Month of Mario: Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Switch)

When Mario and Donkey Kong first faced off in their debut 1981 arcade game, it left a cultural footprint that didn’t seem to waver even as more and more video games saw them both going on heroic adventures or even playing nice in sports and parties. Donkey Kong was the bad guy in that first game, so many with arcade era nostalgia still saw the big ape as one. In 1994 an expanded version of Donkey Kong reignited that rivalry, ten years later Nintendo threw them at each other once more in the Game Boy Advance title Mario vs. Donkey Kong, and 20 years after that, that GBA game would be remade for the Nintendo Switch. It seems the two heroes are always destined to come into conflict with each other due to that legacy, even ignoring things like Donkey Kong now being the descendant of the arcade game’s original antagonist just so he can carry on this feud that just won’t die.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong does initially feature a fairly mundane motivator for the two to be battling each other once more. Spotting a commercial on television, Donkey Kong can’t help but want the hot new Mini Mario toys the heroic plumber sells at the Mario Toy Company. Finding them entirely out of stock, DK goes directly to the factory instead and pilfers as many as he can carry, Mario taking after the big ape to take his tiny wind-up toys back. This isn’t just a little quibble over toy ownership though, the path to Donkey Kong includes a good deal of dangerous traps and surprisingly lethal toys the ape left behind to cover his trail and the two will even face off more directly in a few boss battles.

Most levels in Mario vs. Donkey Kong are about rescuing the toys that Donkey Kong has dropped while fleeing Mario, the Mini Marios ending up in quite a range of locations. From the toy company itself to jungles, volcanoes, and haunted houses, there a good degree of unique locations each with specific hazards that only appear there, although the game does stick mostly to a toy aesthetic. You’ll have to deal with something like the familiar crushing Thwomp blocks, but they have plastic rotating faces to indicate that Donkey Kong didn’t manage to recruit familiar enemies from Bowser’s army to his side. Mario vs. Donkey Kong does actually have an impressive quantity of stages, the final total nearly 140 once you include things like the boss stages and unlockable Expert levels, but the game does essentially have two campaigns to conquer with the Plus levels unlocked after the first ending keeping it from being too short and easy of an adventure.

Easiness is a bit of an issue all throughout Mario vs. Donkey Kong though. In the puzzle platformer levels, your main goal is usually going to be grabbing a key and getting it to a door or reaching a Mini Mario, the main adventure always splitting its normal levels in half so you do the key for one half and then grab the Mini Mario in the other. The key has to actually be carried to its destination, sometimes necessitating some work throughout the level to flip switches, beat baddies, or otherwise clear the way, especially since the key will return to its original position if left unattended for 12 straight seconds. Grabbing the Mini Mario is usually just a matter of reaching it though, although Plus levels do mix up things in an interesting way where instead the Mini Mario follows you and carries the key, making the second half of the adventure focused a lot more on figuring out a safe way to traverse a level and then executing it without the little toy ending up in trouble. Mario is a very capable protagonist though, partly because of his amazing jumping abilities and partly because this remake stripped out the fall damage that made some of the levels tougher in the original game.

Mario has two incredibly helpful jump types to supplement his standard leap, and with many Mario vs. Donkey Kong areas being a bit compact, extra height can really help with navigation. The simpler one is a backflip, something you can whip out in an instant in many cases, but the handstand jump is even better despite being slower. Mario’s handstand ability can be used to protect him from falling debris, this very helpful in some specific boss fights as well as safely traveling through areas overseen by a foe like the Brickman who rains bricks down from above. Jump twice in place with the handstand jump though and you can sometimes leap higher and skip a bit of platforming or speed up movement to rob a puzzling layout of some of its punch. Levels are timed and your performance is only judged based on whether you managed to scoop up the extra bonus presents in a level, and the handstand jump can sometimes even remove the miniature navigation trials that the presents are meant to provide.

Mario’s jumping isn’t the only thing being tested though, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong manages to avoid being all too easy by its new areas bringing with them new mechanics. Switches that alternate which colored blocks and platforms are active are the biggest benefit to the game’s design, a good deal of stages about figuring out the sequence to activate them so you can move yourself or vital items throughout the level. Sometimes you need to use an enemy to your advantage like standing on toy Shy Guys and riding them across spikes or you’ll need to grab the explosive Bob-ombs to blast a path forward.  Navigating alternating lasers, avoiding birds that drop eggs from above, and other little dangers introduce hazards that are less about figuring things out and more about surviving as you move, and there are definitely a few puzzles involving things like conveyor belts where timing is crucial and you can cut it pretty close meaning reflexes are necessary on top of good logic. Casual mode has been added to this remake to ease up on some requirements like letting you spend more time apart from keys and checkpoints are added despite the small level size, and a new two-player option can let a buddy join you despite the fact most levels are often more about figuring out how to do things rather than the execution element. It does feel like the game waits quite a while to up the difficulty, the Plus and Expert stages feeling like the game starting to really push back against you after a fairly breezy main adventure. Mario vs. Donkey Kong’s Switch remake does at least introduce two new worlds, and while one’s gimmicks of slippery ice isn’t too inspired, Merry Mini-Land’s flower fans that can blow objects around in helpful ways do introduce a nice bit of more complicated reasoning puzzles near the adventure’s midpoint.

There are two other level types that crop up near the end of each world, the first being an earlier version of the Mini Mario levels where a whole group will follow you and you need to guide them about to collect letters and reach a toy box. An injection of a new objective does make finishing a world often a touch more interesting than going through its normal stages, and after you’ve put those Mini Marios back in the box, you can take Donkey Kong on in a thematic boss battle tied to the world’s theme. You’ll find yourself facing DK in boss arenas where he’s usually utilizing some gizmo to attack you from afar, the player needing to figure out how to hit him on his perch, this usually involving throwing some object to hit him. Boss battles can be a bit slow, almost all a waiting game in some form as often you turn DK’s attacks back on him, and if you’re trying to get the Perfect stars to unlock expert levels you can’t even afford a single hit. The stakes can help counterbalance some of their simplicity, but the frequent waiting can make them less exciting. The game does offer Time Attack options for stages to try and motivate you to complete them quickly, an unexceptional way to try and add more content, but it doesn’t feel that sparse without this extra layer if you do care for going for Perfect stars. The Perfect stars definitely add extra life to some levels, but it doesn’t feel like it’s necessarily adding depth to them save for when presents really do start asking you to plan out your actions more rather than usually being able to let the level’s design perhaps too clearly indicate the expected path just by what is actually available on hand.

THE VERDICT: It’s not the amount of things to do in Mario vs. Donkey Kong that make it feel a touch underwhelming, it’s that it doesn’t always muster up the strongest level designs. A good deal of the adventure is spent on stages that don’t demand enough thinking to overcome and any peril present isn’t really injecting much action outside of the direct danger of boss fights. Thankfully, the plainer puzzles are often quick enough to complete, meaning you can breeze on through until the ones that start to get the gears in your head turning. Some additions to this remake like Merry Mini-Land keep interest alive until you can get to the stronger challenges, but it still never concocts stages that will wow you with their creativity.

And so, I give Mario vs. Donkey Kong for Nintendo Switch…

An OKAY rating. I was rather surprised finding as I got deeper and deeper into this remake that it didn’t seem to live up to the nostalgic memories I had of the GBA original, but as I emphasized at the start, that game was twenty years ago. In fact, Mario vs. Donkey Kong on Game Boy Advance might have been my first full-on puzzle platformer, so while I remembered it being a great gem of the system’s library, what I might have been doing is carrying on my love for a genre by elevating what helped me discover it. In fact, Mario vs. Donkey Kong on Switch might still be great for younger players who are just taking their first jump into platformers that are more about figuring out a level’s layout and how its variables relate to each other rather than the worries of reflexes and avoiding injury. It has dashes of that still, especially in the battles with DK, but a good deal of Mario vs. Donkey Kong feels like it is easing in younger players but it doesn’t quite scale up enough to work you towards more difficult and satisfying level designs. Expert levels do pack more of a punch and the Plus levels do a good deal in featuring at least a small elevation in what is expected of the player’s ability to reason out how to navigate a level and executing on the plan. The game simply doesn’t do it often enough thanks to stages often being too clear in their purpose. A level that makes you stop and ponder what to do is not nearly as common as one where you can start moving immediately and often make your way to the end with all the presents without issue, the strong jumping abilities kind of a mixed blessing since it does help clear simpler stages faster while also making some of them as easy as they are.

Usually I can anticipate when a game I’ve played will end up not being as good as my nostalgic memories, but the Switch remake doesn’t alter too much from the GBA original that should impact my opinion and still it surprised me with being a simply okay game. Its brisk pace and level sizes mean even easy levels aren’t going to drag things down and there is enough novelty in the new mechanics introduced throughout even if the puzzle complexity doesn’t feel too strong. I do hope this game may find some young gamer out there who doesn’t yet realize their love for puzzle platformers, it a solid way to ease into the genre, and Mario is generally good at leading players into new territory with accessible and enjoyable design. However, this rematch with Donkey Kong doesn’t offer quite as much for people who are already fairly good at problem solving and spatial reasoning in their video games.