As with Donkey Kong, "beating" this one means beating all unique stages, of which there are 4 before it loops.
It's like Donkey Kong except the roles are reversed, there's more climbing vines instead of jumping, more horizontal movement than vertical, and the NES port actually has all 4 stages instead of only 3. It is, I believe, the only game in which Mario has a villainous role. Mario has kidnapped Donkey Kong and you play as Donkey Kong Jr. and have to rescue him. Unlike the first DK, it has less replayability because there is essentially only one way to make it through each stage, so once you know how to beat it, you're basically done.
Wizardry II: Knight of Diamonds
Platform played: SNES Emulator (Wizardry 1-2-3: Story of Llygamyn with Rebalancing Patch)
Date beaten: Jan 12, 2025
In the original Apple II version, this was sold a "second scenario" for the first game (sort of like early DLC), you were supposed to import your characters from the first game to play through it. Unfortunately the NES (and by extension SNES) port doesn't support the importing-characters feature - I was a bit disappointed as I had hoped to take my original party through the second scenario. But as a result, the game was rebalanced so you could complete it with a fresh party. This took some time, delaying the release of the console port, so as a result, the Japanese console release of Knight and Diamonds and Legacy of Llygamyn were switched around (Legacy didn't require the same rebalancing since you play that with a fresh party anyway) so this is labeled as the third game on the SNES cart. Not that it matters much because the game isn't too heavy on story, but it did confuse me a bit at first.
Anyway, this game is a direct sequel to the first one, and I'm sure most of the story is in the manual, but the basic goal of the game is to collect all the Knight of Diamonds armor, equip it and make it to a certain square on the bottom floor of the dungeon to get the Wand of Gnilda (in this case you are descending into Gnilda's dungeon rather than Werdna's) and make it back to town. The quest is quite difficult because the armor you have to collect takes the form of very tough boss fights that can one-shot your guys. While you will likely need a full party to complete your quest, you can only reach the square where your goal is with a single character. This is likely why the game is kind enough to teleport you back to the first floor, rather than forcing you to fight your way back up with only a single character. This also means you need a Fighter to complete the game since he can equip the Knight of Diamonds armor (unless maybe you only need to be carrying it, but I think you have to have it equipped). I suppose the intent is that your singular Knight will fight his way to the bottom of the dungeon, aided by the powerful KoD armor - however, I took advantage of the fact that you can delete a party member in the middle of a quest by having a Wizard teleport my Fighter to the bottom floor of the dungeon, then deleting the Wizard from the town menu so the Fighter was left alone. Pippin, your brave sacrifice will not be forgotten.
Interestingly, the KoD armor pieces themselves make up all the bosses in the game, so there is no "final boss" at the bottom of the dungeon. I suppose the final challenge is just getting there with your singular guy.
Game of the year: I'll have to go with Wizardry again. If you look online, you won't find as much information about the second and third scenarios as the first one, probably due to the fact they are indeed just "extra scenarios" and the gameplay is largely very similar to the first game. But although I don't have as much to say about Wizardry II as its predecessor, it still wins by default because Donkey Kong Jr. just isn't that interesting.