Highly recommended, especially the Puzzle Palace mode. It ditches the platforming for a smooth, creamy mixture of Lemmings, Tetris, and Pipe Dream.

I think the series lost a lot of people as it leaned ever more heavily on the Minis, but there is one game that is unequivocally worth checking out-Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move, which came out on the 3DS eShop in 2013. In MvDK, if you wanted to get a 3-star grade on a level, you had to collect the blue, yellow, and red bubbles and complete the stage by a certain time, and in games where I’m graded on a level-by-level basis, it’s very difficult for me to move on from a level having not aced it, so the momentum that builds when you just run level to level gets lost. You didn’t HAVE to get the parasol, hat, and purse to earn three stars or an S grade or whatever the only competitive element was against yourself, to finish levels faster or self-impose arbitrary challenges. Donkey Kong was a failure largely because they made the trinket collection compulsory. Sad that Taisuke Araki didn’t do much VGM work, he had real chops. Say what you want about the “relative capabilities” of the Game Boy, but “Showdown at the Tower” is metal as fuck, better than the final boss theme even. I’ll have one good afternoon with this probably.” And then of course, the famous misdirect, and I was all in. I got Donkey Kong for Christmas from my grandparents and was like, “Great, cool.

But for some reason, I was allowed to own a Game Boy. I had obsession and rage issues with video games as a kid that my parents didn’t like, so after a couple of botched runs with the NES and the Genesis, they didn’t let me own consoles. Donkey Kong ’94 is one of my all-time favorites, top five for sure, and I was absolutely floored when it made the VGA list.

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