ATARI 2600 Donkey Kong - THREE different version - Original & REMAKES - WOW!
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- čas přidán 5. 05. 2022
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![ColecoVision Longplay [001] Donkey Kong](/img/n.gif)
Garry's just done an interview video on another channel setting the record straight. He only had 90 days from start to finish in order to push DK out for the holidays. He simply didn't have time to do more with it, and couldn't have really utilized the 8k. No time to complete 4 levels. This was one guy, working without the tools we have now. So, no, Coleco did not tank this version.
OH YES, it was GenXGrownup and I just watched that, it was amazing. I also listen to his podcast, it was an hour with Garry Kitchen. He really set the record straight and it was a great interview. I loved the part where he said he could've pulled off four level if he had the time and an 8KB cartridge. The home brews are 32kb - Thank you for the comment!
Did not help either that Coleco did not want to spent another 50 cent per cart for 8 k or a little bit more for 16k I assume. And yes the schedules the programmers often had in those days were gruesome, he did an amazing job back then. ET had a similar insane schedule of roughly 90 days or even less.
Add on top that those guys had zero documentation on the system they had to reverse engineer it themselves!
Btw. I never believed that Coleco held that version back, by the time DK came out the 2600 was hoplessly outdated for arcade ports, it fared well up until space invaders but everything after that was not really possible anymore.
You can see what Coleco did with the Atari Home Computer ports, they were pretty close to the arcade version and definitely as good or better than the Colecovision one, they simply had a better system to work with!
@@werpu12 Facts - Add Pac-man to the list also, short time frame to push the carts our before Christmas. I bought Donkey on the 2600 when it was released and almost returned it because it only had two level. Oddly Garry said, no one complained to him at after playing that it only had 2 of the 4 levels. I think it's because in the arcade most people couldn't get past level one or two. You know I own an actually Donkey Kong arcade machine and when we have parties, I watch people play it, I don't think I ever saw any one get past the first screen,, I'm serious. But when the 2600 cartridge came our I had played DK so much I knew all four screens very well. Back to the cartridge, I would love to hear Garry explain how in the world could he get Mario to walk up an incline as in the first screen? That had to me so hard to figure out on the 2600? It wasn't shortly after this, that I sold all of my Atari 2600 and game to buy the Colecovision - just so I could play a four level Donkey Kong!! Fun times for sure!!
@@StevesRetroGaming Given that I never had a 2600 but we had an Atari 400, I never enountered those bad arcade ports, the A400 was a completely different league and if Bushnell had its way we probably would have seen following console history Atari 5200 (aka 800/400 as console) by 1980 and an Atari Amiga console by 84, and Nintendo never would have stood a chance with the NES to get a foothold outside of japan.
You must remember Jay Miner was the mastermind behind all 3 machines the 2600, the Atari 400/800 line and then the Amiga, they were basically iterations on what he could do graphics and soundwise with the technology available to him at that period of time he designed those graphics and sound chips!
The coleco as well was an interesting piece of hardware, used basically the same setup as the Ti994/a and it shows what the TI could have been gameswise.
Loved the machine for what it was! Never had one though, but the best machine together with the Vectrex of the pre Nintendo generation!
Well it’s been a silly myth so glad he finally put some common sense in those who claimed it 😂
The 2017 32k version of Donkey Kong on the Atari 2600 uses up and down scrolling like the NES Mario game Wrecking Crew and it was 40k.
Yes, I thought it was a little confusing at first, heck I want to know where all the barrels and fireballs are, But I got used to it really fast and found the game really fun!
Maybe one day we'll even see Wrecking Crew on the 2600?
Watch out for those honeycombs. The 2600 was all I had when I was 4. Hadn't been to an arcade yet. So this was fine. I played it a ton
YES, I see your point/ My problem was I played this a ton at a local bowling alley and could clear all four level, so when the 2600 only had two levels, I was so disappointed. Thank you for watching and your comment!
I absolutley loved the Coleco version. Played it a ton at Thad’s house.
YES, it was the reason I sold all of my Atari 2600 stuff as a kid to buy the Colecovision - Just to play a good Donkey Kong! Thank you for the comment!
The screen scrolling in the 2nd version is an interesting idea to compensate for the vertical orientation.
Oh, I had to rewatch this video, and yes the scrolling was interesting and pretty incredible for the 2600 - Thank you for the comment!
Yes and totally mess up the gameplay. I mean even more so
@@StevesRetroGamingsorry what is so incredible with that? I mean there is plenty of 2600 games with vertical scrolling. Not so hard to do when you can control the drawing of the whole screen scan line based right?
The 2nd version is far superior, no flickering and every level is there, you can forgive the scrolling.
Yes, it was very impressive, levels, sounds, music and fun to play! Thank you for the comment!
So basically the real weakness of the 2600 was not its processing power or graphics capability - but companies being too cheap with memory?
Deadlines, workflow, and overall maturity and documentation of the platform have a major impact as well. The company wants the game on the shelves by a certain time, so sometimes It doesn't matter if they give you a bigger ROM size if you don't have the time to utilize it. Homebrew programmers can take as long as they want to work on a project, sometimes taking years to fine tune and make improvements before they consider the game complete. They aren't beholden to corporate overlords breathing down their necks or interfering with their vision, either. Decades of programming tricks and knowledge factor in as well, some of the things they are pulling off today weren't even conceived of or considered possible back then. The improvement in programming tools is also a consideration, it's just so much faster and easier to accomplish things now, and some of the tools that programmers today take for granted today didn't even exist then. It's a miracle that they were able to push that hardware as much as they did back then, some of those dudes were legit geniuses.
FACTS - Yes, I could not have said any of that better!! Thank you for the comment!
Amazing what they can make nowadays with the technology I have alot of 2600 homebrews I forget I'm on the 2600 myself
Number 2 for me
There are some amazing 2600 homebrews, I have a 2600 Pac-man video coming out soon. Thank you for the comment!
@@StevesRetroGaming It's much easier. I've written games for the RCA Studio 2, an even more limited machine. You have the big advantage of cycle accurate emulators, and rebuild with a rapid turn round time in seconds.
@@paulscottrobson Oh, I would love to check out our game, I do own an original RCA Studio, but have never made any videos about it, I would imaging there are emulators for it too then - Thank you for the comment!
from what the programmer stated in a different video, spending the extra money for a bigger chip would have 'only' eaten into their profits since they either came close to selling out or did sell out of cartridges released for Christmas of that year.
Yes, I just watched that interview with Garry Kitchen on GenXgrownup. it was very very interesting!
Which is why the crash happened in 1983. Not that that's Garry Kitchen's fault, rather like ET wasn't HSW's fault.
@@paulscottrobson nothing wrong with ET and is on many peoples top 10 list.
Great video
Thank you for watching and your comment!
@StevesRetroGaming yup was great I like the 7800 version btw but I lower volume 😆
@@rustymixer2886 WOW, I haven't played that in over 30 years I think, I need to fire up a 7800 emulator and check it out.
I have always liked Donkey Kong. Thanks for another cool video.👍
Still my Favorite Arcade game of all time - Thank you for the comment!
T board order is Japan's Order...also the elevator level is similar to Krazy Kong
OH, since the Cement factory level is my favorite, I like the Japanese order better. Have you ever read why the order was changed for the USA?
If you could get that last version to run on mess it does a good job at cleaning up the flicker. But I have been unable to get it to start. If anyone knows how. Please let me know.
That would be nice, I've never used Mess before, I always use Stella, is it worth checking out? Thank you for the comment!
Those homebrew versions puts the official 2600 version of that game into shame and you did an amezing playtrough off all those versions as well😁
YES, they are so so AMAZING, show what Atari could've done if they didn't want the games on a 4K ROM and only give a few weeks time frame to make. I can't imagine how well they would've sold back then, HECK remember the ColecoVision used Donkey Kong to help sell the units by including it as the free pack in game... I sold my Atari 2600 and bought the Colecovision back in the game so I could play an arcade like Donkey Kong. Thank you for the comment.
Yes they had significantly more ram to work with, infinite time and way better tools.
I'm only getting the 30fps version of this video, for some reason. So I can't really judge the last game.
I had that problem trying to record game #3, OBS was set to 30fps and it was bad, but taking it to 60fps helped. Thank you for the comment!
@@StevesRetroGaming My point is that CZcams still seems to have only shown me the 30fps version. I don't know why if you recorded at 60fps.
Which version did you like the best? #1, #2, #3?
Here is the Garry Kitchen interview link: medium.com/swlh/how-i-spent-my-summer-of-1982-59638293f358
The article is terrific!
Great game 👍
Thank you for the comment!
I assume the third game doesn't flicker live
True, I didn't really noticed until I screen captured with OBS at 30fps,
I like Donkey Kong VCS the best. I'm just trying to figure out how the heck they managed to get that kind of sound out of the TIA... did they put a POKEY chip in the cart? The third game in the list is technically more accurate thanks to a full view of the screen but man, it lacks the character of Donkey Kong VCS.
Yes, the sound is incredible, since you can download the ROM online, I'm sure it's not a special chip, but programming magic? There is alot of data on these on the Atariage forums for more technical details. Thank you for the comment!
Atari 2600 Donkey Kong [AtariAge homebrews]
Love AtariAge, so many Amazing homebrews - Thank you for the comment!
What's your high score on the arcade version of Donkey Kong? Mine is 861K.
Who are you
NICE, my HS is no where as close to yours, Thank you for the comment!
The second version was probably executed the best. The third was nice but the flicker was really bad. Not sure if this is just something that isn't an issue "in real life" or not.
Yes, I really like that one also, it's just so incredible! Thank you for the comment!
These homebrews are a flicker-fest. It's just too much.
I still prefer the original, but with the other two stages added (there's a hack that do that, it's pretty cool).
I have to AGREE - I found out how BAD this was when I was recording my gameplay. I recorded at 30fpd and then I went to edit the video, it was HORRIBLE, only 1/2 of the sprites would be recorded. I had to go back and replay/record everything at 60fps just to get a watchable video - Thank you for the comment!
The #1 Donkey Kong from Coleco was pretty bad. The barrel level was decent, but the rivet level was terrible. The #2 Donkey Kong looks great, but it does not seem to play very well. I think the #3 actually seems to play more like the arcade version even though it does not look as good as the #2 version.
The flicker on both the 30 FPS and the 60 FPS look bad. No one ever seems to be able to capture the video from these flickering home brew games properly. My guess is they would look okay with an FPS that was NOT a multiple of 30, such as 20 or 45, but nothing seems to be able to capture at those unusual FPS rates. Recording off a CRT screen would probably yield better results than video capture.
YES, 60FPS is needed to record the Atari 2600 games that used sprite flicker to get more on screen like that Donkey Kong, I originally recorded it at 30FPS and 1/2 of the sprites were missing, so I had to play again and capture at 60FPS to get the full sprite. It's still amazing how programmers figure out all of these trick on such a limited machine. So much more information on Atariage forums, Thank you for the comment.
@@StevesRetroGaming , I think CZcams may have converted the video to 30 FPS or something close. The sprites do not disappear, but they still go on and off only a couple of times per second rather than the 30 times per second that normal flicker would display. This is still an excellent comparison video. Thank you for posting it. I always wonder what the 2600 would have been like if they had bumped up the sprites from 2 to 4 like on the Atari computers and if they had bumped up the RAM from 128 bytes to 256 bytes. I watched a video where they explained how they tried to save every penny possible when designing the machine. The savings techniques forced them to "race the beam", which made the 2600 harder to program but actually gave it more speed and flexibility. However, a couple more sprites and a little more memory would have cost only a dollar or two more per machine, and it would have given the programmers a lot more to work with while greatly reducing flicker.
@@originalfred66 Race The Beam, I have that book here someplace. The history of the Atari 2600 is so fascinating, how it was designed to Play Pong and combat. Then somehow programmers figured out how to do so much more... There are some great YT videos with David Crane & Garry Kitchen talking about it. Great information - Thank you
3 uses modern hardware that could technically run multiple mame DK’s simultaneously. lol not fair to compare.
@@datacipher I can play these ROMS on my Harmony cartridge on an original 2600, so I'm don't understand the MAME part. Help me out please - Thank you for the comment!
Billy Mitchell would dominate in this crap version of DK.
Now that would be an interesting video. Thank you for the comment!
Coleco had the best version on purpose the other stunk was done on purpose
Yep Coleco had the rights and specifically wrote a horrible port for the others.
YEP, I think that was the main reason I bought a Colecovision as soon as it came out.
Nope... that is a myth and has been debunked by the guy who did the 2600 version, btw. the Atari 400/800 version is equally good if not better than the Coleco version. The problem simply were only 4k cartriges, 90 days development time and a machine which at that time was completely undocumented and only about 7-10 people in the world knew how to program for! The 2600 simply did not have the power to pull off a game like Donkey Kong, less so with the default 4k they were aiming for or 8k. All newer ports were using 32k which was unheard of for Cartriges at the time of the original games release and even then you only can get a reinterpretation not an arcade perfect port. At that time only the Colecovision and the Atari Computers could pull this off and they did (and maybe the Ti994/a but that machine already was dead)
What I hated most from the Atari version was Donkey Kong himself just looked terrible and only moved when you moved Mario left or right.
OMG, how would you even describe Donkey Kong? A gingerbread man? Definitely not a Gorilla. But I was mostly disappointed in the only two levels, I felt about as ripped off as when I bought the 2600 pac-man when it was released.
@@StevesRetroGaming It's great to see these better versions made today with the 16K Donkey Kong and Pac Man 8K. If only we had gotten these versions back in 1982 the video crash may not have happened. Although we still had E.T. to deal with.
Truthfully I remember when the Commodore 64 came out and it was like revolutionary and did way more, so I thought, than a video game console and everyone shifted in that direction.
When they showed that ad with being able to program your own games with the little video of the rocket ship having been programmed on the C64, I was hooked. But that little rocket ship was probably it. I was thinking worlds into it but there was probably nothing more than that.
Needless to say, I never bought a Commodore 64. We did, however, get an original IBM PC, so I played Sierra games on it. I liked them.
But yeah, I'd like to get these updated cartridges for my Atari which I still have: the VCS with the 6 switches on it and not 4. I'm never happy when I see videos about the Atari and they show the newer 2600 version that came out later.
These new versions kind of right the versions we got originally. Like I'm imagining it's 1982 again when I play them and looking over what happened then.
@@StevesRetroGaming I just missed out on the Atari 2600 era. I went straight to Atari 8 bit. But when I see comments like this I get a bit confused as many other 2600 games had graphics of a similar quality. Take for example Centipede (just a random game I thought of). Your player is just a square and the mushrooms are just rectangles. Even a well regarded classic like Yars Revenge gets by on the game play - The graphics themselves are very primitive. How did Donkey Kong or Pac Mac get singled out? Or did you have to be there at the time to understand the subtleties?