January 18, 2012 scottcjones 3Comments

[If you’re new here, 1. welcome, friend; 2. get yourself up to speed by going back to Day 1 where I explain why I’m playing 101 levels of Donkey Kong in 101 days. You good? OK. Let’s move on.]

The plane finally reached the gate in Syracuse at around 2:30 in the morning. After the majesty of the United terminal at O’Hare in Chicago–the soaring glass and steel ceilings, the bona fide brontosaurus skeleton, the Coach leather goods store which sold handbags which cost as much as a used Honda–it was difficult to reconcile where I’d been two hours earlier with the threadbare carpeting and boiled-hot dog smell of where I was now: Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, New York. And I wasn’t the only one having trouble with this transition. Everyone exiting the plane appeared to be frowning at the low ceilings and malnourished ferns.

Instead of waking my parents in the middle of the night and asking them to make the hour-long drive to fetch me, I’d decided to take a hotel room near the airport and call them in the morning. For years, whenever I would fly into Syracuse to visit my family, I would always pass by a kind of electronic bulletin board advertising all the local hotels. In the center of the bulletin board was a mysterious-looking and quite possibly magic telephone.

I had always wanted to pick up the phone for some inexplicable reason. But, before I could use the phone and satisfy that long-suppressed desire, I needed to select a hotel. Would it be the Candlewood Suites which featured 124 spacious rooms, each equipped with a DVD player? (No.) The Red Roof Inn which, from the glowing photo on the bulletin board, looked like a community college dorm room from the ’80’s? (No again.) Or would it be the Super 8 Motel which, according to the advertisement, offered “free local calls”? (Who am I going to call anyway?)

I finally settled on the Holiday Inn Express, not because of the gratis Internet or the continental breakfast served in the lobby (translation: free juice and toast), but because the room in the ad looked clean, and simple, and featured the least amount of bullsh*t of any of the ads. In fact, why hotels don’t use the words “clean,” “simple,” and “no bullsh*t” in their advertising is beyond me, because those hotels would be my hotels of choice every time. All I really wanted was to sleep somewhere for four or five hours in a relatively clean bed, take a shower in the morning, and not get infested with bedbugs. Was that too much to ask?

The moment I had been waiting for all these years had finally arrived: it was time for me to pick up the magic phone and speak into it. The receiver was heavier than I expected it to be. I held it to my ear, then punched in the two digits for the Holiday Inn Express. A woman answered on the other end. She sounded like she’d been asleep. “Oh, we have rooms alright,” she said in a kind of flighty way that made me think that there was a good chance that I might be their only guest for the night.

Now, let’s talk Donkey Kong, shall we? Five, maybe six prehistoric-looking ladybugs are crawling–no, swarming–over the three tiers of level 2-6 at very high speeds. Nothing I’ve seen in the game so far–no, not even the projectiles from the piranha plants–has moved as quickly as these things move. There are two pull-the-lever switches in the  level: one located on the bottom tier, and one on the middle tier. And there are a couple of spring-type launching pads for Mario to bounce on. As for dangers: in addition to the ladybugs, there are spikes on the ceilings. Even the smallest jump in the more narrow passageways of the level will result in a triangular spike to Mario’s head and a do-over.

Let’s begin.

I head directly for the lever on the bottom tier of the level and give it a pull. Two things happen when I do this.

1. A barrier, which was preventing me from reaching the lever two in the middle tier, retracts like one of those steel gates in a shopping mall.

2. A series of bridges extend between the floating platforms in the middle tier, transforming it into one long platform.

With the barrier retracted, what happens is some ladybugs become stranded in the top tier–the barrier had been connecting the middle tier of the level with the top tier–while others are stranded in the middle. I work the lever a few more times, trying to corral the ladybugs into a pattern that will make my ascent easiest on me. Pull. Pull. Pull. Pull.

There. Once I’m vaguely satisfied with the results, I head up to the middle tier, and work the lever on the far side of the now-retracted barrier. This lever does the exact same thing, retracting and extending the bridges and the barrier. Again, I work it a few times in the name of manipulating the population of ladybugs. Pull. Pull. Pull. Pull. Again, once I’m vaguely satisfied with the results, it’s time to make my run at the key and the door.

Aside from a tricky jump that I have to attempt a few times from one of the platform springs, the rest of the level plays out so smoothly and the whole thing is over so quickly that I am kind of stunned. I lose exactly zero Marios, something that hasn’t happened since the Big City levels. The only real surprise that this level offers is when I mistime a jump over one of the ladybugs. Instead of dying, as I was certain I would, the ladybug nudges Mario backwards, spinning her legs underneath her. The ladybugs, I learn, do not harm Mario. Instead, they simply make it difficult for him to pass through the level’s narrowest areas, since Mario can’t jump over them (re: spikes).

Also: the ladybugs are fully ridable. Riding an enemy, one would think, would be far more devastating to the enemy than simply outright defeating it. Why? Because once the level is over, once the game is powered down, that enemy will have to go through the rest of its life, waking up each morning and looking at its face in the mirror knowing that Mario once used its head as a mode of transportation.

You try to live with that sh*t.

3 thoughts on “Man Vs. Donkey Kong: Day 18

  1. That’s like those thugs in Arkham City who menacingly growl, “I’m not gonna be the one who lets Batman get away!” Only to be Silently Takedown-ed the next second.

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