. But it doesn't play bad. It actually plays plays pretty well anyway. 

[So let's take a look at this. This is the the cartridge this was eventually reissued with. I've seen I think I have the the Red Label version that was released by Atari, whereas this was the Coleco release, the original one, and this is in pretty good shape. This isn't the cart that I had when I was younger. This is one that I picked up a lot later and it's in pretty good condition. I think there's the manual in here, too. What else we got? Yeah, we've got our cartridge warranty registration for Coleco Industries Inc. I wonder if that still works. 

Then you've got the cartridge instructions. Look at it's a similar drawing to what was on the Famicom Cart. And you've got how to work your Atari. You're that's a little bit more like it. That's really what it looks like in the game. And Pauline, Mario's girlfriend, unbroken letter broken that her Mario, you know, and it works pretty well overall. So that was what I was thinking over the straight lines. It's a it's not a bad game. It's a there have been more impressive renditions of kung fu, the twenty six hundred in later years. But considering when this was made, this could have been a heck of a lot worse. 

So let's stick with some cartridges for a little bit. I'll pull out this little stack here, which I am also rather fond of in these are my and yes games. I do not have these all complete in the box, but I do have them in pretty solid shape. I was fortunate enough to pick these up when I worked at FuncoLand and I really wanted to get all of. What's it, the black label, once I was trying to collect all those, so let's let's look at these one at a time here. Here is Donkey Kong Arcade classic series, the original. And I love this artwork because it's a that's pretty close to the Sprite. The barrels are a little not round. That's kind of cool. But look at Mario. This is totally like a redraw of the Super Mario Bros. sprite with I mean, white and blue coloring here. This is just it's just bananas when I was young, but still very cool, a cool cartridge. 

And just we just looked at the instruction manual for the other one. Here is the here's the English version. So that's the object of the game. Can you save Pauline from the clutches of Donkey Kong? Help Mario scale the construction site to rescue his girlfriend Pauline, dodge the fireballs and barrels that Donkey Kong hurls down the ramps and ladders to thwart your efforts? And then we just kind of go through and this is pretty much page for page, just the Japanese manual with that's been localized, you know, still got all the same super cool vector art, but it is larger, so you can see it a bit better. Those original Famicom books are really tiny, but it's such cool stuff, such cool stuff. 

I love it and I love this version. This was not exactly the version that I played when I was when I first played it. It was on then. Yes, but we'll get to that in a second. But this was missing a stage, you know, which was kind of a bummer. But it's what it is still a very solid version of Donkey Kong. 

Then we have Donkey Kong Junior for NES. Another arcade classic series. I think a much more better depiction box here. You know, that looks a bit more like Donkey Kong Jr. I'll do a quick little look at the instruction manual. It's the object of the game was the story of this one. DK Junior is on a mission to rescue Donkey Kong from Mario's cage, jump from behind divine collecting bonus fruits and avoiding lethal snap jaws, then move on to tougher stages. Jump platforms, dodge sparks of electricity and watch out for those birds. Use your skills to get the key that will set your papa free. Hey, that rhymes! 

A similar situation. Let's see. Look at these bad guys here. We've got your Snapdeal nitpicker in Spark and that's something I like. Donkey Kong Jr.. I've never been I've gotten I've been able to do decently at the arcade version of Donkey Kong. I am terrible at the arcade version of DK Jr, but it's pretty easy to beat on NES. It's a neat game. It's such a weird sequel to the original Kong. But speaking of weird sequels, let's look at Donkey Kong 3. 

Here is going to be the black sheep of the original series because it is so weirdly different. That's quite the quite the Kong there. He's very diamond shaped. But, you know, there's your rock or coconut or whatever. It is so dark country. If you've never played it before, it's kind of like a shooter, which is really weird object of the game. This one does not have Mario in it. 

Let's see, we have Donkey Kong loose in the greenhouse and only Stanley the bug man can stop him. Armed with a can of bug repellent, Stanley must work furiously to keep Donkey Kong and all of the buzz bees and bee spies away from his flowers. Get the super spray and you can blast your way through three screens full of green house excitement. It is an exciting game. I'll give it that. This manual is not as interesting as the others got cool artwork, don't get me wrong, but I like that cool, you know, pixel art drawn work. But either way you've got your Stanley, you get your Donkey Kong is looking pretty funky in this one. I got a Busy Bee and creepy the snake. 

I was always fascinated by this game. A local recreation center by me had the arcade version and I remember playing and just being so surprised that a Donkey Kong 3 existed and was searching for what an actual Donkey Kong 2 was for years. I've actually found it. Donkey Kong 2 does exist. We're going to talk about in a bit. But yeah, Donkey Kong 3, pretty neat game. 

But of course then you have this masterpiece, Donkey Kong Junior Math. Yeah, I can't believe this game is actually worth the amount of money that it is. I get that it's rare, but this game's awful. I again, this was when I worked at FuncoLand and I picked this up when it came into my store one time because I was out to collect all of the Black Label games. It wasn't because I was going to be worth some money someday. Now, this was just because I really just wanted to have all the Donkey Kong games. And this one's always been weird to me because this writing is green, but this writing is blue. That's kind of strange. 

But even stranger than that. After I picked this up, this came into my FuncoLand and Donkey Kong junior math Hong Kong version. We had a couple of these games come into my store, Hong Kong versions. I think I had seen this. And was it soccer? Might have been the other one. Either way, these just weird light gray Hong Kong version cartridges. I have no idea how they found their way to a FuncoLand in New Jersey, but. You know, they did and I bought them while I bought this one, I didn't buy the soccer one because this one just cracks me up. It's like, look at DK junior and they're trying to do math problems. Like, way to go, buddy. That's that's pretty impressive, but that's kind of weird. 

So I guess that would take us to a few other cartridges before we get to the really fun stuff. Just a couple more that I really like, I want to talk about because I love them so much. And this is Donkey Kong Classics. This is the one that I played for the first time when I was a kid. This was my first exposure to Donkey Kong, and this has always been one of my favorite Donkey Kong related images, you know, because you look back at a lot of the older stuff that we were just looking at. And, you know, Mario looks super weird and stuff. He's not the Mario we all remember. But this is like this crazy drawing of a relatively modern looking Mario. He's still got the swopped, blue and red overalls going on there. But I just I thought this was the coolest thing. Mine's a little it's a little faded here, but that's now comes with the territory. 

I did manage to keep my box in manual and everything in pretty decent shape over the years. Yeah. I just love this. This was both games crammed into one cartridge and it was it was kind of funny to me because, you know, here's Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. all on the same cart, but they didn't have space to add that another level back. They eventually did. There was a version of Donkey Kong, for instance, that had the cement factory level added back in. But anyway, at the instruction manual really isn't anything to write home about. It's basically just the same to instruction manuals, back to back with notes at the end, in case you want to include memo or whatever, I don't know. But yeah, here is Donkey Kong classics. I love this cart. I just love this artwork. I love the orange. I love everything about it. It's it's one of my favorites. 

And speaking of one of my favorites, this one, this isn't exactly rare, but this is just one of the best games ever. This game is so, so good and everybody should play it. This is Donkey Kong for Gameboy, also referred to as Donkey Kong 94. This came out in was a July, I think in 1994. I came out this summer is June or July in 94, and I bought this day one with my super Gameboy because I had the playing Gameboy games on TV and color. That sounds crazy. And it really did work, especially for the ones that were enhanced. Like this one is very much enhanced to work with the the super Gameboy. So much so that the the the game itself takes on a couple of interesting unique traits like the ending music is different. It's all sixteen bit. And the the Pauline at the beginning of each stage actually yells help instead of just making the sound effect. But goodness, isn't this artwork just fantastic. I just love this picture. It's so great. Now you've got your proper modern Mario, you know, swinging the hammer, chasing after Donkey Kong and Jaws back in there too. This game was so brilliant in that it didn't just expand on everything that Donkey Kong was in a really, really creative and clever ways, but it also kind of incorporated elements of JR where Mario would kind of work the same way as DK Jr climbing vines. It was really smart. 

So here's the instruction manual, which is pretty awesome. But these super Gameboy games also came with a super Gameboy instruction manual that helps point out certain specific things like this, full color images or ones that just had, you know, a couple colors added to them. Like this title screen looked great and just unique attributes to the super Gameboy itself, the super Gameboy version. And boy, oh, boy, what a masterpiece of a game. I just love this one. 

OK, next up, let's take a look at this. This is the elusive Donkey Kong 2. I know in the grand scheme of, you know, Donkey Kong or just Game & Watches in general. This one isn't exactly super rare or hard to find, but it's Donkey Kong 2. There is a Donkey Kong II and it is exclusive exclusively a game and watch game. And which is it's it's pretty neat. You can see it's got this cool, shiny effect going on there. You know, artwork is pretty classic in the rest of it's not much to write home about, but you crack it open. It's a dual screen, one kind of like the Zelda one. Mine's pretty faded. This is actually running right now. So I'll I'll start this out so you can hear it. But I can't you can't really see the action too. Well, there is it doesn't seem to be showing up on camera well at all, but it is very much a functional gaming watch. Hey, why'd you stop? I'm just I just put fresh batteries in you now. Well, so it kind of works like DK Jr, trying to work your way up to the top, but it combines the other stages together. 

So you start at the bottom here and you climb the vines. You avoid little I can't clap traps because that's what they're called in Donkey Kong country. I never remember what they're called in here. Ah, there it goes. Now we're making some noise. OK, so there's DK Jr now. Well you can see him on there. Oh I just died and you just kind of use your little jump button. Oh I jumped right into a spark and you have to like travel from the bottom screen to the top screen. This is super. It's it's Donkey Kong 2, it's an actual Donkey Kong 2, and I need you to stop making noise now stop beeping. Stop, stop whatever. Donkey Kong 2. 

Next up. I also have this guy, which is also really cool. This is the Donkey Kong three game and watch. And this one, as you can see, is in much better shape. The LCD itself. What makes this super cool is like this is kind of this is kind of like a prototype. Like if this if this Donkey Kong is a prototype DS., this is a prototype Switch because check this out. This is part of the micro versus system. You crack this thing open and it's got to controllers like built in. And they're they're they're on like spools inside. So you can pull these little wires out and then you just kind of set this thing up, like use this bottom part as a stand here. I hold this up a little bit better so you can see it, but then you use the controllers and it's it's a first game. You play against one another. You're trying to kind of spray each other with your bug spray and whatnot, which is why aren't you doing things? Oh, there we go. That must be starting. There we go. All right. So I got the Stanley controller. So you're trying to spray each other, but you also have to like, you know, manager ammo by going over to the side and filling up the bug spray that you can shoot and you're trying to, you know, knock each other out and yeah, you can't actually play the single player. Isn't that something? It's a really neat game. I love the artwork on the actual little honeycomb sprites, the LCD things that are going back and forth there are just super cool. And this is such a neat thing because it's got a little breakoff controllers just like the Nintendo switch. Nintendo just never lets never lets ideas go, which is pretty awesome. 

OK, next up, you've seen this guy, right? He's super cool, but he is not at all my favorite plush. That honor goes to this gentleman right here. I this is my plush. I got this. Jeez, I don't know when I got this, it wasn't actually when I was a little kid. I got it later. I don't remember from where, but I've always loved this little guy and I can never really get much detail on, like, the tag here. You can see it's like super worn. So I can't see any of the actual numbers or anything. But I remember seeing in the Mario Mania Strategy Guide, which is like a strategy guide for Super Mario world for Super Nintendo. But it also had this neat Mario history thing. They mentioned they showed a picture of a bunch of dunking stuff and there was a picture of this plushy in there. And he looks great and he does this. That's I mean, it's so you can hang on to things, but still, you know, that's happening. But look at him. He's so cute. He's definitely up to something. I mean, that face, he is up to something. I love this so much and I'm so happy because condition as he as you can see, his arm is kind of ripped a little bit there. But, you know, I just leave him hanging around in my closet these days. Actually, I think the arm came off more. And I think my mom sewed this back on for me because my mom's the best. But yet Donkey Kong plush, he's so super cool. I love this guy. I love the weird little hand movements and stuff. And you can just see the the evolution here is pretty fun. You know, this is the same character. Bananas. I said bananas again. 

All right. Next, let's take a look at this. Now, if you follow stone age gamer social media, you've probably seen I post about these all the time once a month. I always show off a different month of these calendars. These are the Nintendo, the power game calendars. And this was the only one that had Donkey Kong NES right there chillin there on the cover. Now, this one in particular, the 1991 was amazingly awesome because it has all this like really weird artwork in and stuff. We're going to go straight to June, which is the Donkey Kong month. And here we go. Look at that. This is the month of June. There's your giant Donkey Kong Sprite. You got a little DK Jr. hanging out down there. I'm not sure what's up with this font with the purple polka dots on it, but whatever. I like how you've still got this reinvention of the bay, basically just taking the NES Super Mario Brothers Sprite and kind of shrinking them down. So Paulene still kind of humongous compared to them. But look at this thing. Isn't this awesome? I just love this thing. I love this whole calendar. I mean, every single one of these months, especially the 1990, they're all weird and all super cool. But I mean, there's so much great artwork in here. But the dark one is what we're here for today and today. I have just been so obsessed with these calendars. We're on the the fourth one right now, which is current there. A couple of years ago, this actually became current again. And I've been using them as my regular calendars for a little, what, a little bit now. And like I said, to take take pictures every month and throw them up on Stone Age Gamer's social media channels because they're just so darn. And cool. 

Moving on, sticking with the pre Country years, we have this this is the Donkey Kong board game from Milton Bradley. And boy, just look at look at Mario's face there. Yeah, it's just something weird about that is just creepy looking Mario right there. But based on the arcade game, it's a similar situation to what we did on the A video a while back. I did on the supermarket board game. This is yet another Nintendo video game related board game that I have is definitely a bit older. But let's take a look at what's going on in the inside here. No instructions on the inside there. 

So the board itself, as you can imagine, is based on it's actually really interesting because the board itself is really based on the artwork more than it is the game. You know, you look at a screenshot of the game, you think of the girders in Donkey Kong, the steel girders. Is that the right thing? They're called I don't know what I'm talking about on this construction, whatever. They're all like pink on black. But this is totally based on the artwork like this. That's just crazy to me that this was the interpretation that they went. So that's that's kind of amazing. You got these. Oh, my goodness. All right. So Pauline's tied to that pole up there. That's kind of weird. You got all these. Wow, look at that. How's that for some artwork? That's that's that's a heck of a Donkey Kong right there. So you get these cards up there. I really don't remember how to play this. I didn't enjoy it when I did. You've got jump and hammer cards and they're all worth like different points. You have this Donkey Kong here that you kind of put this together and this arm goes in here and then he like he throws barrels. So he like clips to the side of the board with this little clip here. And then you load him up with barrels and you load the arm up with barrels and then he drops them down. You load them up up here. That's right. You throw the barrel in here and then he, like, drops a barrel on the board and these little barrels. I found the game really tedious because you have to move all these barrels and stuff all the time. Here's the dye that came with these little little fireball icon. And I love this because this is up to four players. You've got these four different colored Marios. So you've got your blue Mario, you've got your green Mario, you've got your yellow Mario and your red Mario. And that is that is the Donkey Kong ball game. It's pretty wild. I don't think the game is actually very fun at all. Donkey Kong rests, but my son's been having a lot of fun with it lately, so maybe there's something I'm missing. I'll play it with him one of these days and we'll figure it out from there. 

All right. So we've got a couple more fun things to look at now. 1994 was DK 94 came out for super Gameboy and it was super, amazingly cool. But then this showed up in the mail. This was a promotional VHS tape that Nintendo Power sent out. And I was not an intended power subscriber at the time as much as I wanted to be. So I'm still not sure how this went up in my mailbox, but I'm so glad it did because I obsessed over this video. This was the first I had ever seen of Donkey Kong country. And it's a full, incredibly 90s just VHS promotional tape about, you know, the making of Donkey Kong, what the game was about, what it was going to be like. It's mind blowing graphics, which honestly, I mean, they really weren't mind blowing at the time. I mean, look at these these leaves in the background like they this was a big deal. Look at the reinvention of Donkey Kong. This was the first time this particular form of Donkey Kong had been been taken. There's really nothing else going on in the outside here. 

The tape itself is pretty snazzy. VHS tape with your home country artwork exposed. This video is so, so cool. I love this thing. And I watched it so many times because I was I mean, I was unabashedly entrenched in the console wars back then, which are completely ridiculous. Looking back on it now, like the second genesis is awesome. But I was a Nintendo kid and this was like this was putting the the stake in the heart of Sonic the Hedgehog. This is like, yeah, Sonic's cool, but look at this. This was the big comeback. And this really did help the game. It really did turn the tide for the Super Nintendo in that whole generation there. But boy, oh, boy, this specific tape and I spent a ton of time with this. 

Speaking of Donkey Kong country, though, there's this little doodad here. This is not what you think it is. I don't actually own one of the Donkey Kong country competition cartridges. I wish I did because I did actually compete in at my local blockbuster. I came in second, which was not enough to move on. But years and years and years and years and years later, I came across this. This is actually two different things that I've pieced together. This box is a reproduction box from a website. Called Uncle Tusk, and he does these really cool repro boxes, they're not even refroze because they're boxes for things that never had boxes. So like I bought a box for Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt or Super Mario, All Stars and Super Mario world like Pacman games and stuff that never had boxes. He put together these really awesome boxes for him. And I think this one's great and it does a great job of containing this cool little guy in here. If I can open this up without putting my box. Crazy person. I picked this up online ages ago and it's a really snazzy reproduction cartridge of the the duck country competition thing, the competition card that they used at the blockbuster thing. So, yeah, it's it comes in this awesome want came in. They don't make these anymore. At least have I've not seen them on the site that I got them from. I don't think anybody really produces these anymore in the in a world of ever drives et cetera. But this is, it's just a really cool thing. And it was really nice years later to actually plug this into my Super Nintendo and play that competition card again, because I, I practiced so hard for this thing. And it was all about collecting as many bananas as you could in a limited amount of time. But I didn't realize that the stages were going to skip around. I practiced the first handful of stages. I think they said it was the first like five, six stages or whatever when I was asking about the rules. And so I practiced the heck out of those. And then they threw this curveballs. Wait, that wasn't that wasn't the next level in the game. I was I'm in no way prepared for this. And I was still I was still told that I made second place at my store, but it wasn't enough to move on to the competition. Oh, well, still awesome. I'm so glad I have this. 

So only got a couple of things left. First, I want to show off this awesome guy here. This, I believe came from when I was working at funcoland. This was a preorder bonus for Donkey Kong 64. Look at this giant shirt. You can see that it's a little worse for wear. It's because I wore the heck out of it. It's definitely not as white as it used to be. I don't know how well that's coming through on the video, but I mean, it's a giant Donkey Kong face and it's Donkey Kong 64 and it's pretty neat. It's kind of the similar situation on the back. You got Kong's face looking forward. He's back again because you know, I don't know, it made sense when they said he's back when Duck on Country first came out but they kept using that for these. Oh know I don't love Donkey Kong 64. I really wanted to but it's not my it's not my bag of tea is nobody really says. 

But what's more important is this guy right here, this was the preorder bonus for Donkey Kong country somewhere. I don't remember where I don't remember where my mom bought this game for me back in the old days. Look at this guy here. I love this shirt so much. All right. So I would just say I was obsessed with talking country would be a bit of an understatement. I played the game once a day, every day for like a year. Just at the very least, I'd turn it on, go to the mass screen and beat like one of the early stages just for a couple of minutes, just to be able to say I played Donkey Kong Country today because I was a nut, but I wasn't the only nut. My friend Adam also had this shirt. And now this isn't the exact one that I that I had because I don't remember where I got this. This is another it's the same shirt, but it's not literally the same shirt because my original one got worn to death like it was no longer a viable piece of clothing and any any stretch of the imagination. But my friend Adam and I wore these shirts to school every Friday because we were nerds. And every Friday without fail, the two of us would be wearing our green shirts. And I like this one so much better than the other one, too, because not only does have this, you know, the green going on in the background, but the back of it is actually the back of Donkey Kong. Look at that. So you got the space on the front, the back of that on the back. I love that. I love it. This is this man, man. When country first came out, that was such such a thing. And I love the most of the country games. I have a three I'm not nuts about. And you know, the longer story. 

All right, I got one more one more thing now. I guess, you know, we live in a world where something like this is not unheard of. But you know what? This was a Game Cube game, and that was a long time ago now. So maybe this is news to some people. This is one of the most interesting don't come games ever made. This is Donkey Kong jungle beat for the Nintendo game here. This is what the Mario Galaxy team did before they did Mario Galaxy. And this game is brilliant. It's it is a so the decay Bongo's. Let's take a look at what's what's going on inside here. In case you didn't know, during the Game Cube era, they released a pair of bongos for the Nintendo Game Cube, and they came with a game called Donkey Conga, which. Is hilarious, I mean, that's just a great name, so these are the Dick Bongo's they plug in because they are a game controller and you've got your start button on here. You have your left bongo, your right bongo, and then you have this microphone in the middle that registers clap or like I tend to do, you just hit the side. So it makes a similar sound because like, this is just, I don't know, was too much going on there. Donkey Kong was a rhythm game and it was a really stupid fun rhythm game. Like it wasn't the most amazing rhythm game you've ever played, but it was really it was really fun. There is just something intensely fun about having these silly little bongo drums that you just, you know, beat up and do your thing with. And then these lunatics made up platformer that controlled with the DK Bongo's. Now, this did get rereleased on the Wii with motion controls and it did not work anywhere near as well as this did. This is this game only works like this. It is very much designed for these bongo, these bongo controllers. And it's just nuts. It's such a weird and creative game. I there's there's just never really been anything like it. You get into fights like the boss fights. You'll do this to dodge and then Donkey Kong will be you start punching. So you have to do this to mimic his punches or during the stage you tap right to move right top left to move left, double jump the jump and then clap, clap, clap to grab bananas like you just grab this guy. I can't say enough good things about this. If you have a Game Cube or a Game Cube compatible, we and you can get your hands on a functioning set of bongos, which, you know, there's a bunch of them out there. They're kind of like Guitar Hero controllers. They were everywhere because Donkey Kong was a pretty decent sized success. Get this game, but don't play the Wii version. Play the Game Cube version. It's fantastic. 

You know, I thought I was done. But then talking about Donkey Kong, it just reminded me of a couple of the the strangest preorder bonuses and really memorable ones. I don't even remember these were their bonuses. But look at this. This is a Donkey Kong, a shot glass because they knew exactly who they were marketing Donkey Kong to like it's all public domain music and whatnot. But the the idea here was have a drink with your friends and play Donkey Kong. And they were really encouraging that without flat out saying so, like our Nintendo rep would come to the store and they gave us a handful of these shot glasses and be like, yeah, this is this is the environment that you should play Donkey Kong again, which I thought was really cool. 

But even weirder than this with Donkey Kong is this this is let me see if I can actually get it on screen here. This is a a stool. This is a like like a camping stool, a foldout stool that says Donkey Kong on it. And they gave a couple of these to each of our stores so we could set them up and people could sit down, put their their DK bongos on there. There goes my box, put their DK bongos on their lap and sit out here on our sales floor on these little camping chairs and play Donkey Kong, which was just completely nuts. But I loved it. This was such a weird time. This was such a strange thing because this was this was what Donkey Kong was on the Game Cube. Right. There wasn't the exception of Jungle Beat. There wasn't like a proper Donkey Kong came on the game. He was all Donkey Kong and there were two sequels to it. One of them didn't come out in America. I think the third one was Japan only. But yeah, Donkey Kong, that was a thing. Camping chairs shot glass. Absolutely bananas. 

So 40 years of Donkey Kong now, I have a lot of cool stuff, but I have nowhere near the definitive Donkey Kong collection, like not even close. I mean, this guy, he's got a heck of a history and I love most of it. I mean, there's a there's a lot of crazy stuff out there that's a, you know, of questionable quality like that, that animated series. Remember that thing? That was weird. Regardless. I love you. Love Donkey Kong. What is your favorite Donkey Kong? Let us know. Thank you so much for watching. 

If you enjoyed what you saw here today, please comment like subscribe do all that cool, fun YouTube stuff that the people that are a lot younger than me like to say. And like I said, let us know what your favorite games are. Let us know what you think of that weird CG animated cartoon or what you think of the old old, old, old, old, old old cartoon where Mario looked very different. Either way, tell us what you think about Donkey Kong. Thanks again for watching. On behalf of all of us here at Stone Age Gamer. Keep playing games.