Kangaroo

About Kangaroo

Kangaroo (1982) is Sun Electronics' arcade platformer, distributed in North America by Atari, in which a boxing-gloved mother kangaroo climbs to rescue her joey from fruit-throwing monkeys, one of the first Donkey Kong-like games that was not a clone.

Kangaroo in Depth

Jumping is central, but there is no jump button: the player pushes the joystick up, or up and diagonally, to leap. On three of the four levels, the mother kangaroo starts on the bottom floor and must reach her joey, held by monkeys on the top floor, climbing between platforms or up ladders. Monkeys throw apples and apple cores, which she must jump, duck or punch, and she can punch any monkey she meets face to face with her boxing glove. Fruit hanging overhead can be jumped for points, and touching a bell replaces collected fruit with higher-value pieces. The big Ape occasionally appears to try to steal her gloves, and each level must be finished before time runs out.

On the third level, the joey hangs in a cage held up by a stack of monkeys, with a hoard of apples that will be released if five monkeys climb up to it. The kangaroo must punch each monkey in the stack several times to lower the cage, then climb up to the joey before it rises again. The music borrows classical and folk tunes: the "Turkish March" at the start, "American Patrol" during play, "Oh! Susanna" for completing a level and the "Westminster Quarters" when a bell is rung.

Making Kangaroo

Sun Electronics developed Kangaroo and released it in Japan in May 1982, and Atari, Inc. released it in North America that June. Arcade Express gave it 8 out of 10 in November 1982. Atari published ports for the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 in 1983. Video magazine's "Arcade Alley" called the 5200 version "an excellent piece of work" but said it "fail[ed] to bowl [them] over", criticising "animation-quality graphics" used to dress up simple play; it nonetheless won "1984 Best Arcade-to-Home Video Game/Computer Game Translation" at the 5th Arkie Awards, where judges said it looked and played as a "virtual duplicate" of the arcade game. Reviewing the 2600 version for Electronic Fun, Charles Ardai wrote that despite its "horrible" graphics and sound, its gameplay was better than the arcade's. Hamster Corporation released the arcade game in its Arcade Archives series for Switch and PlayStation 4 in July 2020.