Mario back to battle old primate nemesis

Mario’s new game has no multiplayer modes, no polished cinematics, no tangled wires and gadgets to connect it to other Game Boys and GameCubes. But this game does have a good dose of fun.

“Mario vs. Donkey Kong” is stripped down to the core: This is man vs. beast, with very little else going on. Love it or leave it. At the least, I think you’ll like it very much.

The plot is simple and played out in basic but effective still shots in the beginning. Donkey Kong burgles the Mario Toy Factory, stealing hordes of walking, talking mini-Marios. It’s your job to hop, climb and swing your way through six worlds – eight levels in each – in pursuit of the big gorilla. If you complete the quest, a second challenge unlocks so you can play the game again.

As Donkey Kong flees, he keeps dropping mini-Marios. You collect the little buggers through the first four levels of each world, leading them like lemmings to a big toy box. Be careful: You have to shepherd them safely, and they don’t always take the same path as you.

Once the little guys are recovered, D.K. battles you for them before you get to move on to the next world.

It seems more and more video games these days want to take over our lives, requiring hours of immersive game play. Those of us who have full days can pop in and out of this game in five minutes. The levels are short, though they get harder.

Creativity makes the game entertaining. Through his long game history, Mario has been all about hopping through side-scrolling worlds, bopping on the heads of little baddies. Yet Nintendo keeps coming up with new stuff to make Mario games worth buying.

Here, the surprisingly athletic blubber boy can do back flips and handstands, block falling bricks with his feet, swing on gymnastics bars to catapult to great heights, climb trees, leap from tree to tree and more.

The sound effects are classic Nintendo: tinkling music with a good beat and Mario saying little more than “Mama mia!” when he buys the farm. I wish the game play didn’t happen on such a tiny screen; other GameBoy titles have been fashioned to make things look bigger. But I didn’t have any real trouble seeing what was happening.

“Mario vs. Donkey Kong” is a simple little electronic world. And sometimes that’s all a gamer needs. self end