Frank Johnson programmed Inty Donkey Kong (and a load of other games)

[+bhall408]

On 2/20/2024 at 7:42 PM, Gunoz said:

His profile shows - 

 

Programmer

Computer Magic

Jan 1984 - Jan 1985 · 1 yr 1 mo

Developed video games for the Coleco Colecovision.

 

Programmer

Impact Research

Jan 1983 - Jan 1984 · 1 yr 1 mo

Programmed games for the Matell Intelivision and Coleco Colecovision.

Profile is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-thompson-86753a5/

[First Spear]

On 3/19/2024 at 2:14 PM, bhall408 said:

Profile is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-thompson-86753a5/

Not Psycho Stormtrooper.

[decle]

GenXGrownUp has put up a really interesting interview with Gary Kitchen who did the 2600 port of Donkey Kong (the DK discussion starts at 5:42):

 

 

Like Jennell, Gary makes it clear that developers were not asked to shank the ports, there was no Coleco conspiracy.  Instead, the focus was on time to delivery and ROM size.  Specifically, development needed to be complete in May '82 in order for production to be done by September, and the games to be available in the run up to Christmas.  Further, Gary suggests that even if he had a larger ROM, he might not have been able to do much more in the 90 days he had for development.

 

I suspect that, if he was still around, Frank Johnson might empathize with Gary's experience.

 

The importance of ROM space is something that should not be forgotten when comparing DK ports.  On the Colecovision, DK was originally a 24KB game written in Pascal.  This compares with 4K decles (5KB) on the Intellivision and 4KB on the 2600. Therefore, it's not surprising that content was cut on the Inty and 2600 versions. I believe the Coleco version was reworked in assembly later, reducing the size to 16KB with no loss of functionality.  This potentially shows the overhead of using a high level language, that more ROM space might have been traded for a shorter development time on the Colecovision version, and the efficiency improvement that more development time and experience can bring.  So as a really naive comparison, even in it's optimised, 16KB form, Colecovision DK effectively had more than 5KB of ROM space per level, as compared with 2.5KB on the Inty and 2KB on the 2600.

Edited April 25 by decle

[+DZ-Jay]

How long did it take to make the Colecovision DK?

 

Because if it took a lot longer than 90 days, and could afford a ROM larger thank 4 or 5 KB, then it sounds to me a lot like “never mind the budget — make sure ours looks and plays better than the others, whatever it takes!” sort of situation.

 

In that view, the programmers for the other consoles may not have been asked specifically to make crap games, but that sounds like a distinction without difference.

 

    dZ.