DK Arcade 2600 - Playable Demo!

[PhoenixMoonPatrol]

Very strange as it works perfectly now. I haven't changed any of Stella's setting at all either. Its possible that my PC was glitching because i had been doing allot of video editing around the time I had tried the game out. I appreciate the help though,thanks. Working great now and wow this is really a great version. Probably my favorite Donkey Kong version ever for the 2600 now. Well done.

Which binary(s?) Which version of Stella?

 

DK23Arcade2600.bin and DK20141011BcDemoH.bin both work just fine here on Stella 4.7.2.

[retrogoober]

HOLY CRAP this game is one amazing achievement, thank you SO much, such a long time DK fan, and this could NOT be better, all the gameplay mechanics, challenge/difficulty are there, nice homage to the original DK 2600 in ways mixed with genuine arcade gameplay, sorry but LIGHT years better than DKVCS, save maybe for animation quality, BUT I suspect programming sacrificed overall presentation and gameplay for graphics, would love to hear from experienced programmers.

 

SO cant wait for full release and hope Nintendo doesn't block it

 

Thanks again for your work

 

Lee

 

pic - hard demo

[Arenafoot]

SO cant wait for full release and hope Nintendo doesn't block it

I'll second that!!!!

[AtariBrian]

Would be cool to see it released on a Coleco tan cart like the Ladybug special edition one .

[insertclevernamehere]

I didn't know about this. Now I need to decide if I get this or Opcode's DKA for the SGM. It'll probably come down to which one comes out on cartridge first.

[AtariBrian]

I didn't know about this. Now I need to decide if I get this or Opcode's DKA for the SGM. It'll probably come down to which one comes out on cartridge first.

 

Looks like you will be getting this one then

[chewy]

This takes the cake for most NES looking VCS game.   you hear that?  cake.

[PitfallHarry77]

This is such awesome work and I would love to get hold of it on cartridge!! I was also wondering if it would be possible to get a PAL version of the ROM release for all of us in PAL land?? I humbly bow down before you lucky people who have an NTSC copy of this fantastic game. Please help us - I am sure it would make lots of us very happy!!! The colours aren’t actually too far off but Jumpman / Mario is pink and red and Pauline is a sickly looking green. The drum with the flames is also a bit strange. It just isn’t quite the same as the incredible screenshots. I would love to play this with the family while we are in isolation. How good is the Atari 2600 right now and how would it be to travel back and release these arcade ports back in the early 80s?? The Atari 2600 really does have a very impressive arcade lineup and it is great fun playing them right now.

Edited April 7, 2020 by PitfallHarry77

[MissCommand]

You guys did such a great version of Donkey Kong here! A great addition to the 2600 library!  ?

 

I wonder if anyone has seen the following review on this YouTube channel? It appears several years old...

 

 

[Lantesh]

I just discovered this today in a YouTube review.  I can't wait to try it.  It looks great!

[johannesmutlu]

I played this version and let me tell ya ,it’s an absolute incredible port, it looks & sounds very acceptible compared to the arcade among other versions of donkeykong,it definitely puts the official version into SHAME,i hardly can believe it runs on an actual atari 2600, however,it’s obvious that the poor 8bit cpu cannot do this all atonce sadly,so that’s why the arm processor inside the harmony cart becomes very handy as it will partially take over the main cpu and do all it’s dirty tasks like overdriving the TIA chip to generate such incredible graphics & sounds,while the main cpu could focus on AI or it could be that the main cpu will do the audio while the ARM processor will do the  graphical and AI stuff,so it’s up to the homebrew developer,i first tout that the arm chip was only responsible to emulate those different bankswitching chips as well as for handling the os menu but it seems like the arm chip in the harmony cart could do just sooo much more,

either way,it’s just incredible what could be pushed out of the atari 2600,

My only main complain about this version is that if you clime up the next ladder on the right side in the pie factory stage,you cannot go walk to the left side of it and vice versa as the deadly oil barrel is standing in the way wich you cannot passtrough,also you are very dependend on the RNG of those fireballs at wich direction they will go,also those platforming jumps in the alivator stage are off,if you try to jump from the middle to next platform or alivator,you will falltrough it,but if you try to jump from the edge of a platform you will falltrough that platform as well,and so because of that,it’s really really hard to judge from were exactly you can properly jump from,

but apart from those complains i was able to beat it but it was really hard because of these issues but hey that makes it just so challanging and rewarding,

and so am very very happy with this version of donkeykong,i also own the other homebrew version of it,and let me tell ya,that donkeykong vcs looks looks and sounds also good ,but version do look & sound sooo good that you will start to wonder if you do really need a nes or an atari 7800 system,

yep for decades i never was an atari fan and i didn’t care about atari at all,also i tout tout that the atari 2600 was a 4bit system wich could only generate squares and blop sound,but let me tell ya something,only i realized that nintendo games also appeared on atari systems and only i saw those hmebrew versions of both donkeykong,pac man and galaga etc,,, i can conclude that the atari 2600 is gonna be rocking hard to became just an awesome and powerful system,it can even put many nes games into shame,why would you eva want a need a nes if you can squeeze every ounce of the atari 2600 with such incredible homebrew games🙏😁👍

Edited January 3 by johannesmutlu

[Rockymin]

So does this prove that Coleco released a crappy 2600 version on purpose?  And they could have done better?

[+groundtrooper]

1 hour ago, Rockymin said:

So does this prove that Coleco released a crappy 2600 version on purpose?  And they could have done better?

Let me guess. You’re new here. You should probably google some Garry Kitchen interviews. With your opinion your trying to tell me that the guy that programmed Keystone Kapers and Pressure Cooker made a terrible game on purpose. 🙄

[MikeM_]

1 hour ago, groundtrooper said:

Let me guess. You’re new here. You should probably google some Garry Kitchen interviews. With your opinion your trying to tell me that the guy that programmed Keystone Kapers and Pressure Cooker made a terrible game on purpose. 🙄

I always find it interesting that the original DK was written on an Apple II with a custom interface card to test to the 2600. 
 

Far more advanced than anything I ever made on my Apple //c in Apple Basic. 

[Rockymin]

18 hours ago, groundtrooper said:

Let me guess. You’re new here. You should probably google some Garry Kitchen interviews. With your opinion your trying to tell me that the guy that programmed Keystone Kapers and Pressure Cooker made a terrible game on purpose. 🙄

 

Well, if Coleco paid him to, yes.  DK on 2600 was a worse conversion than Pac-Man.  And no need to be so insulting.  I've always felt that way since I played the game at a friend's house when it was released.  I didn't buy the game after that, nor did I buy any other Coleco game for my 2600.

[+groundtrooper]

48 minutes ago, Rockymin said:

 

Well, if Coleco paid him to, yes.  DK on 2600 was a worse conversion than Pac-Man.  And no need to be so insulting.  I've always felt that way since I played the game at a friend's house when it was released.  I didn't buy the game after that, nor did I buy any other Coleco game for my 2600.

So they paid Garry to write a crappier version of DK so that people would buy a ColecoVision because it was better. Why did Coleco even bother making games for a competing console? Why do that? Doesn't make economic sense. They made 2600 versions of games because the 2600 was a monster system that some many people had adopted early and some people weren't gonna buy ANOTHER video game system. 

You are comparing apples to oranges in this case. The original DK was 4k. 4k. This is 32k. There are more advanced programming techniques that have been developed over the DECADES. If Garry had been given more space he might have been able to do a little bit more with the game. 

 

You can believe that they built a crappy version for the 2600 and I can believe that they did the best that they could do at the time with the resources and system constraints. 

[Rockymin]

18 minutes ago, groundtrooper said:

So they paid Garry to write a crappier version of DK so that people would buy a ColecoVision because it was better. Why did Coleco even bother making games for a competing console? Why do that? Doesn't make economic sense. They made 2600 versions of games because the 2600 was a monster system that some many people had adopted early and some people weren't gonna buy ANOTHER video game system. 

You are comparing apples to oranges in this case. The original DK was 4k. 4k. This is 32k. There are more advanced programming techniques that have been developed over the DECADES. If Garry had been given more space he might have been able to do a little bit more with the game. 

 

You can believe that they built a crappy version for the 2600 and I can believe that they did the best that they could do at the time with the resources and system constraints. 

 

I've asked myself that very same question over the decades.  I always wondered why all those companies started releasing software for their competitors.  Mattel with M Network releasing games to 2600.  And Atari with Atarisoft.  It made no sense to me then and it doesn't now.  I read that Atari had developed a killer version of Pac Man for Atarisoft to release for Colecovision, but it was too good and they didn't release it.  So why couldn't Coleco do the opposite of that with their release of DK for the 2600?

 

They already had Atari by the balls at that time, having the console rights to DK.  Atari had the much superior version of DK for their 8 bit computers, all 4 levels and everything.  But because of the licensing, they couldn't bring it to the 5200.  And Coleco apparently had no intention of making a version of DK for it.  Since it probably would have been the same as the Atarisoft Pac-Man situation.   If only Atari had released that keyboard add-on to the 5200 to make into a computer, they might have been able to bring their version of DK to it.  They probably would have kicked Coleco's butt back then if that happened.

[Zoyous]

It's just revisionist history that the original Donkey Kong for the 2600 was poorly received. If you look back through the press at the time, like Electronic Games magazine, you can see it charted highly among readers' favorites for many months. It was a solid port, and fairly groundbreaking in the sense that Garry Kitchen figured out a way to create an asymmetrical background. I might also add that he did this with 4k, on schedule, in a professional environment, with deadlines - not as a hobby with no deadlines and 30+ years of accumulated community-based technical knowledge of the system. There was some crappy emo blogger on Kotaku named Owen Good several years ago who wrote a dimwitted diatribe against this solid effort by Garry Kitchen. I wrote a response to his ignorant rant saying that he probably stood on the side of the road and laughed at cars because he didn't understand how they worked; same with him laughing at DK on the 2600. He blocked me - typical petty behavior.

 

2 minutes ago, Rockymin said:

 

I've asked myself that very same question over the decades.  I always wondered why all those companies started releasing software for their competitors.  Mattel with M Network releasing games to 2600.  And Atari with Atarisoft.  It made no sense to me then and it doesn't now.

Simple, so they could make additional money on the competitors' platforms which also had install bases of millions of customers. Same reason Microsoft still releases Minecraft onto competitors' consoles and doesn't just make them Xbox-exclusive.

[Rockymin]

13 minutes ago, Zoyous said:

It's just revisionist history that the original Donkey Kong for the 2600 was poorly received. If you look back through the press at the time, like Electronic Games magazine, you can see it charted highly among readers' favorites for many months. It was a solid port, and fairly groundbreaking in the sense that Garry Kitchen figured out a way to create an asymmetrical background. I might also add that he did this with 4k, on schedule, in a professional environment, with deadlines - not as a hobby with no deadlines and 30+ years of accumulated community-based technical knowledge of the system. There was some crappy emo blogger on Kotaku named Owen Good several years ago who wrote a dimwitted diatribe against this solid effort by Garry Kitchen. I wrote a response to his ignorant rant saying that he probably stood on the side of the road and laughed at cars because he didn't understand how they worked; same with him laughing at DK on the 2600. He blocked me - typical petty behavior.

 

Simple, so they could make additional money on the competitors' platforms which also had install bases of millions of customers. Same reason Microsoft still releases Minecraft onto competitors' consoles and doesn't just make them Xbox-exclusive.

Nothing against Kitchen or anything but I just did not like DK for the 2600 at all.  Neither did my friends who also had 2600s at the time.  DK was the arcade game we were all into at the time and we were hyped for a home version and ended up disappointed just like Pac-Man.  And the 2600 had already gotten better conversions of other games by then too. 

 

And releasing games on competitor's systems still didn't make sense to me.  Especially when they were fighting like cats and dogs at the time, with their ads calling each names and crapping on each other's systems.  I was a huge Atari fanboy in those days and never bought any M-Network or Coleco game.  Nobody I knew bought them either. 

[fluxit]

2 hours ago, Rockymin said:

Nothing against Kitchen or anything but I just did not like DK for the 2600 at all.  Neither did my friends who also had 2600s at the time.  DK was the arcade game we were all into at the time and we were hyped for a home version and ended up disappointed just like Pac-Man.  And the 2600 had already gotten better conversions of other games by then too. 

 

And releasing games on competitor's systems still didn't make sense to me.  Especially when they were fighting like cats and dogs at the time, with their ads calling each names and crapping on each other's systems.  I was a huge Atari fanboy in those days and never bought any M-Network or Coleco game.  Nobody I knew bought them either. 

So how did you end up trying Donkey Kong to know that it was 'no good,' if no one that you knew would buy anything but Atari branded carts?  What about Activision, and Imagic?  Frankly, you and your friends missed out on some of the best games in the name of brand loyalty.  Buying video games isn't a sport.

[Living Room Arcade]

5 hours ago, Rockymin said:

 

I've asked myself that very same question over the decades.  I always wondered why all those companies started releasing software for their competitors.  Mattel with M Network releasing games to 2600.  And Atari with Atarisoft.  It made no sense to me then and it doesn't now.  I read that Atari had developed a killer version of Pac Man for Atarisoft to release for Colecovision, but it was too good and they didn't release it.  So why couldn't Coleco do the opposite of that with their release of DK for the 2600?

 

They already had Atari by the balls at that time, having the console rights to DK.  Atari had the much superior version of DK for their 8 bit computers, all 4 levels and everything.  But because of the licensing, they couldn't bring it to the 5200.  And Coleco apparently had no intention of making a version of DK for it.  Since it probably would have been the same as the Atarisoft Pac-Man situation.   If only Atari had released that keyboard add-on to the 5200 to make into a computer, they might have been able to bring their version of DK to it.  They probably would have kicked Coleco's butt back then if that happened.

To me, the difference between the Atari 2600 and Colecovision versions is just the way that Mario jumps.  In the Colecovision version, he jumps smoothly.  In the Atari 2600 version, he teleports into the air and then teleports back down again.  Do you guys know what I mean?  

Edited January 16 by Living Room Arcade

[Rockymin]

20 hours ago, fluxit said:

So how did you end up trying Donkey Kong to know that it was 'no good,' if no one that you knew would buy anything but Atari branded carts?  What about Activision, and Imagic?  Frankly, you and your friends missed out on some of the best games in the name of brand loyalty.  Buying video games isn't a sport.

I said in a previous post that one of my friends did get it.  And I never said that we'd only buy Atari branded carts.  Just that no one I knew bought carts from Mattel or Coleco.  We all had plenty of Activision and Imagic games.  We played the hell out of Demon Attack, and I loved Pitfall to death.  We also had access to Custer's Revenge too, hehe.

17 hours ago, Living Room Arcade said:

To me, the difference between the Atari 2600 and Colecovision versions is just the way that Mario jumps.  In the Colecovision version, he jumps smoothly.  In the Atari 2600 version, he teleports into the air and then teleports back down again.  Do you guys know what I mean?  

 

The Atari version only had 2 levels instead of the 3 that Coleco had.  And only Atari's own DK version for their 8bit computers had all 4 levels from the arcade game.  They also had all 4 levels in the 7800 version that they released later.  As I said earlier, even Nintendo's own NES version didn't have all 4 levels.

 

Coleco could probably have gotten the 3 levels that were in their version into the Atari version.  Parker got all 3 levels into the 2600 version of Popeye.

[+splendidnut]

16 minutes ago, Rockymin said:

Coleco could probably have gotten the 3 levels that were in their version into the Atari version.  Parker got all 3 levels into the 2600 version of Popeye.

Different games have different space requirements for levels.  Coleco was probably avoiding the cost of a bigger ROM and the necessary logic to handle bankswitching to fit the other levels.

[Living Room Arcade]

51 minutes ago, Rockymin said:

The Atari version only had 2 levels instead of the 3 that Coleco had. 

Well, now the Atari 2600 version has four levels and the Colecovision version has three!  

Edited January 16 by Living Room Arcade

[bigfriendly]

I have always thought the 2600 gingerbread DK was funny looking. I was fortunate to get a Colecovision for Christmas in 1982 so I got to play the cool version. I always put the 2600 DK into the same camp as Pac-Man in that I just thought they could have put out a more respectable version than they did. I will say however that 2600 version does offer up a pretty darn good challenge once you advance into the game a few levels. These days I'll play it every once in while and it has honestly grown on me over the years. This new version looks great but man it is really tough!

Edited January 30 by bigfriendly
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