NES Donkey Kong w/Cement Factory

[+SpiceWare]

While I never got into the NES myself, having gone from the Atari VCS to home computers beginning with a VIC-20 in 1981, I did find this video by POJR about Nintendo adding Donkey Kong's Cement Factory level all these years later to be interesting:

 

Quote

The NES version of Donkey Kong was a very good Arcade port, but it made some sacrifices. This version omitted the cement factory stage, and didn't feature most of the cutscenes that were in the Arcade version. Even future releases of this game (such as Donkey Kong Classics) would not include the cement factory stage or the extra cutscenes. So why didn’t Nintendo include all 4 stages, when there’s plenty of NES titles that feature numerous levels? Let’s take a look, and we’ll also talk about an unbelievable update by Nintendo, 20+ years later.

 

 

[Tanooki]

That popped up for me too, it's going over some well documented old stuff though.  At some base level I really wish I hadn't let go of my 'pie factory' cart I had like a decade ago as it was a fun stage to mess with.  It's interesting to me because it's one of two games they decided to clean up and not even at the same time.  Europe also got a Mario Bros Classic, but it was done like 20 years earlier back in 1993.  That one they put back the missing introduction demos of the new enemies names/motions and cleaned up the visuals in general to match the arcade far closer.  I hate we didn't get this in the states.
 

I would utterly LOVE some bootleg modern cart, like those namco 1/2 split arcade cabinets where it's THIS Mario Bros and THAT Donkey Kong on one cart.  That's it, nothing crazy or greedy, just a wicked 2in1 cart.

[ABA180]

The other thing that's always puzzled me is...

 

Why do they have the lower hammer on the Barrel stage in the wrong spot?  That makes zero sense

[Arno1978]

The Donkey Kong Original Edition rom is easy to find. I would love if that particular version of Mario Bros was available as NTSC. I love Mario Bros. I even planned once doing a romhack of Mario Bros to make a sequel with what I thought would be the most likeliest of enemies. I tried to imagine I was working at Nintendo in the early 80s and I had been tasked to come up with a sequel. It was a fun little exercise. I planned an enemy that you had to knock down from the top platforms to the floor where it would sink away. You bopped it from the bottom first, it would shake then hang underneath the platform, then you jumped onto the platform and if you ran over where it was hanging, it would fall to the next platform below. If you didn't get rid of it quickly, it would spread out as an oil slick across platform - just like ice. There was also a spring robot, that would sit still for a second then when it's spring activated, it jumped quickly in the direction it was facing slinky style, then compress and wait another second before doing it again. There were 2 other enemies that I forgot, but I do have the details drawn and written down somewhere. Perhaps I'll make the romhack someday. If I should find my drawing which is in one of my notebooks, I'll post it here - or a better version.

[ColecoFan1981]

I wonder if they will do an "Original Edition" of Donkey Kong, Jr.? While I know all four levels are intact in the actual original Famicom/NES release (the hideout being the 3rd level in each cycle), in the original arcade release Mario transported Donkey Kong's cage offscreen when Jr. came up to rescue him, and there were two intermission screens: one before the 1st level upon game start, and one before the hideout level.

 

~Ben

[Rockymin]

He didn't mention the release for Atari 8 bit systems.  That had all 4 levels and predated the NES version.  And I believe the 8 bit carts were smaller than NES carts.  So it doesn't really make sense that Nintendo couldn't get all four levels into the NES version.  And I could have sworn I saw a DK version for the 7800 that had all four levels too.

[ColecoFan1981]

On 1/23/2024 at 3:55 PM, Rockymin said:

He didn't mention the release for Atari 8 bit systems.  That had all 4 levels and predated the NES version.  And I believe the 8 bit carts were smaller than NES carts.  So it doesn't really make sense that Nintendo couldn't get all four levels into the NES version.  And I could have sworn I saw a DK version for the 7800 that had all four levels too.

And that version you mention was released in June 1983, just as Coleco was getting itself ready to demonstrate its forthcoming version for the Adam computer; that version had to be delayed for a year (to June 1984) because of it clashing with the contract it signed with Nintendo (Coleco=consoles only; Atari=computers only).

Even the Adam version of Donkey Kong, Jr. (meaning without the fifth screen or "Mario's Kitchen") didn't make it until April 1984.

 

~Ben

Edited March 15 by ColecoFan1981

[johannesmutlu]

Yeah it blows my mind that nintendo just decided to put back in that cement/pie factory level in the nes version after a whopping 27 years not only that but that version was only cemented in the limited edition red wii for europe, why they never came up with a 30th anniversary edition of donkeykong for the famicom in 2011??  ,is just beyond me,

it’s also beyonde why they didn’t rectified that with the famicom disksystem because those disks did had extra memory space for it,what a shame,

it’s already a shame that many other versions did already had already all 4 levels included and/or with all the cut scenes in it as well back then.

[Rockymin]

On 3/15/2024 at 7:46 PM, ColecoFan1981 said:

And that version you mention was released in June 1983, just as Coleco was getting itself ready to demonstrate its forthcoming version for the Adam computer; that version had to be delayed for a year (to June 1984) because of it clashing with the contract it signed with Nintendo (Coleco=consoles only; Atari=computers only).

Even the Adam version of Donkey Kong, Jr. (meaning without the fifth screen or "Mario's Kitchen") didn't make it until April 1984.

 

~Ben

 

I thought DK Jr only has four screens.  And the fourth is "Mario's Hideout".  And that brings up another thing about DK for the NES.  DK Jr on NES had all four screens, so they should have been able to have all four in NES DK. 

[Tanooki]

Same cart size, same size on the CHR/PRG chips, really no excuse other than rushed to market for the Famicom launch or laziness, or potential temporary incompetence not getting what the hardware could do perhaps even.

[ColecoFan1981]

3 hours ago, Rockymin said:

 

I thought DK Jr only has four screens.  And the fourth is "Mario's Hideout".  And that brings up another thing about DK for the NES.  DK Jr on NES had all four screens, so they should have been able to have all four in NES DK. 

Yes, the Coleco Adam DK, Jr. did have all four screens intact; however, Coleco programmers wanted to include a fifth screen as well.

 

~Ben

[johannesmutlu]

1 hour ago, ColecoFan1981 said:

Yes, the Coleco Adam DK, Jr. did have all four screens intact; however, Coleco programmers wanted to include a fifth screen as well.

 

~Ben

Well DK jr on the addam does have a 5th stage but it can be only locked by using a cheat with certain button combinations,then you have to go multiple times trough those current levels before reaching level 5, there’re rom hacks out there wich don’t involve you to do such cheat but it can be still difficult to reach level 5 that kitchen stage wich is level 10 in the DK jr hack i got,phew🤣