A Donkey Kong Tutorial

For the uninitiated, here is a little bit of background on how the game works so that you can have some context with the scores and levels that I am going to post.

The first thing to understand is the difference between levels and screens.  Contrary to what most people think, the game is not just endlessly jumping over barrels - that is just one of the screens (though it is the one that occurs most often).  In total, there are 4 different screens in Donkey Kong, but you have to reach Level 3 before you have seen them all.  Here they are (note that these are just taken from the web, not from my actual machine):

This is the "Barrel Screen" and it is the one that usually comes to mind when people think about DK.  It is the first screen in the game.

This is the "Factory Screen".  It does not appear until Level 3 and is the last of the 4 screens to be revealed.

This is the "Elevator Screen".  It's also the trickiest screen in the game and the one that was designed to kill off the average gamer and force them to fork over another quarter.

This is the "Final Screen" - not because it is the last screen in the game but because it is the screen that always ends a particular level.  You will note that in all the other levels, Donkey Kong is standing next to a ladder at the top.  When you reach the top he grabs Pauline (our maiden in distress) and climbs up to the next level.  But on this level, once Jumpman (yes, that's correct, it's not Mario) removes all the yellow rivets he falls down and the happy couple is reunited:

The game then starts over again at the next level at the "Barrel Screen".  The goal in the first 3 screens is the same - reach the top without being hit by anything.  In the "Final Screen" Jumpman has to walk across all of the yellow rivets to remove them while avoiding the fire.

Level 1 has 2 screens (Barrel and Final), Level 2 adds the Elevator screen, and Level 3 adds the Factory screen.  Levels 4 and 5 add 1 and 2 (respectively) additional Barrel screens and then the game stays at 6 total screens for the rest of the game.  Here is the complete sequence:

Level 1 - Barrel, Final
Level 2 - Barrel, Elevator, Final
Level 3 - Barrel, Factory, Elevator, Final
Level 4 - Barrel, Factory, Barrel, Elevator, Final
Level 5+ - Barrel, Factory, Barrel, Elevator, Barrel, Final

So reaching the end of Level 5 equates to completing 20 screens and then each additional level completed adds another 6 screens.  The game increases in difficulty up through Level 5, at which point it stays constant and you are basically just replaying Level 5 again until you either die or reach the Kill Screen on level 22 (which is screen 117).  For the curious, here are details on the Kill Screen - but the jist of it is that due to a programming error when you reach this screen the game doesn't give you enough time to complete the level, thus making it impossible to continue.

As a final note, the switch settings allows you to adjust the number of lives you have as well as the point where an extra life is earned.  I am playing it at the "official" settings - 3 lives to start, with one additional bonus life earned at 7,000 points (for a total of 4 lives to complete the game).