Urbanmusiq is an 80's baby.. XD

Gosh now that I am in my 30's I guess I should be feeling my age. I do miss the 80's. Things have changed so much since those simple days. Thanks to video game companies many of my favorite playmates as a child are still alive and well. Since Mario has been everywhere since before Christmas I have been considering ordering up some fan art of him. Urbanmusiq was itching to do this for some time. (No doubt Ink-B's Mario had some influence.) So I suggested doing the original Nintendo crew of heroes, in a specific pose and let Uranmusiq get to work...that was yesterday!!! XD This kid shoots out fantastic art faster then Namco produced Pac-Man Machines!

With a nostalgic tear running down my cheek, I humbly present Urbanmusiqs Donkey Kong age Mairo and friends:




Mario has never looked so heart warming and sexy. The boy glows off the page and right into the center of your heart. This is how Mario should have looked in his prime. A cute muscular young man, able jump over barrels and climb hundreds of meters high into the sky after his beloved Pauline. ^o^ What a charmer he is, he has a total early 80's pinup feel to him.

Mario is a very sacred character to me. He is attached to so many childhood memories and I am not too found of the Mario porn we see all over the net. There are very few people I would entrust with making Mario sexy and Urbanmusiq is at the top of that list. Urban captured a side of Mario that is so young and virile. Oh how I dig those shoulders, they look like they could break into a Micheal Jackson dance routine any second. Pauline would so faint if he did! Mmmmm MMMMMMMMMMMMM how hot is it that neck line of his shirt, so low revealing the top of his perfect chest? I just love that handsome face covered in blush and completed with a big strong chin! XD Hee hee. I got the Donkey Kong board game when I was really small. Urbans Mario with his detailed coloring and milky skin actually reminds me a lot of the playing pieces and box art. The game art was very detailed and well shaded. I still own a copy of it. A Mario for the ages. We went all out and went with the tradition black hammer instead of the brown mallet used in later art works.


Pauline is very succulent beauty! Her expression filled cartoony eyes are such a wonderful bright blue that they light up the picture. ;) He gave her some nice bouncy barrels! XD hee hee. She's a curvy sexy match for Urbanmusiqs Mario. He did the video game worlds first D.I.D. justice. (That's damsel in distress.) Seeing her here, elegantly poised, makes me long for her to become more a part of the series once again.

And of course I had to request my favorite Nintendo character as a young kid here as well. The often neglected, eternally cute Donkey Kong Junior. Urban got him as perfectly adorable as any official art. He's so chubby and cuddly! I read somewhere that there was a manga featuring Pauline and Donkey Kong Jr working in a circus. I always kinda felt the two of them would have a bond and maybe even a long time friendship. I can see Pauline taking care of Jr like the mother he never had.




The first sketch was already making me squeal! My heart started to race when I looked at it. Thanks Leon!!! You made this a Canada day to remember!!!!!!



The First Nintendo Game I Ever Owned.




Urbanmusiq Really got me in an 80's mood. Strangely enough I heard this song for the first time today while driving to work. :O







Here is something I wrote regarding my feelings of Donkey Kong Jr the NES game when I was in college. ;) LOL I should have fixed it up. I submitted to a web site years later when JR was going to come out on the Gameboy E-Card Reader. I don't expect you guys to read this. XD


How do you rate a classic game? How does anyone really inside, or outside the industry , come up with a rating for a game character that has touched the lives of so many children and adults over more then two decades? . So in order to do a proper review, let me share with you, my tale....

Donkey Kong Jr introduced me to the world of Nintendo. Oh I knew of Donkey Kong, but doubt I had played it before that Christmas of 83, or was it 84? Ah, never mind. The game was Donkey Kong II Game and Watch. My sister of 17 gave it to me. She had saved for weeks. I was never so delighted in my life. To an outsider it was two simple screens. In the mind of a child, it was an entire clock work world, living, breathing, beautiful to behold and easy to be engrossed in. The box art filled my fantasy's with images of floating platforms up high in the sky. A place where Nitpickers swooped and Snap Jaws looked hungrily for their next meal. It was from then on that JR was right up there with Pac-Man as one of my all time favorites. But good things are often lost with time. It may have only been a little over a year, before JR vanished in his Game and Watch form from me for sometime.

JR's games, unless one had a computer, were indeed hard to come by in any decent shape. (My parents were not to happy with me hanging in arcades and I do believe I only once got a chance play DK JR in an actual arcade.) Luckily friends of mine did have computers. The first true home arcade conversion I played was actually not on a disk, or cart, but on a tape! It was great, but I really only got to play it a couple times and so I longed for a copy of my own.

It wasn't until the advent of Nintendo that I was able to get my hands on a copy. It came about when my complete deck malfunctioned and had to replace it. Ah, I remember it well; I had the choice of the same deck, or the one with Super Mario Bros and one other game. And I have to admit (even when I saw the equally popular Popeye cart on the same shelf,) it wasn't a tough choice. All that was needed for me, was to see JR's plucky face as he reached for a fruit on the box's cover.

Donkey Kong JR takes the 'King Kong theme' of Donkey Kong to the same levels the film 's squeal did. This is the story of poor misunderstood youngster who only wants to do good. Unfortunately human forces (i.e. Mario) belay him that right. Also in keeping with the traditions of the movie, the settings have changed from the big city climax, to the dense jungle. (Was Mario only trying to return DK to his home? We may never know.) In the movie Dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts are used. In the game Mario gains the help of Snap Jaws, T-Rex, or Alligator like living bear traps with the ability to climb and an appetite for young monkeys. (These creatures, I assume later became the model for Kremlings in the 'Country' games on Super Nintendo.) These like the later Koopa Troopas came in two color types that dictated their personality. The red, like the red Troopas travel calmly back, forth, up and down vines and platforms in constant search of Donkey Kong JR. The Blue being the more suicidal of the two, had no problem going in one set direction, even if it meant falling from a vine to capture a meal below. Mario seemed to keep an endless supply of these, where reds could, at first be taken out of the level for good with a well dropped fruit.

Instead of pterodactyls we find two different kinds of Nitpickers. Big nasty Crow like fat ones guard DK's main cage along with many Snap Jaws. The second variety are thin egg laying chicken like ones who hinder JR in his most vertically challenged stage. The egg dropping ability was pretty much a first in games and is another ability that was carried on by a famous Super Mario enemy, Lakitu. Another character who would later appear in many games was also introduced here, the common platform circling spark.

The game play is very different from Donkey Kong, but it should be expected since the characters of Mario and JR and so drastically different. And from this game spawned many elements that were later used in the Super Mario bros series of games. Introduced was the ability to climb vines, jump on spring boards and throw projectiles (albeit only vertically down in this game.) The now common floating Island/Tree platforms were also first seen here. These became a staple of many side scrollers even to this day. The final first, my be the less obvious, but Keys were first used here, in the world of Nintendo anyway.

In JR the player had to learn to watch the enemy characters and learn when the best time to attack was. Like who to leave alone and when and when not to jump into the action. JR took the game play in Donkey Kong to the next level. You could choose the speed JR climbed and descended down a vine. For the early 80's this was a very big deal. Even in today's games alternate means of transport along harsh terrain are always welcome. Interestingly enough Snap Jaws are also effect by this. This keeps the game play fair and adds an element or physics to the game.

As the game went on the enemies got faster, smarter and more plentiful. After awhile the Red Snap Jaws, which you though you could get rid of for good would come back in full force from Mario's stash. And once back the player might find themselves dealing with enemies in places they had never, nor would not want to.

Music in the game is extremely catchy, just as it was in Donkey Kong. From the classical music intro, to the 'panic' like music during the games climax stage, it's all catchy and fits very well.

Like so many of the early Arcade games finishing the story didn't have to be your only objective, it was seeing how many neat things would happen as you passed each loop too! Alas like so many of Nintendo's first games to hit the system, cart memory space was indeed limited. Gone were the cut scenes, the two Mario's (Luigi?) hauling away DK and the introduction to the story. Gone was the chase scene where JR clung to a magic Umbrella as he followed Mario to his hideout. And gone was DK kicking Mario away in the ending, when the one in red and blue just won't give up. I always wondered why in 1987, they didn't upgrade the American versions. I guess video game companies have always been a little lazy, eh?

No matter. The game, graphics and sounds were otherwise of Arcade quality and if you didn't know what was missing, you never would have thought any less of the game anyway. This year JR's NES conversion will once again grace the video game screen in yet another medium. I don't find it surprising at all the he was one of the first chosen to have his NES game converted to the GBA via game cards.

JR is too me as much a favorite Nintendo game as Mario 3, or any of the like. He introduced me to world that has grown much larger and more and more interesting over the long years. His sweet innocent presence in this game and all the ones there after has always filled me joy. Nintendo, thank you for the memories and never forget, it all started with an Ape and a Plumber....


Ice Cream Trucks here in Toronto used the Donkey Kong II box art for their logo!


Another favorite game of mine was Donkey Kong Hockey. I still own a version of this and Punch Out! :)


My Donkey Kong JR Table Top I got off of a local seller back in 2001.







I don't have this box...... :(

See you guys next time!