A playthrough of Nintendo's 1985 edutainment game for the NES, Donkey Kong Jr. Math.

In this video I show all of the available modes:
Calculate A 0:32
Calculate B 2:52
+-x÷ Exercise 7:04

Following Atari’s greed driven imploding of the entire console market a few years prior, Nintendo of America sought to establish a presence by differentiating itself as much as possible from its forbearer. To make the NES seem less like a videogame system, accessories like R.O.B. and the NES Zapper were released to appeal to children’s interest in high-tech toys.

Furthermore, to convince parents that the new hardware was indeed a worthwhile investment, a lone title in the 18 game launch line-up bore the image of brilliant red graduation cap, signifying its membership in the "Educational Series." Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Nintendo’s token contribution to the cognitive development of young children, was widely considered the weakest of the NES’ first wave of games, epitomizing the somewhat myopic approach of Nintendo’s marketing machine during the early 1980s. Much like R.O.B., Donkey Kong Jr. Math was soon regarded as a misguided attempt to do something different, and the "series” never became a series at all, but an abandoned experiment to be relegated to the footnotes of Nintendo’s annals. And as a reviled cash grab when it was rereleased on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007.

It's also an unbelievably rare and expensive cart to get your hands on these days.

As a forerunner in the burgeoning “edutainment” field, Donkey Kong Jr. Math sat alongside notable quality PC software that emphasized learning while still providing an entertaining experience: the Stickeybear series, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and The Oregon Trail had all proven that the confluence of appealing characters, entertaining graphics, and implicitly meaningful learning moments could motivate kids to want to study. Donkey Kong Jr. Math, however, did not successfully recreate the experiences provided by these popular PC titles.

Upon booting, kids choose from three exciting modes available to engage and mold their young minds: Calculate A, Calculate B, and +-x÷ Exercise.

The names alone really get the heart pumping, don't they?

Calculate A requires Donkey Kong Jr. to use simple arithmetic to reach the number held up by his father at the top of the screen. Using the same control mechanics as Donkey Kong Jr., Junior must climb vines and hop small pitfalls while collecting the appropriate operands and operators to reach the target for the round, and they can be chained together if the answer requires more than a single operation to complete.

For example, if Donkey Kong holds up “+87,” Junior can correctly answer by stringing together 9 x 9 + 6, 9 x 8 + 6 + 9, or any other appropriate combination. Calculate B plays the same way, but is more difficult in that it introduces large and sometimes negative numbers as a target.

Both Calculate A and B can be played as competitive two player matches, with the first player taking control of Junior as the second player directs Junior’s hot-pink albino twin, the imaginatively dubbed Junior II. This mode of play pits the two brothers against one another in a race to solve given problems the fastest, with the winner of each round being awarded an apple, an apparent sign of validation and approval from “Papa." The first player to claim five apples wins the game.

Because there is no specific two-player game mode provided, the second player can join in at any time by picking up the second controller. The single-player method of dealing with Junior II, however, highlights one of the most significant flaws of the Calculate mode: due to the complete absence of any artificial intelligence routines in the game, Junior II will remain catatonic in the corner for the entire duration of the game. Though the questions aren’t particularly compelling game content, friendly competition does provide some motivation to play; without this sense of competition, Calculate becomes a cumbersome fill-in-the-blank worksheet-like exercise that demands far more time and effort than the purple mimeographed exercise sheets students in the 1980s were subjected to.

+-x÷ Exercise provides actual worksheets to players looking to improve their skills through practice. However, Junior is required not only provide the answers to the questions, but also to show his work! While reinforcing the process of finding the answer is useful, the inability to show carried numbers negates a large part of its intended purpose.

Donkey Kong Jr. Math would've probably encouraged some kids that hated flash cards to learn their arithmetic, but considering the difference in price between an NES cart and a pack of index cards, the game doesn't really do a whole lot to justify its existence.

I mean, Donkey Kong and Jr. were cool, but not *that* cool.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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