Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong is Coleco's 1982 Atari 2600 conversion of Nintendo's arcade game. The cartridge was distributed as a Coleco release in North America and under the CBS Electronics label in other markets; its Atari 2600 program is credited to Garry Kitchen of Imaginative Systems Software.

Mario sets out to rescue his girlfriend from Donkey Kong using the Atari joystick. Left and right make him run, while up and down climb intact ladders; the red button starts a screen and makes him jump. The button is also used to take a hammer, briefly letting Mario smash hazards, although he cannot climb while carrying it.

The game alternates between two single-screen challenges. On the ramp screen, Mario climbs toward the captive while dodging barrels and fireballs; reaching the top carries the remaining bonus forward and leads to the rivet screen. There, he removes every rivet by running or jumping over it while fireballs pursue him, then the pair of screens repeats at a higher difficulty.

Each game begins with three Marios, and a life is lost to a hazard or when the 5,000-point bonus counter reaches zero. The manual awards 100 points for jumping a barrel or fireball and for removing a rivet, and 800 points for smashing a barrel or fireball. Any bonus left when a screen is cleared is added to the score.

Unlike the 1981 arcade game, which has four different stages, this version includes only the barrel-ramp and rivet screens. The cement-factory conveyor-belt stage and the elevator stage are absent, so its repeated two-screen cycle is a compact adaptation rather than a full arcade reproduction.