Kangaroo (arcade game) - Definition and Overview

Kangaroo is an arcade game, which was released in 1982. It was manufactured by Sun Electronics but distributed by Atari.

Description

Kangaroo is a bit of a run-of-the-mill arcade game which bears resembelance to Donkey Kong Jr. The storyline is simple. The player is a Mother Kangaroo trying to rescue her Baby Kangaroo from a group of pink monkeys.

There are 4 different levels. Each of them basically consist of the Mother Kangaroo on the bottom floor trying to get to the top floor where her child is being held captive. On each of the levels, there are monkeys who are throwing apples at Mother Kangaroo. Sometimes the apples are thrown so that she must jump over them and sometimes they are thrown so that she must jump. If she gets face to face with one of the monkeys, she can punch the monkey with a boxing glove. Also, there are pieces of fruit that she can jump up and get for points. Additionally, there is at least one bell on each level that she can hit so that more fruits will appear. She must be wary of the big Ape, who will occasionally appear and try to take her gloves away from her. Just like in Donkey Kong Jr., there is a timer that counts down. If it reaches 0, the player loses a life.

Levels 1, 2 and 4 consist of different platforms that the Kangaroo must jump onto or climb onto via a ladder. On the third level, the cage in which Kid Kangaroo is imprisoned is held up by an entire stack of monkeys and there is an entire horde of apples that the monkey will unleash if five of them climb up there. On this level, Mama Kangaroo must punch each monkey in the stack several times until the cage is lowered and when the cage has been lowered enough, Mama Kangaroo must climb to the next floor to get to Kid Kangaroo before the cage is raised again or before the monkeys have the horde of apple cores unleashed.

Ports

Like most of the games of its era, Kangaroo was ported to many different systems, including the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200.

External links

• The KLOV entry on Kangaroo (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=K&game_id=8275)
• Mobygames entry on the home versions of Kangaroo (http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/gameId,8989/)