Welcome back to another exciting chapter of
TidusRenewed.
Taking a look into the origins of video game genres.
Time to contrast and compare Donkey Kong and Pong.
Donkey Kong involves Jumpman(Mario) dodging the falling barrels thrown by the insidious Donkey Kong.
So as the above picture illustrates, the objective is to get out of the path of the barrel. A few observations: this diagram looks a lot like a game of Pong. This model of avoiding the round objects reminds me of side-scrolling shoot-em ups like Gradius, Space Invaders or Galaxian.
Yes, so I suggest that Donkey Kong is like inverse pong.
Pong is based, or Pong is inspired by Table Tennis.
The objective is to block the ball sending it back to whence it came hopefully to bypass the opponent's defences.
Here we can see that unlike Donkey Kong, the objective is to get into the path of the ball. The way in which this happens, the defence, also serves as the attack. That is, if the ball is blocked it will inevitably head back at the opponent.
Is Pong then, the same genre as Mario and Donkey Kong? Is it also the same genre as Galaxian, Space Invaders and Gradius?
Probably not. But blocking the path of these round objects, or getting out of the way seems to be the cornerstone for a large family of video games.
