Arcade Archives Kangaroo
Switch eShop (Arcade emulated)
Sun Electronics / HAMSTER
1982 2020
Kangaroo is a single-screen platformer emerging shortly after Donkey Kong. It was developed by Sun Electronics, later (and better) known as Sunsoft. The player controls a mother kangaroo who must rescue her joey from a hostile pack of monkeys. Are there even monkeys in Australia?
There are four rounds before the game loops -- each loop is called a "level" here. In three of the four stages, the goal is simply to reach the top platform to reunite with the joey. Mommy kangaroo can jump, duck, and punch with a boxing glove. There's fall damage and one-hit deaths, and of course no continues. The scariest looking enemy, the big ape, actually can't defeat you, but can steal the punching ability away for a little while. The little monkeys are absolute bastards and constantly toss apples and apple cores (lol, creative). You can collect fruit for points and ring a bell to spawn additional fruit.
Gameplay is functional but not ideal. The kangaroo sprite is too big and some of the jumps are weird. It's hard to explain: basically, certain ascending platforms have to be jumped on sequentially, even though it looks like the kangaroo can leap high enough to skip a few. Graphics are legible, though admittedly garish. Music is public domain stuff; always a sucker for that. As for that oddball round: it's complete chaos. There's a stack of monkeys holding a cage and they must be punched out one at a time. Strangely, this is round three and not four, though it feels like a fitting climax. Oh, and I'm not sure if the game never had a proper English version or if Hamster didn't release it, but ママ is displayed upon a successful joey rescue.
Bit of an odd one. Not great, but this particular ancient genre remains intriguing to me.
Rating: 2.5/5
Reviewed: 02/23/26
Kangaroo
Atari 2600
Atari
1983
This is pretty damn fun and actually better than the arcade original. Yes, the "stacked monkey" stage is missing, and yeah the first stage is too simplistic, and yeah this basically feels like a complete overhaul rather than a proper port... But it plays nicely and this variant of Kangaroo ends up being one of the best platformers on the 2600 period.
Speed is calibrated just right, as is the overall challenge. Scoring feels a bit broken due to fruit respawns; I instead choose to see how many successive loops I can complete. Graphics are, well, Atari graphics, though the monkeys have some fairly detailed walking animations. There's a nice rendition of "Oh Susanna" upon stage completion. Highly recommended.
Rating: 4/5
Reviewed: 02/23/26