Mario vs Donkey Kong Review – Captain Mario, Toy Tracker

While Mario would go on to make its name and define the industry in its image via a series of historic platformer titles that forever changed the direction of video games as a medium, both Donkey Kong got its start in a game that was decidedly different from those defining games. The original Donkey Kong arcade game, while introducing a lot of motifs and elements that would become mainstays of either franchise, was a very different game than Mario or Donkey Kong platformers.

In that game – which is one of the biggest and most successful arcade games of all time, Nintendo’s first big hit, and the first appearance of Mario (then called Jump Man) and Donkey Kong alike, you’re not going through a series of horizontally side scrolling themed obstacle course levels. Rather, while the game is still a platform, the entire game takes place on a construction site, where playing as Mario, you avoid obstacles thrown your way by Donkey Kong and solve puzzles about how to get to the top using limited mobility and environmental power ups.

Why, exactly, have I spent so long talking about the original Donkey Kong game in a review for Mario vs Donkey Kong? Well, the original Mario vs Donkey Kong game, when it hit the Game Boy Advance almost two decades ago, was meant to be a spiritual successor to the arcade Donkey Kong game (and its excellent 1994 Game Boy exclusive follow up). While the premise, aesthetics, and character designs are all wildly different, the style of gameplay is very similar to that older arcade game and its Game Boy follow up – just greatly expanded.

In Mario vs Donkey Kong, you are still playing as Mario, going up against Donkey Kong (this may have come as a surprise to you, I don’t blame you). Donkey Kong is on the run from Mario again – this time he hasn’t kidnapped Pauline, but rather he has stolen a whole lot of Mario-themed mini toys from a toy factory, and Mario is trying to recover them. That’s it, that’s the premise. It’s the simplest possible premise to justify the actual game – which, yup, sees you traversing and negotiating levels with limited mobility and environmental power ups to try and make your way to the objective.

"As the mechanics and gimmicks start to stack and layer up, the levels can get legitimately devilishly difficult and challenging."

The actual level design is the star of the show here. It starts out extremely simple, slowly adding one mechanic per level, first demonstrating to the plater what they can expect from each mechanic before twisting and subverting it by applying it in unexpected ways, often in combination with some other mechanic that you may not have expected would go together. As the mechanics and gimmicks start to stack and layer up, the levels can get legitimately devilishly difficult and challenging, at least in the very last worlds.

Overall, Mario vs Donkey Kong is still a relatively simple and straightforward game, because it is targetting younger audiences, but it does amp up the difficulty to a satisfactory level the more you play, and also poses some legitimately and genuinely stumping challenges via optional collectibles. The best point of comparison for this game would be Captain Toad Treasure Tracker – like that game, the puzzle is traversing the levels with limited movement and having to rely on what you can find in the environment, and like that game, this one takes a simple premise and then goes nuts with it.

While the base game itself remains largely simple, if it does get too challenging, you can always switch to a brand new Casual Mode, that makes things simpler still by removing the time limit, and allowing Mario to take more hits per level before he is sent back to the start. It’s a great compromise to allow players who may have figured out what to do, but may be struggling with actually doing it, an option to stile able to complete the game and get past whatever level is challenging them.

Regardless of your experience or skill level, Mario vs Donkey Kong will probably not take you a lot of time to complete. In what is one more point of comparison with Captain Toad, this is a fairly quick game, and I expect most players to be able to clock in at under ten hours by the time they close the book on it. The game does have over a hundred levels, but they are all bite sized, and can’t take you more than a few minutes to finish each (barring a few exceptions in later levels, but they won’t be padding up that play time count much either).

There are some more elaborate levels in the newly added worlds, and I did enjoy them, though I personally felt the quick and snappy taut pacing of the original levels was lost in these ones. You also get harder variants of each world once you complete the boss fight, which, along with the general score attack nature of the game, does incentivize sticking around for more than just the critical path. The game’s great format lends itself well to a great fusion of arcade and handheld game design sensibilities, with a lot of replayability paired with a quick pick up and play nature letting the game get deceptively addictive at times.

"The game’s great format lends itself well to a great fusion of arcade and handheld game design sensibilities, with a lot of replayability paired with a quick pick up and play nature letting the game get deceptively addictive at times."

Also new to this version of the game is a co-op mode, where a Toad joins Mario. The levels themselves remain the same, but the only change made is that there are now two keys and each player must collect their own to be able to complete the level. It’s a great, fun way to allow for co-op for, I imagine, younger players who may want to play the game with their families. 

It’s also impressive how well the game has been upgraded visually. The original was, as mentioned, a Game Boy Advance game, and while it was a pretty good looking one, there’s a fair bit of difference between a GBA and a Nintendo Switch – to be clear, more than the difference between an SNES and an Xbox 360. So there was a lot of ground to cover, and while at no point in time will Mario vs Donkey Kong be considered a stunner on the Switch, or even a great looking game within the limited constraints of the platform, it is a nice and pleasant looking game that does not look out od place with the rest of the platform’s library.

Is all of this worth $50? The game is not full price, thankfully enough, because it’s a pretty straightforward translation of a quick, short, decades old handheld game. Nintendo has added stuff to the game, but ultimately this is the same title that kicked off a mini-series (heh) all that time ago. I think if you’re a fan of these sorts of puzzle games, or looking for something to play with your kids, Mario vs Donkey Kong is a great, fun game that I can see going down well.

If you are a fan of the original (or the arcade game, or the Game Boy game), then you will probably still enjoy this update to that title. But if you are coming into this for the first time, you might find yourself a bit underwhelmed – what’s here is great, but there isn’t enough of it, even with the additions. Unfortunately, we never quite got to see this style of design expanded and built on further, because while there were other Mario vs Donkey Kong games after this one, they went in a different direction with their design (opting for a Lemmings style instead). Hopefully this is successful enough that at some point Nintendo attempts a true follow up – for now, what we have here is a good game, and if you keep your expectations in check, good enough to check out.

This game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch.