20 Nintendo Games You Must Play Before You Die
10. Donkey Kong (NES)
No Nintendo history lesson is complete without a namedropping Donkey Kong, the arcade smash that introduced the world to two of the most iconic video game characters ever conceived.
Both the eponymous ape and Mario (under the moniker of Jumpman) made their debuts when this coin-op hit took the world by storm in the early '80s.
Donkey Kong was one of the earliest examples of a game with a storyline that unfolds on screen, and it showed the world what Nintendo was about: barrels of fun. Guiding Mario up that scaffolding is no less engaging today than it was in 1981.
The platformer came along at a time when the Big N wasn't exclusively developing for its own-brand hardware, so it appeared on multiple formats following its arcade debut. The definitive version, however, was the NES port that arrived several years later.