What is this Donkey Kong Atari 2600 cartridge?

[Armageddon Potato]

Found a weird lookin' label-less Atari 2600 Donkey Kong cartridge in a huge lot of Atari 2600 games that recently came in. It seems... odd. The tape label on it says, "D·K·" and what appears to be an illegible looking date? What is this?

[Supergun]

Well, Atari didn’t make Donkey Kong, (Coleco obviously did), but they did end up re-releasing it under the Atari brand several years later. But the time period when Atari used those circuit boards was much earlier then when Atari released it. So if I had to guess, I would say that what you have there was most likely an Atari employee back in the day making himself a Donkey Kong cartridge using parts that he had access to while working there.

 

(also the date code on the hex inverter is from 1981, consistent with parts laying around being sourced by the person at Atari)

[Armageddon Potato]

On 11/18/2023 at 9:17 PM, Supergun said:

Well, Atari didn’t make Donkey Kong, (Coleco obviously did), but they did end up re-releasing it under the Atari brand several years later. But the time period when Atari used those circuit boards was much earlier then when Atari released it. So if I had to guess, I would say that what you have there was most likely an Atari employee back in the day making himself a Donkey Kong cartridge using parts that he had access to while working there.

 

(also the date code on the hex inverter is from 1981, consistent with parts laying around being sourced by the person at Atari)

So what is something like this even considered? An employee in house copy?

[+bent_pin]

Opened an 82 cart. This is the production board from the beige cart that everyone had.

 

Yours looks like an EPROM.

 

Any differences in gameplay? 

[351cougar]

You cant see the DC on the eprom, to give another hint of the assembly date. What did the re release carts look like? Do we have log book history on those acquired IP integration into atari (85-90)?

[Supergun]

The re-released carts were by Atari during the 1986-1990 revival period. The red label cartridges.

 

CX26143 Donkey Kong

CX26144 Donkey Kong Junior

CX26145 Venture

CX26146 Mouse Trap

CX26147 Frogger

CX26148 Turbo

CX26149 Zaxxon

CX26150 Q*Bert

 

I’m not aware of any known documentation explaining how they came into Atari’s control nor why some were released and some were not. (same thing with Imagic and Activision with Atlantis, Demon Attack, and Moonsweeper.)

[Tempest]

Well Turbo wasn't released because it was never finished (I assume it was assigned a part number by someone in marketing that didn't know it was unfinished or perhaps they were planning on finishing it?).  Frogger did get to the EPROM stage as I found an Atari folder of them a long time ago with Atari labels on them, but I have no idea why they never released it.  Maybe there was some sort of issue with Sega?

 

Back on topic, that cart is someone's homemade copy.  Probably an Atari employee.