Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong, often called Donkey Kong '94 to distinguish it, is a puzzle-platformer developed and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy in 1994. It opens as what looks like a faithful port of the original 1981 arcade game, four familiar screens of Mario climbing to rescue Pauline from a barrel-throwing ape, and then, after the player clears them, dramatically expands into something far larger: more than a hundred inventive puzzle-platforming stages spread across many worlds, in which Mario must reach a key, carry it to a locked door, and use an expanded acrobatic moveset of flips, handstands, and long jumps to navigate increasingly intricate rooms. It was among the first titles to support the Super Game Boy accessory, gaining color and a border when played on a Super Nintendo. Widely praised as one of the best games on the system, it is enormous and clever, the kind of deep, room-by-room challenge a player could live inside for a whole trip, with far more content than a Game Boy cartridge seemed able to hold. If a summer means one long game you slowly work your way through, patient screen by patient screen, this is exactly that game. It stands as one of the most inventive reworkings of an arcade classic Nintendo ever attempted.