It feels odd to me that the near leg doesn't move at all in the animation. It would also be more convincing if the torso rotated, rather than just sliding backwards.
Loving the face especially. Awesome sprite! Although it really does look like gold statue.
The top part is monkey, the bottom is robot. Kinda limited with the NES pallete but that's part of the challenge and fun. Thanks for the Player 2 color anyway!
The colors kind of make it more like a gold statue. I replaced some colors to show you what else you could do to make look more like a robot.
http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/3592/monkuy.png
I'm not seeing half robot half monkey either. He could be more than 3 colors, even on the nes pallete with the way that tiles worked. Just sayin, in any case it looks awesome.