This week’s Retro Spotlight on the forum is Nintendo’s arcade classic Donkey Kong, which is a fascinating game for all kinds of reasons. In the Eighties it was subject to all sorts of battles, as Universal unsuccessfully sued Nintendo over copyright infringement, while Atari and Coleco clashed over conversion rights. In the arcades the game has been the battlefield for vicious high score competitions, featuring stunning victories and astonishing allegations of cheating, and even inspired the documentary The King Of Kong. Donkey Kong himself went on to become a huge gaming star in his own right, appearing across a variety of platform games and a series of bongo-based music games for the GameCube. Oh, and then there’s the small matter of the little bloke you play as, some guy named Mario. We don’t quite know what happened to him later on. If you fancy chatting about the game, just click here to go straight to the thread.

Incidentally, one of our favourite versions of Donkey Kong is the excellent Game Boy game, which starts off like the arcade game before becoming an astonishing original puzzle platformer. And issue 196 of Retro Gamer is out today, with Nintendo’s green-screened masterpiece on the front cover. Pick that up in all good newsagents, or order it directly via My Favourite Magazines here.