There are other, better ports of this arcade classic, but this one is passable.
Once you've fired up the game and played it for a while, the first, and most glaring omission you'll notice is a lack of two screens. So the game is only two screens long! It's a bit of a dissappointment, although it's hard to tell whether it was simply due to the limited space of an Atari cart, or just some sort of development-side issue. Either way, this is the one thing that makes the 2600 version of Donkey Kong stand out from the rest of 'em.
The game's two levels - as you might guess - are the first and last. The first level has you scaling a factory to reach the ape DK and Mario's girlfriend, while climbing ladders and hopping barrels. The game is still very faithful to the original arcade game.
The second level is a five-tiered complex. Deadly fireballs roam each level of this screen. On each level are two platforms, which when run over are destroyed. So your goal is to destroy eight of these chunks of the platform. Once you do that you've beaten the level. Missing from the 2600 port of DK is the end cutscene, where the platforms rip apart and Mario is reunited with his girlfriend and all that good stuff. Chances are you won't care though.
And of course in each screen is your good friend and mine the hammer. The hammer works... well, it works like the hammer from the Donkey Kong arcade game. And that's a good thing, especially considering [ I belive it's] the Intellevision version of DK had a messed-up hammer or something.
The graphics obviously look nothing like the arcade game, but hey, what can you expect? It's the Twenty-Six-Hundred. Still, Mario looks like Mario, and Donkey Kong looks like Donkey Kong. Mario also animates well.
The sound effects are a bit sparse, limited to only the walking of Mario and the jumping sound. Although, they did manage to get that classic "dooloodoo do doo" sound effect from jumping over the barrels down right.
So, in the end, if you want to play Donkey Kong, you could do better than this version, but what it does do it does well.