The Essential 100, No. 36: Donkey Kong

"It's easy to define the original Donkey Kong as essential for its part in birthing the character who would eventually evolve into Mario, but for me, the arcade game created something much grander. Donkey Kong is the Big Bang that acted as a catalyst to my favorite genre of gaming -- the platformer. I adore games that give me a well-developed environment to explore using an avatar's physical prowess. No video game challenge entices me more than using twitch reactions to hop over pits, duck under fireballs, and bop enemies on top of their heads. If you litter a world with shiny collectables, you can bet damn sure that I'm going to find them all. It's this mix of discovery and challenge that make platformers so desirable to me, and without 1982's Donkey Kong, none of that would be possible.", writes 1UP.