YES! THANK YOU! You don't know how many Google searches I've done for "stock video game sound for TV" or "list of tv shows using Atari Donkey Kong sounds" to no avail - but in the 80s through the 2000s I would hear it all the time and immediately know exactly what the sound was! I thought I was the only one who ever noticed that.
You're right! "Bleeps and bloops". The head of foley was probably like "Get me some video game bleeps and bloops for the scene when the kid is playing PlayStation."
My mother took me to buy this game when I was a child and within 10 minutes I was so sad that she took me back to the store to get my money back. That's when I found out that opened games were un-returnable. We begged and pleaded too and they wouldn't budge.
That's why I always bought games at Long's drug Store (RIP). I knew I returned games more than I kept them. And they always gave a full refund without fuzz !! I couldn't believe I returned Yar's Revenge, though !! :-)
For the Intellivision port, the same was thought.. but the developer was interviewed on the Retro Hour podcast and he said no, nothing of the sort, they, as is usual in tech, were just trying to get as much done as they could in the time they had.
I've heard Garry Kitchen talk about the development of this game. Garry really wanted to put more levels in this game but Coleco knew they were going to sell a bunch of cartridges whether it had the extra levels or not. So, yeah, Coleco did a crash grab, just like everyone else at the time.
And not only would people buy this game regardless of how it came out because of the craze about the arcade game, both this and the Intellivision version were sales jobs for the Colecovision. The Colecovision was so many light years beyond this and so close to the arcade, at some point someone in the C-Suite said, "Let the folks with the 2600 and Intellivision go over their friend's house around Christmas and have a look."
@@ApoplecticDialectics I bet that was their thinking. Also they had the Colecovision console displays in the stores where you could play. I was 13 at the time and we begged our parents for a Colecovision after playing it at the display using the evergreen excuse of "if we had a Colecovison we won't have to go to the arcade because the Colecovision was just as good as the arcade."
@@polocatfan Garry did the best he could with the time and ROM space given. Nobody set out to make a bad game, but on the other hand, Coleco didn't want to put more money and time into it to make it better.
"We played the hell out of it anyway because it was all we had, and the only way to have Donkey Kong at home". That describes the situation for so many 2600 games for those of us (who were little kids during the first half of the '80s)
I still remember coming home from school being so excited to play Donkey Kong. It is Atari history. I play the arcade version more today because now I can. Love your reviews.
In Atari 50 there's an interview with the programer. He said that justo making the first screen was like a miracle, and now everyone on the internet says it's the worst thing they have seen.
Donkey Kong on Atari was a 4K rom, and compared to other games in 1982 was about the same, competency-wise, until Activision started blowing everyone out of the water. Pac Man was another game that year, so that should tell you something about where we were at. Colecovision also came out that year (vs Atari in 1977), and was a 16k rom file. Not only did they have 4X the rom size to work with, they had 4+ years of console development to work with and improve upon, on Coleco’s own platform. Of course it wasn’t sabotaged, they did the best they could I’m sure, but they had literally everything in their favor for Colecovision, being able to design their own hardware+software to nail their own products.
I don't know why this "rumor" got started, the 2600 was already last-gen compared to the ColecoVision. People nowadays don't realize how 'expensive' the ColecoVision was to the 2600 which was already in most people's homes at the time. That last fact was why Coleco not only did 2600 ports but also released an adapter to play carts from a competing company that was pretty much the industry standard. This was my first Atari game and yeah it was nothing like the CV version that I really wanted to play, I still played and enjoyed it as a kid. It wasn't until years later that I upgraded to an Atari 8-bit computer that I got the "superior" version of Donkey Kong that had all four levels in the US arcade order. If current retrogamers are automatically comparing every Donkey Kong port to the NES version that they only want to play...well that's plain stupid.
I have always disliked how people state that they tanked the port as if it was a fact. It’s amazing Garry did as well as he did with the timeframe and a 4K limitation, which was standard. It’s an unfortunate rumor.
As a kid, I thought it was very strange that the two titans of the arcade, PAC-Man, and Donkey Kong, got sub-par releases for the Atari…I guess in my young mind, I couldn’t fathom the makers of video games actually being GREEDY and SHORT-SIGHTED when it came to video game development. That being said, this was miles better than Pac-Man.
As a kid I loved this game. I was just so happy to be getting to play Donkey Kong at all. I grew up in a town where arcade games were illegal, and it was rare we would go to a place with arcade games. Sometimes I'd see them on a show called Starcade. There was a book I got from the library called "How To Master The Video Games" and that was mostly how I learned about arcade games in that time period. So I had a ton of fun with this version of Donkey Kong. I also think kids kinda understood that the Atari 2600 is not going to be the same as the arcade game. That was just how it was for a while.
words can't express how disappointed i was when i got this when it came out. it was back to the arcade with the quarters i was supposed to use for my school lunch
Seeing this brings a smile to my face. I had both the 2600 and Colecovision. The graphics weren’t great but it was so much fun. So many days in the arcade so being able to play at home was great even if it didn’t look as good.
My brother was an expert at this game. There was one late night gaming session where he played this game for 3 hours straight.Those fireballs where moving like lighting. Just remember that Donkey Kong was the game that came with the Colecovision. So that was their showcase game to demonstrate how much superior their console was better than the 2600.
I have to admit you made some good points on what Coleco might have been thinking when they released this and why. Of course, I could contrast that with the Colecovision ports of Centipede and Galaxian which were excellent. In fact I seem to recall one reviewer at the time praised the Colecovision version of Centipede over the 5200 port!
They sold 4.2 million of those Atari 2600 Donkey Kong carts, making it the third best selling VCS game of all time, so good job either way! In fact, they very likely sold more of the VCS versions than their own version, but it absolutely helped sell the Colecovision itself since it was a pack-in game.
Programmed by Gary Kitchen of ACTIVISION fame. As you mention, it was quite challenging for him because of the angled “floors”. At the time that was a programming marvel. I really enjoyed the game myself 😊. Great vid!
I think the truth is, the 2600 just wasn't a good enough system in 82, and it was on it's way out. Why would Coleco spend the time and money on producing a good version of this, or any other game, for a system that was being replaced? If anything, I'd believe that Atari themselves wanted this to be a less than spectacular port. After all, they would much rather sell the 5200, which actually had a good port of this game. And unlike Coleco's port on their own system, it had all the levels.
I enjoyed all of the Atari 2600 arcade ports as a kid as it was the only way to play those games at home, even pacman. I remember playing Defender at the arcade for the first time thinking, i was pretty good at the atari 2600 port and dying very quickly. I remember getting Donkey Kong 2600 port and i still played it a lot despite the limitations. Once I bought an Atari 600xl computer and played those metal cartridge games, then i realized the atari 2600 wasn't as good.
I remember comparing the 2600 version to the Apple ][ version and deciding computers were the way to go! I never entirely ditched consoles though - I currently have a Nintendo Switch and a Vectrex that I keep meaning to finish restoring.
Maybe "sabotage" is too severe a term. Maybe more like "it's not a priority". This game was made around the same time as Atari's own port of Pac-Man to the 2600 and that was a much worse port. Both titles were expected to sell heavily from name value (and they both did) so going the extra mile to make a better game probably wasn't something the executives even understood.
I got this as a "hand me down" when i got the Atari 7800 (my first gaming console). I knew back then that it wasn't the best of versions, but it was nonetheless another game i could play along with my other games. I wasn't playing it for hours, but 10-15 minutes was enough until i played another. My gaming "allowable time" was usually limited to an hour or two if i was lucky to play on the big color tv in the living room. By the time i had a tv in my bedroom, i had the NES. Great memories ❤
Back then I didn’t like this version and played either the arcade or at my friend’s who had coleco vision. Knowing now what I learned about the 2600 I see this as a huge accomplishment for that system. Many of the 2600 games do amazing things and their programmers are brilliant
Growing up, I fully believed that those fireballs were teapots. Tonight, for the first time, I saw them as fireballs (though not immediately). Maybe due to the cleanliness of the video, or just dumb luck, but I finally see it!
It’s amazing how good many Atari 2600 games were considering the console was designed to play Pong and Tanks, plus Jay Miner added the ability to repeat and stretch sprites. There was a lot of clever programming going on given the limitations.
Really good video Jon. On the surface 2600 DK looks pretty weak when compared to other arcade ports on the 2600 but there was just something about this game that kept me coming back. I would still occasionally play this port even after I got a Colecovision for Christmas in 1982. I think it was probably the challenge of the 2nd screen when the score would get around 100K that kept me wanting to play this sometimes. One thing I would do that was different than you is once the score started getting up there I would go ahead and get the hammer on the second screen and kill the fireball on the 3rd floor. I did this so there was zero chance of getting killed by the fireball if it tried to jump a gap and chase me down. Another interesting tidbit about this game is that I think it was one of the games that Todd Rogers had the record high score on the Twin Galaxies website years ago. After his Activision Dragster time was proven to be fake people started looking at his other record scores and the 2600 DK score was one that stood out because his score was light years ahead of the second place score. The best I ever did years ago was probably 120-130K and like you said the game almost gets to be unfair with the way the fireballs vibrate and often jump the gaps when your score gets up around 100K range. I don't remember what Rodgers had put on the TG site for this record score but it seemed ridiculously high.
Me and my brothers loved the ColecoVision, we thought we were hot stuff having the best console compared to Atari and Intellivision and what we naively perceived as such an "arcade perfect" version of Donkey Kong. Time and maturity change that view of course, I grew to love the Atari 2600 too later on in the aftermarket days, it was fun to discover so many other multiplatform games that instead played better on the 2600 versus the other two machines. Fun gameplay almost always wins out over cutting edge graphics in the end.
Donkey Kong was so coveted by me that I asked for it twice during a time period when I only got 2 carts per year. I got the 2600 version, and then later the AtariSoft c64 version. Loved them both.
While many people might not appreciate the complexity associated with the hammer, the game has a rather substantial chunk of code dedicated to it. There isn't enough time in each scan line to handle all of the normal decision making and also enable/disable missile 1 and the ball at the necessary times, so during vblank the game performs all of the decision making that will be needed during the lines that might contain the hammer and stores in RAM the values to be written to the sprite registers for each line. This wouldn't really represent the best use of ROM resources if the goal was a 4K cartridge, but demonstrates a great deal of effort and cleverness on the part of Garry Kitchen. If the game had omitted the hammer, and were willing to accept flickering barrels on later stages, it could pretty easily have used the saved RAM to keep an extra copy of the barrel state, and swapped barrel states every frame. If flicker were tolerable on the fireaball stages, those could have been improved by alternating frames between the current style of fireballs and one fireball that could move around the screen. An interesting historical quirk of the Atari 2600 and bank switching is that when not using a custom ROM chip, a 4K cartridge would have required two chips (the ROM plus a 74xx-series part) but bank-switching designs from the 1980s required four. In fact, a single common-off-the-shelf chip from 1980 (74LS153) could replace all three of the control chips, but I don't think any such design was known to be possible prior to 2007.
Yeah, how I so remember when that game came out for the 2600. My brothers and I would play the crap out of it and I do remember it getting pretty difficult, especially on the second screen when getting up towards the 100K mark. One of my friends did have a Colecovision and do remember playing that version quite a bit as well. I do have a Colecovision in my basement, with the "Atari adapter" that allowed it to play 2600 games. What I also really remember is getting the IBM PC version of Donkey Kong around the same time and playing it on my Dad's IBM PC. Despite the CGA graphics, it was actually a pretty faithful representation of the arcade version, including having all four of the screens as they appear in the arcade, and even including the "cut scenes" between levels with the appropriate music like the arcade (as best can be rendered using the "PeeCee" speaker as had no sound card at the time). It came on a single self-booting 5 1/4 inch floppy disk.
Wow. I forgot what this looked like! You’re right. It was still Donkey Kong at home for Atari. Arcades ruled back then. 20 tokens or more for a 5 dollar bill!😅
Thanks for another great time warp of growing up back then. I played this when it first came out as well. I traded it for spider man, temporarily, and ended up swapping for the game permanently, eventually. Keep up the good work!
Be happy that the 2600 got a version this good. The original Intellivision version has to be the worst of the bunch. After seeing what versions for the other 8 bit home computers at the time looked like, I believe Coleco actually did hold back a bit to try and sell their systems.
The Atari 2600 (and as an extension, it's game catalog) were much like VHS, they weren't the best out there, but they were the most popular. I agree with your assessment, not sabotage, just a company looking to make the best financial decision they could at the time.
When you first look at DK 2600, you know right away what game it is supposed to be, and while it wasn't amazing, it was a decent effort. My biggest gripe is it having only 2 stages, as it was common to only have 3, but only 2, WTF!? As stated the cart size could only do so much, and while there is a killer homebrew version of DK, called Donkey Kong "Arcade", that shows what could have been. A game like that probably never would have happened back then, as programmers just didn't have the resources that so many have today. Even though I had a ColecoVision, possibly the best version of the time, I also had the 2600 cart adapter and would have loved a better version than what was offered.
I absolutely believe the Patrick Ewing draft lottery was fixed. I absolutely believe Michael Jordan’s experiment with baseball was due to a secret suspension for gambling. And I absolutely believe Coleco tanked the 2600 version of Donkey Kong. We need more conspiracy theories in retro gaming for folks like me to believe.
I remember being 13 requesting to rent 2600 Donkey Kong from the local video store in small town Ruidoso for $5 for the week-end and then not coming in to take it for some reason- the clerk was upset as others wanted to put it on hold it for them-. I felt bad... well until I played it - well :) I still should have called to cancel. 1st and last time ever cancelling without notice.
I did get my own later for Christmas - and I played and appreciated it. More so I never liked paying $3 a day for a rent /$5 a weekend - when I could own it after a few rentals.
The day I got this game (with loved ones no longer here) has huge sentimental value for me, it's actually my #1 Atari childhood memory. As for the game...level 1 is actually pretty good. Level 2 though feels like they did a careless rush job taking the easy way out.
This is one of the first games that my parents bought for me and my brothers for Christmas 1982, when we got our first Atari 2600. I stayed up all night on Christmas Eve in 1982 playing Donkey Kong, as our parents let us open the Atari on Christmas Eve. The game isn't bad for what it was at the time. I played the dickens out of it as an 8 year-old kid when I got it. I still envied anyone that owned a ColecoVision or computer back in 1982 that could actually play a more accurate representation of the arcade classics!
We're just not gonna talk about the fact that, despite this being a lackluster port, a lot of TV shows used the putt-putt-putt sound effects from this port as the quintessential video game noise? Also I remember thinking Mario was a panda, "Pauline" was a lamb, and "Donkey Kong" was a gingerbread man as you said. The fact that Mario became a headless pixellated blob as he climbed ladders was also a WTF moment in my childhood. Thankfully, I also had the C64 cartridge version and the local Pizza Hut had the arcade game, so I did learn what they were supposed to be.
I remember my brother buying this at a local electronics store in town called Deyorse's. They let him sample it first before buying it. I did not think he should, but he decided to. I have never really liked this version knowing the ColecoVision version was so great in comparison... But we only had Atari and it was still cool he got it so we could play at home. The barrels look like Honey-Comb cereal!
Seeing how Pacman turned out, I would say Donkey Kong was on the mark for the quality. Of course, in my younger days, I didn't seem to mind the differences between this port and the arcade version. So, I was like many people just to have a version.
I remember seeing the Donkey Kong Machine on the cover of the Coleco Atari 2600 Box & as a 10 year old Kid I assumed that the Coleco Game Will look like the Arcade Game,I bought this game with Christmas money at Video Concepts & needless to say disappointed!!!!!! It’s hard to say if Coleco was trying to screw over other systems. This Donkey Kong probably like yourself has a special place in our Hearts. Loved the video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bought the CV system while in school in 1982. One roommate had a 2600, but we almost never played it. The CV was just more appealing visually in comparison. I don't think we concerned ourselves with the corporate strategies that might have been in play at that time 😅
My 8 year old son loves to make fun of me playing this game, still fun even though I begged my parents for a Colecovision due to how much better it looked on that system. Sounds are so nostalgic to me even though the game is underwhelming in retrospect. Good video and love your channel.
Hadn't really thought about it, but it's true that modern gamers have never had to deal with the rationalization process of "Does it look like the arcade game?", "Does it play like the arcade game?", "Is it fun regardless?" computing to a final "Is it good?". Heck, modern gamers don't even have arcade games to port from. :P
One other thing to consider - Atari Corp themselves re-released this game along with a few other Coleco created games in the 2600 "Fun is Back" era in 1987 (CX26143). Not sure if that means Atari gave it their "stamp of approval", probably more like they had the rights to produce it, so they did. But, as mentioned the time limitations, and the limitations of what was on hand to create games in the early 80s - it's just what we got. :D
If a better game (with an 8k ROM) meant pushing the release just one financial quarter out, it didn't have a chance. Corporate America rarely has the foresight greater than 3 months. To this day, games are commonly prematurely released. The second screen had Kong fall down head first in the arcade, right?
Haha I always said the fireballs looked like lamps and the barrels looked like Honeycomb cereal. I loved this port and even Pac-Man. Of course they weren’t close to the arcade versions but I didn’t expect them to be.
Donkey Kong caused quite a stir in it's early days. Universal Pictures tried to sue Nintendo over the rights to King Kong (Universal lost). Later, Atari was slated to release the Famicom in the USA until Atari execs saw Donkey Kong running on an Adam computer. Atari pulled out of the deal & well, you know the rest.
That's right. Coleco had the console rights to Donkey Kong while Atari had the rights to the computer port. Coleco claimed that having Donkey Kong on the Adam wasn't a violation since the Adam was more of an add-on to the Colecovision console.
Atari didn't pull out of the deal because of Coleco showing off DK on the Adam. Nintendo and Coleco cleared up the debacle. The only reasons the deal fell through was because of the video game crash of 1983, and Ray Kassar, Atari's CEO who had been spearheading the negotiations for the Nintendo deal, was terminated, setting the nearly-done deal back to nothing.
the colecovision donkey kong was a warp zone on first level withnthe broken ladder. Learned it from a friend back in 1982 from a friend of mine. Im sure theres a video somewhere of how to do it on youtube.
I remember playing this version till no end, then my parents got me colecovision with gyruss for my 8th birthday DK was the pack in game my Jaw dropped as it was nearly 1:1 with the arcade (or a least I thought it was at the time).
Donkey Kong on the 2600 is one of those titles that when I see a video or image of the game, I get those nostalgic "warm and fuzzy" feelings. I think Jon is spot-on with his opinion. Gary did what he could with 4K, and in my opinion, I think the visuals and sounds are well done. The angled girders are especially impressive for the system. Yes, the game can get repetitive, but you can say that for most 2600 titles. I had a Coleco Gemini, which was a 2600 clone machine, and it came with Donkey Kong and Mouse Trap - and I played both to death. I think Mouse Trap is another really nice port and recommend it. Now, if you want to see a really bad Donkey Kong port, check out the Intellivision version 😄
I always felt like the Intellivision version was even worse - with it having hardware more or less 1/2 way between the 2600 and Colecovision, it was even more embarrassing for that one to get the same 2 screens...
In 1982 the Commodore 64 was supreme with a 480i color monitor and Donkey Kong. Atari, Coleco, NES, SMS are 240i and SNES is 480p in 1991. I remember games looked better on the C64 than the NES. They was higher resolution.
Would have been worth mentioning that this was the second game he worked on after _Space Jockey,_ and the fact that he was able to make 2600 games in the first place was specifically because he had reverse-engineered the hardware, meaning he was the first person to make a 2600 game without being part of Atari, where people were trained, or Activision/Imagic, which was comprised of ex-Atari engineers who were also trained. As far as I remember, the project started out as a proof of concept rather than him being asked to make the game. A good example of him going the extra mile was the aforementioned non-mirrored stage 1, but also the fact that the girders were ramped, which was challenging in itself. They started out flat.
I bought my first Atari VCS at Christmas 1981 then in 1982 I moved to a school that had a computer club. The school's TRS-80 was trivially easy to program in BASIC and that fooled me into thinking that the Atari must also be pretty easy to program. I was so wrong. Programming the Atari without modern development tools is brain-melting. For programmers to produce anything of value was miraculous. It makes me mad that Warner so utterly failed to acknowledge their programmers' genius and acted like they were just a barely-necessary expense.
I got this cart as a kid and I was ok with it. Then a cousin got a Colecovision and I found myself playing that version than my own. Also, a ROM hack came out sometime ago for the 2600 version that has all 4 levels of the arcade version, and that version brought me back to my youth. And yes, I say Coleco had some financial shenanigans going on, as other arcade ports by Atari and other companies were much better.
For me, there was no conspiracy. Coleco was shoveling money from Cabbage Patch Kids sales into their home video game division. As you said, Coleco made more money off selling video game carts for other platforms than on the ColecoVision console and carts for it. Although the ColecoVision console and games were more advanced than the other consoles on the market at the time, I always felt they should have stuck to the much more profitable game cart market than spending boatloads of cash developing a game system. There was no way that Coleco was going to knock the crown off of the widely sold numbers of Atari 2600 game consoles.in kid's hands. Mattel almost tanked because of the cash they invested in the Intellivivion platform.
I enjoyed the game back in the day. I think I already had a VIC-20 when I got my Atari 2600 version so I was already migrating away from my Atari, but I did enjoy it. The first screen is really good, bit I feel the flaming barrels were no fun on the second screen.
As a kid with questionable taste who played E.T. for hours, even I couldn't stand this Donkey Kong. (No offense to those with fond memories. 😀) BUT - the Atari 8-bit version? Now we're talking. To this day, I believe it's the best home version ever released.
No it was not tanned intentionally. On the contrary it’s a VERY technical well made game. Also I think compared to other VCS games looks not to bad. And most of all it plays really well. The controls are sharp. And about the 4K well it was the classic thing. Cartridges cost a lot of money. If they would have went with 8k they would had needed to put a higher price = risk less sales. What many do not speak about it it’s sales. It sold VERY well on Atari VCS. Actially I think I sold more units there than on Colecovision so it made tons of money for them. I think it made totally commercial sense. Make a good game for 4K. It would sell well. Give a taste of good gameplay and if one wanted to play all the levels with superior graphics. Then hey why don’t get a Colecovision system. So no conspiracy. Just smart business mindset
Coleco had their own programmers to make the games for the Colecovision, and paid 3rd party programmers to make the games for other systems. Garry Kitchen did the best he could do for that time... he almost made the girders straight instead of angled, but was challenged by David Crane to make them right. I am curious to know who programmed DK for the Intellivision, so far nobody knows 😁
According to the Blue Sky Rangers website, it was Frank Johnson of Roklan. Johnson also did DK Jr, Carnival, Mouse Trap, and Zaxxon for Coleco (the programmer is unknown for the other three Intellivision releases) as well as all Parker/Parker Bros. games except Frogger (that was Paul Crowley).
It is a decent game for 4k. I loved Donkey Kong in the arcade, but I got bored with this version pretty quickly. I think I borrowed it from a friend. I later bought an Atari computer, and Donkey Kong on the Atari 8-bit was excellent!
I was so disappointed in this game when it came out. A friend bought the Colecovision and had Donkey Kong, and when they saw my version on the VCS they laughed. I can't blame them, it was not good. As you said, I don't think it was viable to make a bad version, but Atari had a massive hold on the industry, and Colecovision wanted that. They would have known that not everyone would be able to buy both the Atari and Colecovision and so they would lose $$ if they didn't make an Atari port of Donkey Kong. Plus, it would showcase just how good the Colecovision was. I remember wanting a Colecovision even MORE after seeing Donkey Kong on the VCS. If it was nearly as good as the Colecovision then I would have felt content with my Atari and not cared about the Colecovision. To this day, when I think about Colecovision, I think Donkey Kong. I think a great port of Donkey Kong on the VCS back then would have hurt Colecovision console sales..
I believe Coleco subtly sabotaged it with choices like the 4kb cart size. It made the game look inferior without being exceptionally poor, ensuring that it would still sell due to its fun gameplay and the demand from kids for Donkey Kong. This strategy also conveniently made ColecoVision appear superior. It seems like a win-win situation to save on cart size costs while also making your own gaming system look better. How could they resist?
I enjoyed this port back in the day. I knew it looked bad and only had two levels, but it was still fun. I had a TI 994a (and still do) and my brother borrowed Donkey Kong from a friend for it. It was amazing in comparison. I never got a copy of that version though. Later on I got a Coleco Vision and played that version a lot. I have heard the debate and think you are right about it being a financial decision and not necessarily sabotage. They often rushed ports out. Just look at Pac-Man. I had fun with that game for the same reasons though.
This is one of those games that you’ll hear the sounds from in some TV shows and movies when a character is “playing a video game.” 😊
YES! THANK YOU! You don't know how many Google searches I've done for "stock video game sound for TV" or "list of tv shows using Atari Donkey Kong sounds" to no avail - but in the 80s through the 2000s I would hear it all the time and immediately know exactly what the sound was! I thought I was the only one who ever noticed that.
@@GenXGrownUpit was Donkey Kong, or Atari Pac Man when Pac dies.
Possibley the most widely used sounds in Tv!
You're right! "Bleeps and bloops". The head of foley was probably like "Get me some video game bleeps and bloops for the scene when the kid is playing PlayStation."
Yeah! This one and Pac-Man.
My mother took me to buy this game when I was a child and within 10 minutes I was so sad that she took me back to the store to get my money back. That's when I found out that opened games were un-returnable. We begged and pleaded too and they wouldn't budge.
Same experience, but with Gorf!
That's why I always bought games at Long's drug Store (RIP). I knew I returned games more than I kept them. And they always gave a full refund without fuzz !!
I couldn't believe I returned Yar's Revenge, though !! :-)
For the Intellivision port, the same was thought.. but the developer was interviewed on the Retro Hour podcast and he said no, nothing of the sort, they, as is usual in tech, were just trying to get as much done as they could in the time they had.
I've heard Garry Kitchen talk about the development of this game. Garry really wanted to put more levels in this game but Coleco knew they were going to sell a bunch of cartridges whether it had the extra levels or not. So, yeah, Coleco did a crash grab, just like everyone else at the time.
And not only would people buy this game regardless of how it came out because of the craze about the arcade game, both this and the Intellivision version were sales jobs for the Colecovision. The Colecovision was so many light years beyond this and so close to the arcade, at some point someone in the C-Suite said, "Let the folks with the 2600 and Intellivision go over their friend's house around Christmas and have a look."
@@ApoplecticDialectics I bet that was their thinking. Also they had the Colecovision console displays in the stores where you could play. I was 13 at the time and we begged our parents for a Colecovision after playing it at the display using the evergreen excuse of "if we had a Colecovison we won't have to go to the arcade because the Colecovision was just as good as the arcade."
so it... was intentionally tanked??? by Garry's own admission.
@@polocatfan Garry did the best he could with the time and ROM space given. Nobody set out to make a bad game, but on the other hand, Coleco didn't want to put more money and time into it to make it better.
"We played the hell out of it anyway because it was all we had, and the only way to have Donkey Kong at home". That describes the situation for so many 2600 games for those of us (who were little kids during the first half of the '80s)
Same. As with this game and pacman. It was a huge disappointment but I played it anyway and enjoyed it for what it was.
The commodore 64 ports of this and pacman were way better.
I still remember coming home from school being so excited to play Donkey Kong. It is Atari history. I play the arcade version more today because now I can. Love your reviews.
Same here. Thanks for watching! 😁
In Atari 50 there's an interview with the programer. He said that justo making the first screen was like a miracle, and now everyone on the internet says it's the worst thing they have seen.
I loved this game, one of my most played, behind pitfall and yars revenge! I always thought the barrels looked like honeycomb cereal!
Yup, HoneyComb cereal!
I never hated playing Gingerbread Kong.......
It took me many years to realize Donkey Kong has a neckline. I always thought it was a sad face.
Despite the limitations... it's still light years of that mess of the DKjr. 2600 port.
Donkey Kong on Atari was a 4K rom, and compared to other games in 1982 was about the same, competency-wise, until Activision started blowing everyone out of the water. Pac Man was another game that year, so that should tell you something about where we were at.
Colecovision also came out that year (vs Atari in 1977), and was a 16k rom file. Not only did they have 4X the rom size to work with, they had 4+ years of console development to work with and improve upon, on Coleco’s own platform. Of course it wasn’t sabotaged, they did the best they could I’m sure, but they had literally everything in their favor for Colecovision, being able to design their own hardware+software to nail their own products.
👆 This.
I don't know why this "rumor" got started, the 2600 was already last-gen compared to the ColecoVision. People nowadays don't realize how 'expensive' the ColecoVision was to the 2600 which was already in most people's homes at the time. That last fact was why Coleco not only did 2600 ports but also released an adapter to play carts from a competing company that was pretty much the industry standard.
This was my first Atari game and yeah it was nothing like the CV version that I really wanted to play, I still played and enjoyed it as a kid. It wasn't until years later that I upgraded to an Atari 8-bit computer that I got the "superior" version of Donkey Kong that had all four levels in the US arcade order.
If current retrogamers are automatically comparing every Donkey Kong port to the NES version that they only want to play...well that's plain stupid.
I have always disliked how people state that they tanked the port as if it was a fact. It’s amazing Garry did as well as he did with the timeframe and a 4K limitation, which was standard. It’s an unfortunate rumor.
Yep. I've already heard it from commenters on this video! 😁
@@GenXGrownUpCompare to DK Jr. on Intellivision.
Naked purple Mario speaks for itself.
As a kid, I thought it was very strange that the two titans of the arcade, PAC-Man, and Donkey Kong, got sub-par releases for the Atari…I guess in my young mind, I couldn’t fathom the makers of video games actually being GREEDY and SHORT-SIGHTED when it came to video game development. That being said, this was miles better than Pac-Man.
Gingerbread man chucking chocolate chip cookies while kidnapping Lisa Simpson...
😅
and Don't forget him conjuring up Ghosts in level 2
Excellent description! LMAO. 😆
@@jasonminote7499 Did you ever notice that the 'ghosts' in level 2 were also the scorpions in the Atari 2600 version of Centipede?
As a kid I loved this game. I was just so happy to be getting to play Donkey Kong at all. I grew up in a town where arcade games were illegal, and it was rare we would go to a place with arcade games. Sometimes I'd see them on a show called Starcade. There was a book I got from the library called "How To Master The Video Games" and that was mostly how I learned about arcade games in that time period. So I had a ton of fun with this version of Donkey Kong. I also think kids kinda understood that the Atari 2600 is not going to be the same as the arcade game. That was just how it was for a while.
An arcade was illegal ?!? You're poor kid !!
So I was having a bad day… and then this video came up on my feed. Thanks GenX guy. Always look forward to your videos.
Oh, how kind! I'm glad I brought a little sunshine your way in an otherwise bad day. 🌞
42 years of these sounds tucked away in my subconscious never to be thought of again and you just awakened them...dammit!!
words can't express how disappointed i was when i got this when it came out. it was back to the arcade with the quarters i was supposed to use for my school lunch
Seeing this brings a smile to my face. I had both the 2600 and Colecovision. The graphics weren’t great but it was so much fun. So many days in the arcade so being able to play at home was great even if it didn’t look as good.
My brother was an expert at this game. There was one late night gaming session where he played this game for 3 hours straight.Those fireballs where moving like lighting.
Just remember that Donkey Kong was the game that came with the Colecovision. So that was their showcase game to demonstrate how much superior their console was better than the 2600.
I have to admit you made some good points on what Coleco might have been thinking when they released this and why. Of course, I could contrast that with the Colecovision ports of Centipede and Galaxian which were excellent. In fact I seem to recall one reviewer at the time praised the Colecovision version of Centipede over the 5200 port!
I loved the Centipede port. I even had the roller ball they released for it.
They sold 4.2 million of those Atari 2600 Donkey Kong carts, making it the third best selling VCS game of all time, so good job either way! In fact, they very likely sold more of the VCS versions than their own version, but it absolutely helped sell the Colecovision itself since it was a pack-in game.
In the next level of the 2600's original version of Donkey Kong I thought the fireballs looked like baby prams moving along.
Heh. Someone else said tea kettles. 😉
Programmed by Gary Kitchen of ACTIVISION fame. As you mention, it was quite challenging for him because of the angled “floors”. At the time that was a programming marvel. I really enjoyed the game myself 😊. Great vid!
Yeah, his first attempt of the game didn't have angled floors. David Crane challenged him to make it correct. 🙂
Crane was an ass they say always acting superior. Until he wasn't.@@BriansManCave
I think the truth is, the 2600 just wasn't a good enough system in 82, and it was on it's way out. Why would Coleco spend the time and money on producing a good version of this, or any other game, for a system that was being replaced? If anything, I'd believe that Atari themselves wanted this to be a less than spectacular port. After all, they would much rather sell the 5200, which actually had a good port of this game. And unlike Coleco's port on their own system, it had all the levels.
I enjoyed all of the Atari 2600 arcade ports as a kid as it was the only way to play those games at home, even pacman. I remember playing Defender at the arcade for the first time thinking, i was pretty good at the atari 2600 port and dying very quickly. I remember getting Donkey Kong 2600 port and i still played it a lot despite the limitations. Once I bought an Atari 600xl computer and played those metal cartridge games, then i realized the atari 2600 wasn't as good.
I was so young when I first played this version - I didn't know the difference. I had never seen the arcade version before.
I remember comparing the 2600 version to the Apple ][ version and deciding computers were the way to go! I never entirely ditched consoles though - I currently have a Nintendo Switch and a Vectrex that I keep meaning to finish restoring.
Maybe "sabotage" is too severe a term. Maybe more like "it's not a priority". This game was made around the same time as Atari's own port of Pac-Man to the 2600 and that was a much worse port. Both titles were expected to sell heavily from name value (and they both did) so going the extra mile to make a better game probably wasn't something the executives even understood.
I got this as a "hand me down" when i got the Atari 7800 (my first gaming console). I knew back then that it wasn't the best of versions, but it was nonetheless another game i could play along with my other games. I wasn't playing it for hours, but 10-15 minutes was enough until i played another. My gaming "allowable time" was usually limited to an hour or two if i was lucky to play on the big color tv in the living room. By the time i had a tv in my bedroom, i had the NES. Great memories ❤
Back then I didn’t like this version and played either the arcade or at my friend’s who had coleco vision. Knowing now what I learned about the 2600 I see this as a huge accomplishment for that system. Many of the 2600 games do amazing things and their programmers are brilliant
Growing up, I fully believed that those fireballs were teapots. Tonight, for the first time, I saw them as fireballs (though not immediately). Maybe due to the cleanliness of the video, or just dumb luck, but I finally see it!
The barrels always reminded me of honeycomb cereal
It’s amazing how good many Atari 2600 games were considering the console was designed to play Pong and Tanks, plus Jay Miner added the ability to repeat and stretch sprites. There was a lot of clever programming going on given the limitations.
Really good video Jon. On the surface 2600 DK looks pretty weak when compared to other arcade ports on the 2600 but there was just something about this game that kept me coming back. I would still occasionally play this port even after I got a Colecovision for Christmas in 1982. I think it was probably the challenge of the 2nd screen when the score would get around 100K that kept me wanting to play this sometimes. One thing I would do that was different than you is once the score started getting up there I would go ahead and get the hammer on the second screen and kill the fireball on the 3rd floor. I did this so there was zero chance of getting killed by the fireball if it tried to jump a gap and chase me down. Another interesting tidbit about this game is that I think it was one of the games that Todd Rogers had the record high score on the Twin Galaxies website years ago. After his Activision Dragster time was proven to be fake people started looking at his other record scores and the 2600 DK score was one that stood out because his score was light years ahead of the second place score. The best I ever did years ago was probably 120-130K and like you said the game almost gets to be unfair with the way the fireballs vibrate and often jump the gaps when your score gets up around 100K range. I don't remember what Rodgers had put on the TG site for this record score but it seemed ridiculously high.
Me and my brothers loved the ColecoVision, we thought we were hot stuff having the best console compared to Atari and Intellivision and what we naively perceived as such an "arcade perfect" version of Donkey Kong. Time and maturity change that view of course, I grew to love the Atari 2600 too later on in the aftermarket days, it was fun to discover so many other multiplatform games that instead played better on the 2600 versus the other two machines. Fun gameplay almost always wins out over cutting edge graphics in the end.
Donkey Kong was so coveted by me that I asked for it twice during a time period when I only got 2 carts per year. I got the 2600 version, and then later the AtariSoft c64 version. Loved them both.
While many people might not appreciate the complexity associated with the hammer, the game has a rather substantial chunk of code dedicated to it. There isn't enough time in each scan line to handle all of the normal decision making and also enable/disable missile 1 and the ball at the necessary times, so during vblank the game performs all of the decision making that will be needed during the lines that might contain the hammer and stores in RAM the values to be written to the sprite registers for each line. This wouldn't really represent the best use of ROM resources if the goal was a 4K cartridge, but demonstrates a great deal of effort and cleverness on the part of Garry Kitchen. If the game had omitted the hammer, and were willing to accept flickering barrels on later stages, it could pretty easily have used the saved RAM to keep an extra copy of the barrel state, and swapped barrel states every frame. If flicker were tolerable on the fireaball stages, those could have been improved by alternating frames between the current style of fireballs and one fireball that could move around the screen.
An interesting historical quirk of the Atari 2600 and bank switching is that when not using a custom ROM chip, a 4K cartridge would have required two chips (the ROM plus a 74xx-series part) but bank-switching designs from the 1980s required four. In fact, a single common-off-the-shelf chip from 1980 (74LS153) could replace all three of the control chips, but I don't think any such design was known to be possible prior to 2007.
Mario’s sideburns and honker nose ruled.
Yeah, how I so remember when that game came out for the 2600. My brothers and I would play the crap out of it and I do remember it getting pretty difficult, especially on the second screen when getting up towards the 100K mark. One of my friends did have a Colecovision and do remember playing that version quite a bit as well. I do have a Colecovision in my basement, with the "Atari adapter" that allowed it to play 2600 games. What I also really remember is getting the IBM PC version of Donkey Kong around the same time and playing it on my Dad's IBM PC. Despite the CGA graphics, it was actually a pretty faithful representation of the arcade version, including having all four of the screens as they appear in the arcade, and even including the "cut scenes" between levels with the appropriate music like the arcade (as best can be rendered using the "PeeCee" speaker as had no sound card at the time). It came on a single self-booting 5 1/4 inch floppy disk.
Wow. I forgot what this looked like! You’re right. It was still Donkey Kong at home for Atari. Arcades ruled back then. 20 tokens or more for a 5 dollar bill!😅
Thanks for another great time warp of growing up back then. I played this when it first came out as well. I traded it for spider man, temporarily, and ended up swapping for the game permanently, eventually. Keep up the good work!
Glad you enjoy it!
We knew our 2600 was outdated in 1983 but the thing was still fun. Once we got a Colecovision we realized how much better things could get.
Hi, Jon.👋 Wow, does that ever remind me of how Donkey Kong was also on my Intellivision back in the day. Thank you for the video, buddy.👍
My pleasure!
Be happy that the 2600 got a version this good. The original Intellivision version has to be the worst of the bunch.
After seeing what versions for the other 8 bit home computers at the time looked like, I believe Coleco actually did hold back a bit to try and sell their systems.
I've played the Inty version, and it's sadistically bad!
The Atari 2600 (and as an extension, it's game catalog) were much like VHS, they weren't the best out there, but they were the most popular.
I agree with your assessment, not sabotage, just a company looking to make the best financial decision they could at the time.
I picked this up recently after snagging a 2600+ and I think it's a fine game. I've even managed to get one of my teenage kids to play it!
When you first look at DK 2600, you know right away what game it is supposed to be, and while it wasn't amazing, it was a decent effort. My biggest gripe is it having only 2 stages, as it was common to only have 3, but only 2, WTF!? As stated the cart size could only do so much, and while there is a killer homebrew version of DK, called Donkey Kong "Arcade", that shows what could have been. A game like that probably never would have happened back then, as programmers just didn't have the resources that so many have today. Even though I had a ColecoVision, possibly the best version of the time, I also had the 2600 cart adapter and would have loved a better version than what was offered.
I absolutely believe the Patrick Ewing draft lottery was fixed. I absolutely believe Michael Jordan’s experiment with baseball was due to a secret suspension for gambling. And I absolutely believe Coleco tanked the 2600 version of Donkey Kong. We need more conspiracy theories in retro gaming for folks like me to believe.
Hahaha! I'll see what I can find for ya!
I remember being 13 requesting to rent 2600 Donkey Kong from the local video store in small town Ruidoso for $5 for the week-end and then not coming in to take it for some reason- the clerk was upset as others wanted to put it on hold it for them-. I felt bad... well until I played it - well :) I still should have called to cancel. 1st and last time ever cancelling without notice.
I did get my own later for Christmas - and I played and appreciated it. More so I never liked paying $3 a day for a rent /$5 a weekend - when I could own it after a few rentals.
It may not have been the Donkey Kong when deserved, but it was what we got. When i got my 2600 + this was one of the first games i had to buy.
In the mid-'90s, I thought Mario going up the ladders looked like an upside-down Stimpy, and still can't unsee it.
Mario looks like a chicken
The day I got this game (with loved ones no longer here) has huge sentimental value for me, it's actually my #1 Atari childhood memory.
As for the game...level 1 is actually pretty good. Level 2 though feels like they did a careless rush job taking the easy way out.
This is one of the first games that my parents bought for me and my brothers for Christmas 1982, when we got our first Atari 2600. I stayed up all night on Christmas Eve in 1982 playing Donkey Kong, as our parents let us open the Atari on Christmas Eve. The game isn't bad for what it was at the time. I played the dickens out of it as an 8 year-old kid when I got it. I still envied anyone that owned a ColecoVision or computer back in 1982 that could actually play a more accurate representation of the arcade classics!
I love this game and I played a lot back then! I didn't know if it was good or bad, it was just fun for me.
We're just not gonna talk about the fact that, despite this being a lackluster port, a lot of TV shows used the putt-putt-putt sound effects from this port as the quintessential video game noise?
Also I remember thinking Mario was a panda, "Pauline" was a lamb, and "Donkey Kong" was a gingerbread man as you said. The fact that Mario became a headless pixellated blob as he climbed ladders was also a WTF moment in my childhood. Thankfully, I also had the C64 cartridge version and the local Pizza Hut had the arcade game, so I did learn what they were supposed to be.
We've been talking about it! Another viewer mentioned that and there's a short thread of agreement. 😁
I wish I had kept my stuff from my childhood. I had a donkey Kong game and watch console and a Casio watch with a game on it.
I remember my brother buying this at a local electronics store in town called Deyorse's. They let him sample it first before buying it. I did not think he should, but he decided to. I have never really liked this version knowing the ColecoVision version was so great in comparison... But we only had Atari and it was still cool he got it so we could play at home. The barrels look like Honey-Comb cereal!
Seeing how Pacman turned out, I would say Donkey Kong was on the mark for the quality. Of course, in my younger days, I didn't seem to mind the differences between this port and the arcade version. So, I was like many people just to have a version.
I remember seeing the Donkey Kong Machine on the cover of the Coleco Atari 2600 Box & as a 10 year old Kid I assumed that the Coleco Game Will look like the Arcade Game,I bought this game with Christmas money at Video Concepts & needless to say disappointed!!!!!!
It’s hard to say if Coleco was trying to screw over other systems.
This Donkey Kong probably like yourself has a special place in our Hearts.
Loved the video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I gotta say…I was so excited to get this game. Even though it was truncated, I still enjoyed it and played the heck out of it.
I bought the CV system while in school in 1982. One roommate had a 2600, but we almost never played it. The CV was just more appealing visually in comparison. I don't think we concerned ourselves with the corporate strategies that might have been in play at that time 😅
In think it was probably gimped for financial reasons but it still holds up and I enjoyed watching your playthrough Jon :-) Keep up the awesome work!
My 8 year old son loves to make fun of me playing this game, still fun even though I begged my parents for a Colecovision due to how much better it looked on that system. Sounds are so nostalgic to me even though the game is underwhelming in retrospect. Good video and love your channel.
Absolutely perfect version given the hardware limitation. I played a lot and it was pure magic.
Hadn't really thought about it, but it's true that modern gamers have never had to deal with the rationalization process of "Does it look like the arcade game?", "Does it play like the arcade game?", "Is it fun regardless?" computing to a final "Is it good?". Heck, modern gamers don't even have arcade games to port from. :P
It still sold 4 000 000 copies.
I got Donkey Kong for my Intellivision and felt that Coleco tanked that version as well. I was pissed but still played the heck out of that game.
One other thing to consider - Atari Corp themselves re-released this game along with a few other Coleco created games in the 2600 "Fun is Back" era in 1987 (CX26143). Not sure if that means Atari gave it their "stamp of approval", probably more like they had the rights to produce it, so they did.
But, as mentioned the time limitations, and the limitations of what was on hand to create games in the early 80s - it's just what we got. :D
Played the heck out of DK on the VCS! Stiull play it today!
If a better game (with an 8k ROM) meant pushing the release just one financial quarter out, it didn't have a chance. Corporate America rarely has the foresight greater than 3 months. To this day, games are commonly prematurely released. The second screen had Kong fall down head first in the arcade, right?
That's right. In the US ordering, the second screen (rivets) ends with DK plummeting to his doom (until the next level). 😁
Haha I always said the fireballs looked like lamps and the barrels looked like Honeycomb cereal. I loved this port and even Pac-Man. Of course they weren’t close to the arcade versions but I didn’t expect them to be.
Donkey Kong caused quite a stir in it's early days. Universal Pictures tried to sue Nintendo over the rights to King Kong (Universal lost). Later, Atari was slated to release the Famicom in the USA until Atari execs saw Donkey Kong running on an Adam computer. Atari pulled out of the deal & well, you know the rest.
That's right. Coleco had the console rights to Donkey Kong while Atari had the rights to the computer port. Coleco claimed that having Donkey Kong on the Adam wasn't a violation since the Adam was more of an add-on to the Colecovision console.
Atari didn't pull out of the deal because of Coleco showing off DK on the Adam. Nintendo and Coleco cleared up the debacle. The only reasons the deal fell through was because of the video game crash of 1983, and Ray Kassar, Atari's CEO who had been spearheading the negotiations for the Nintendo deal, was terminated, setting the nearly-done deal back to nothing.
the colecovision donkey kong was a warp zone on first level withnthe broken ladder. Learned it from a friend back in 1982 from a friend of mine. Im sure theres a video somewhere of how to do it on youtube.
I remember playing this version till no end, then my parents got me colecovision with gyruss for my 8th birthday DK was the pack in game my Jaw dropped as it was nearly 1:1 with the arcade (or a least I thought it was at the time).
Donkey Kong on the 2600 is one of those titles that when I see a video or image of the game, I get those nostalgic "warm and fuzzy" feelings.
I think Jon is spot-on with his opinion. Gary did what he could with 4K, and in my opinion, I think the visuals and sounds are well done. The angled girders are especially impressive for the system. Yes, the game can get repetitive, but you can say that for most 2600 titles.
I had a Coleco Gemini, which was a 2600 clone machine, and it came with Donkey Kong and Mouse Trap - and I played both to death. I think Mouse Trap is another really nice port and recommend it.
Now, if you want to see a really bad Donkey Kong port, check out the Intellivision version 😄
I always felt like the Intellivision version was even worse - with it having hardware more or less 1/2 way between the 2600 and Colecovision, it was even more embarrassing for that one to get the same 2 screens...
I agree. The Inty version was a travesty.
I have always liked 2600 Donkey Kong. I played it quite often even though I had 7800 Donkey Kong, too.
In 1982 the Commodore 64 was supreme with a 480i color monitor and Donkey Kong.
Atari, Coleco, NES, SMS are 240i and SNES is 480p in 1991. I remember games looked better on the C64 than the NES. They was higher resolution.
👌
I was born in the 21st century, and I can tell you that these games are great! (Secret quest is my favorite)
All Atari games were limited. Although Ms. Pacman actually looked much better than Pacman.
Would have been worth mentioning that this was the second game he worked on after _Space Jockey,_ and the fact that he was able to make 2600 games in the first place was specifically because he had reverse-engineered the hardware, meaning he was the first person to make a 2600 game without being part of Atari, where people were trained, or Activision/Imagic, which was comprised of ex-Atari engineers who were also trained. As far as I remember, the project started out as a proof of concept rather than him being asked to make the game. A good example of him going the extra mile was the aforementioned non-mirrored stage 1, but also the fact that the girders were ramped, which was challenging in itself. They started out flat.
No need - you covered it. 😁
I bought my first Atari VCS at Christmas 1981 then in 1982 I moved to a school that had a computer club. The school's TRS-80 was trivially easy to program in BASIC and that fooled me into thinking that the Atari must also be pretty easy to program.
I was so wrong. Programming the Atari without modern development tools is brain-melting. For programmers to produce anything of value was miraculous. It makes me mad that Warner so utterly failed to acknowledge their programmers' genius and acted like they were just a barely-necessary expense.
I got this cart as a kid and I was ok with it. Then a cousin got a Colecovision and I found myself playing that version than my own. Also, a ROM hack came out sometime ago for the 2600 version that has all 4 levels of the arcade version, and that version brought me back to my youth.
And yes, I say Coleco had some financial shenanigans going on, as other arcade ports by Atari and other companies were much better.
Six beams with the Gingerbread man on the left. Looks good!
For me, there was no conspiracy. Coleco was shoveling money from Cabbage Patch Kids sales into their home video game division. As you said, Coleco made more money off selling video game carts for other platforms than on the ColecoVision console and carts for it. Although the ColecoVision console and games were more advanced than the other consoles on the market at the time, I always felt they should have stuck to the much more profitable game cart market than spending boatloads of cash developing a game system. There was no way that Coleco was going to knock the crown off of the widely sold numbers of Atari 2600 game consoles.in kid's hands. Mattel almost tanked because of the cash they invested in the Intellivivion platform.
I enjoyed the game back in the day. I think I already had a VIC-20 when I got my Atari 2600 version so I was already migrating away from my Atari, but I did enjoy it. The first screen is really good, bit I feel the flaming barrels were no fun on the second screen.
Having any version of DK at the time was a blessing lol. Good times!😊
As a kid with questionable taste who played E.T. for hours, even I couldn't stand this Donkey Kong. (No offense to those with fond memories. 😀) BUT - the Atari 8-bit version? Now we're talking. To this day, I believe it's the best home version ever released.
I said before that would be nice seening an e.t. video like these, but also would be nice to see Mario Bros
Heard. Thanks for the suggestions.
No it was not tanned intentionally. On the contrary it’s a VERY technical well made game. Also I think compared to other VCS games looks not to bad. And most of all it plays really well. The controls are sharp. And about the 4K well it was the classic thing. Cartridges cost a lot of money. If they would have went with 8k they would had needed to put a higher price = risk less sales.
What many do not speak about it it’s sales. It sold VERY well on Atari VCS. Actially I think I sold more units there than on Colecovision so it made tons of money for them.
I think it made totally commercial sense. Make a good game for 4K. It would sell well. Give a taste of good gameplay and if one wanted to play all the levels with superior graphics. Then hey why don’t get a Colecovision system.
So no conspiracy. Just smart business mindset
Coleco had their own programmers to make the games for the Colecovision, and paid 3rd party programmers to make the games for other systems. Garry Kitchen did the best he could do for that time... he almost made the girders straight instead of angled, but was challenged by David Crane to make them right. I am curious to know who programmed DK for the Intellivision, so far nobody knows 😁
According to the Blue Sky Rangers website, it was Frank Johnson of Roklan. Johnson also did DK Jr, Carnival, Mouse Trap, and Zaxxon for Coleco (the programmer is unknown for the other three Intellivision releases) as well as all Parker/Parker Bros. games except Frogger (that was Paul Crowley).
@@mdoerty13 Interesting! Thanks for the info 🙂
It is a decent game for 4k. I loved Donkey Kong in the arcade, but I got bored with this version pretty quickly. I think I borrowed it from a friend. I later bought an Atari computer, and Donkey Kong on the Atari 8-bit was excellent!
I was so disappointed in this game when it came out.
A friend bought the Colecovision and had Donkey Kong, and when they saw my version on the VCS they laughed.
I can't blame them, it was not good.
As you said, I don't think it was viable to make a bad version, but Atari had a massive hold on the industry, and Colecovision wanted that.
They would have known that not everyone would be able to buy both the Atari and Colecovision and so they would lose $$ if they didn't make an Atari port of Donkey Kong.
Plus, it would showcase just how good the Colecovision was.
I remember wanting a Colecovision even MORE after seeing Donkey Kong on the VCS.
If it was nearly as good as the Colecovision then I would have felt content with my Atari and not cared about the Colecovision.
To this day, when I think about Colecovision, I think Donkey Kong.
I think a great port of Donkey Kong on the VCS back then would have hurt Colecovision console sales..
I believe Coleco subtly sabotaged it with choices like the 4kb cart size. It made the game look inferior without being exceptionally poor, ensuring that it would still sell due to its fun gameplay and the demand from kids for Donkey Kong. This strategy also conveniently made ColecoVision appear superior. It seems like a win-win situation to save on cart size costs while also making your own gaming system look better. How could they resist?
Don't think I ever got to play this in color, my parents gave me an old b&w TV for my room to play my 2600 on
I've always liked playing this version, it was all I knew growing up
I enjoyed this port back in the day. I knew it looked bad and only had two levels, but it was still fun. I had a TI 994a (and still do) and my brother borrowed Donkey Kong from a friend for it. It was amazing in comparison. I never got a copy of that version though. Later on I got a Coleco Vision and played that version a lot. I have heard the debate and think you are right about it being a financial decision and not necessarily sabotage. They often rushed ports out. Just look at Pac-Man. I had fun with that game for the same reasons though.
I played this so much when I got it. Thanks!