Donkey Kong Circus

Donkey Kong Circus is a Game & Watch title released as part of the Panorama Screen series on September 6, 1984. It is a remake of the second Mickey Mouse Game & Watch game, which was released worldwide seven months earlier. The two games' codes even seem to have gotten mixed up, with Mickey Mouse being model "DC-95" and Donkey Kong Circus being "MK-96." Neither the Panorama Screen Mickey Mouse nor Donkey Kong Circus was released in Japan.

The alarm indicator of this game is a bell that is located under the time/score, and the bell swings when the alarm goes off.

Gameplay

Gameplay of Donkey Kong Circus

In this game, Donkey Kong balances on a barrel while juggling pineapples and avoiding the fireballs falling from the drums. Mario watches his performance. Donkey Kong receives a point every time he catches a pineapple. If Donkey Kong loses a pineapple, Mario will laugh at him, resulting in a miss. If Donkey Kong manages to grasp a fireball, he will flail, which also counts as a miss. If Donkey Kong reaches 300 points without any misses, the points will be worth double until he does get a miss. If he has any misses at said score, every miss will be cleared instead. When he gets three misses, the player gets a Game Over.

Gallery

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  Box art for Donkey Kong Circus

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  Donkey Kong artwork

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  Mario sprite

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  Donkey Kong sprite

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  Pineapple sprite

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  Display when the game is reset

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  The alarm bell

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Japanese	ドンキーコング サーカス Donkī Kongu Sākasu	Donkey Kong Circus

Trivia

The game start jingle

The excerpt of "Pop Goes the Weasel" on which the jingle is based

The jingle, slowed down and pitch-shifted to match the song's tempo and pitch, combined with the song itself

• Donkey Kong Circus used a slightly faster rearrangement of the first six seconds of "Pop Goes the Weasel" for the game start jingle.
• While this originally had a Disney license that was dropped in favor of Nintendo characters, the previous Game & Watch game featuring Mickey Mouse was an alternate version of Egg released simultaneously in certain countries.
• This is one of the few Game & Watch units to feature full color. This was actually due to Gunpei Yokoi's idea to move the background around the characters, rather than the other way around.