Nintendo Donkey Kong Jr. Game & Watch

  It's been over thirty years since I got my hands on Nintendo's Donkey Kong Jr. from their Game & Watch series. As a small child I received one as a xmas gift from santa. I played this game constantly, always had it with me, and to this day, I'm still not sure how I lost it. I think it got misplaced when my family moved from our apartment to a town house in the same neighborhood. Really though it's a mystery, because in 1982 I was only about five years old. I could easily be remembering wrong. Anyway, enough about ancient history, let's get to the details.

Reset screen showing all possible LCD states.

  The Donkey Kong Jr. Game & Watch hit the US in 1982. It's is widely considered to be one of the best titles in the series. The unit is about four and a quarter inches long, has a dark green plastic back, white trim on the sides and a green metallic plate on the front side. The frame of the screen has the words DONKEY KONG JR. on the top and Nintendo on the bottom. The Game & Watch logo appears on the front left side and below that, a color image of Donkey Kong holding Jr on his shoulders. Jr has the key to Kong's cage in his hand.

  The back of the unit features the battery compartment, it uses two watch batteries, a metal kick stand, a serial number, a model number, and some other manufacturing information. The serial number for this particular unit is 15468549. It's model no. is DJ-101. This marks it is as being part of the New Wide Screen family of the Game & Watch series.

Back side of the unit.

  The game has ten buttons in total. On the far right side of the front, there are two buttons inset that require a pen or other such device to press them. ALARM sets the alarm clock, ACL resets the game and sets the time. Just left of those are three buttons, GAME A, GAME B, and TIME. Game a and b are difficulty settings, time shows what time the alarm is set to. Below these, there is a round JUMP button. On the left side of the front is a 4 button D pad for moving DK Jr. This is one of the earliest uses of the D pad in gaming history! Game & Watch predates the famicom and the nes by more than a year.

  Gameplay is very simple. DK Jr. must save his dad by making his way to the cage and unlocking it with the swinging key. This must be done four times. While maneuvering through the jungle he must avoids birds and snapjaw's or he loses a life, of which, he has three. Bonus points can be scored by dropping fruit, located on the upper level, on the bad guys. Every time you save DK, the game gets a little tougher.
  As far as retro handheld electronic games go, I can't recommend this one enough. Finding one in good shape can be difficult. Focus less on scratches to the casing and more on an undamaged screen, buttons that still have good play in them, and a clean battery compartment. Every collector should get this game. It's a true legend. Some games are older, some games are rarer, but few games are as much fun as the Donkey Kong Jr. Game & Watch.

Oculus Rift

  Over the past few days, the Oculus Rift VR system has gone from savior to demon, and all it took was for Facebook to acquire it. Full disclosure here, I am not a fan of Facebook and I've never hidden that fact. This post will obviously reinforce my personal bias.
  When I first heard about Oculus Rift I thought it was a great idea but destined to fail. I didn't see any point in helping fund the kickstarter, but I have kept an eye on the system's progress because it's something that truly interests me.
  I grew up in the 80's and 90's and virtual reality was always the distant dream of the future. We had movies about it, and there were even arcades that hosted early vr systems. They were kinda fun, but clunky, and they didn't take off the way anyone expected. But the hope and dream of a viable, home vr system, never left the thoughts of anyone who played games and grew up in that time.
  Oculus Rift brought that dream back to us, and offered it up as a reality. That's why this acquisition has caused such and uproar. The people freaking out, finally saw their childhood dreams starting to come true, and then that dream was sold for two billion dollars. Not only was is it sold, it was sold to Facebook.

 Even though Facebook is massive and used by people everywhere, it's a hated company. And for good reason. They rarely show respect for their user base, and their privacy models are joke. Facebook has been around for far less time and has somehow managed to be as distrusted and hated as Microsoft.
  The acquisition may have gone a bit smoother among the fans if it hadn't been sold to Facebook specifically. People simply do not trust them to take the system in the proper direction. The two billion will certainly help in the development but how the system will be used is now suspect. The possibilities for use in a social networking framework are endless and exciting, but not if it's tied to facebook.
 As stated earlier, I didn't fund the kickstarter, but I've always had an eye on Oculus. If it lived up to my expectations, I was planning on buying it. I've pretty much abandoned console gaming, but this would have brought me back. That is no longer a possibility, and unfortunately for Oculus Rift, I'm not alone in this position. Someone else, somewhere, will take this technology in the right direction, and they'll get our money. It's going to happen, if nothing else Oculus Rift has proven that people still want this.