Donkey Kong Unblocked

Play Donkey Kong free online — no download, no install, playable on any Chromebook or school laptop.

Genre: Arcade Platformer
Release: 1981
Platforms: Game Boy Advance (Classic NES Series, emulated in browser)

Instructions

Run with the left and right arrow keys, climb ladders with up and down, and jump with Z. That is the entire control scheme, which is part of why the game has aged so well - there is nothing to learn beyond the timing.

Jump barrels at the last possible moment. Jumping early is the most common mistake: the barrel keeps rolling while you are in the air and catches you on the way down. Wait until it is almost on you, then jump. You can also jump over a barrel as it rolls down a ladder you are climbing past, which is worth points but is far riskier than simply avoiding it.

Grab the hammer when a screen gets crowded, but watch the clock. The hammer smashes barrels and fireballs for big points, and while you hold it you cannot climb ladders or jump - so taking it at the wrong moment traps you on a girder until it runs out. The bonus timer at the top drains steadily and is your real opponent on later boards.

Controls

Arrow keys — run and climb ladders
Z — jump
Enter — START - begin the game and pause
V — SELECT - choose one or two players

Tips to Master Donkey Kong

The arcade original had four stages: the sloped girders, the cement factory with its conveyor belts and pie trays, the elevators, and the rivets. The NES port - which is what this Classic NES Series cartridge reproduces - dropped the cement factory entirely, most likely to fit the game into the cartridge memory available in 1983. Players who grew up with the console version and later found the arcade one are usually surprised to discover a whole stage they had never seen. The three remaining boards then repeat at increasing speed rather than cycling through four.

Mario before he was Mario

The character you control was originally called Jumpman, and the plot placed him as the owner of an ape who had escaped with his girlfriend Pauline. He picked up the name Mario later, and Pauline was largely replaced by Princess Peach as the series moved on - though she returned decades afterwards in Donkey Kong games and in Super Mario Odyssey. Donkey Kong himself went from villain to hero over the same period, which makes this one of the few games where you can watch an entire franchise's cast being invented in real time.

Why it still holds up

Donkey Kong is short, has no story to sit through and no systems to learn, and every failure is instantly legible - you jumped too early, or you climbed into a fireball. That combination is rare and is why the game survives as something people actually play rather than merely respect. The scoring is deep enough to sustain competitive play, and the world-record chase around it has been documented in films and is still contested by a small group of players today.

The kill screen

The arcade version famously breaks at level 22 - a counter overflow gives the player far too little bonus time to finish the board, killing them regardless of skill and capping the maximum achievable score. It is one of the most-discussed bugs in gaming, partly because it put a hard ceiling on a world record that would otherwise be open-ended. Console ports behave differently, so this version is not the one to hunt that particular ceiling on.

Donkey Kong Unblocked

Players Also Enjoy

More Free Unblocked Games