This the time where Mario has made first debut as Jumpman trying to rescue his girlfriend, Pauline/Lady (which it was named back then) by the clutches of Donkey Kong. It was a success for Nintendo and thanks to the designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, it has a sequel called Donkey Kong Jr., and Mario Bros., and it also had spawn merchandise, a cereal, magazine that shows a comic a news journalist interviewing with Mario and do some wacky things on a construction type of thing, and lastly ports/conversions that are well faithful to the original well some of it were trying but could not.
Overall, Donkey Kong is a fun platforming game and it was well playable from the start if you can get use to, as it gets challenging as it goes, repeated levels (don't mind about it), and also the characters and the story of the game that I feel very intrigued of, especially my 2nd favorite character, Mario/Jumpman of this game alone. So yeah give it a try and have fun.