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Technical Specs
Hardware
Donkey Kong is a 2D raster graphics arcade
game. The vertical display is 224 x 256 pixels in size and uses a 96-color
palette. The game's original controls featured a single joystick and a
jump button. It runs on a Z80 microprocessor running at 3.072 MHz, with
the sound being processed on an I8035 microprocessor running at 400 KHz.
[Crazy Kong's sound ran on an AY-8910 running at 1.536 MHz.] Donkey Kong's
sound is DAC audio. Some of the sound was analog, so if you're playing DK
on an emulator such as MAME, three sounds may be missing:
- Donkey Kong's crashing sound when he
stomps on the girders in the opening sequence
- Mario's running sounds
- Mario's jumping sounds
In order to hear these sounds on the
emulator, you need to download them and add the WAV files into your
MAME\SAMPLES directory.
Cabinet Styles
Donkey Kong was manufactured in three different cabinets:
- Cocktail
- a flat, low table, designed for two people to sit facing each
other and play doubles. The screen flips depending on whose turn it
is. Dimensions: 22.75" x 33.75" x 22", 130#
- Cabaret
- a squat upright that takes up less room. Significantly
lighter in weight. Dimensions: 55" x 20.5" x 23.5", 124#
- Upright
- the full-size arcade case. Dimensions: 67" x 23.5" x 33.5",
220#
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Screenshots and
Pictures
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Overview
 Donkey Kong is a 1- or 2-player arcade
game. You play Mario, the overalls-wearing plumber whose girlfriend,
Pauline, has been kidnapped by Donkey Kong, a giant ape who will stop at
nothing to keep his lovely prize. Donkey Kong has climbed the steel
framework of a building and is holding Pauline up there; it's Mario's job
to climb to the top and rescue her.
This isn't as easy as it sounds. Donkey
Kong throws barrels, which fly or roll down, causing Mario to jump a lot.
Some barrels become free-moving fireballs with an amazing ability to climb
ladders and chase Mario. On later levels, Mario faces stranger opponents:
bouncing I-beams and mud pies on conveyor belts.
Mario isn't without his own methods, of
course, He can jump quite high, and he uses this skill to leap over
rolling barrels and intelligent fireballs. Occasionally, a big mallet-like
hammer can be found; by grabbing it, Mario has a short span of time when
he can smash barrels, fireballs, and pies.
In the opening sequence,
ominous music plays as Donkey Kong,
panty-flashing Pauline under his hairy arm, climbs a pair of ladders
(which disappear as he goes).
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When he reaches the top, he drops Pauline on her perch and then
jumps up and down on the top girder—collapsing the girders beneath
him into angled, uneven surfaces.
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History
 Donkey Kong was released by Nintendo in
1981, and it took the arcade game world by storm. Today, it is easily one
of the most successful video games of all time.
While a few pirate hack versions of
Donkey Kong did appear on the market, Nintendo did license Donkey Kong to
a few companies who produced authorized clones. The most notable is Crazy
Kong by Falcon. Unauthorized bootlegs of the game were produced by Alca,
Orca, and Jeutel. It's also known as Congorilla and sometimes Donkey Kong
Part II.
The differences between DK and CK are slight:
- Sounds. Virtually all sound effects and
music are completely different, and absolutely inferior.
- Colors.
Most colors are changed, and there are several versions of Crazy Kong,
including a few unauthorized bootlegs. For example, while most Crazy
Kongs have an orange color to the Barrels Level girders, aqua and green
(see picture below right) are out there.
- Level order. The screens are in
different order. On DK, the Rivets Level is the second screen you see; on
CK, the Conveyer Belts Level is your second screen (fun for those players
who weren't so good at DK, and always wished they could get to the
Conveyor Belts!).
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Level changes.
The best feature of CK is
the slight alterations in the way some of the levels are played:
- On the first Barrels Level
(Screen #1), you'll notice the girders are cut off on every row—the
furthest ladder ends up at the very edge. Not too amazing, but changes
the game a bit. When you repeat that screen, a few noticeable chunks
in the middle of
 the
girders are missing—something else to jump over, making it more
difficult. The hammers are also slightly different; the lower hammer
sits closer to the girder and the upper hammer is far off the edge and
difficult to get.
- The Rivets Level is pretty much the
same, but once you grab the lower hammer, the upper hammer vanishes! In
reality, it's still there; it just goes invisible. Confusing, though.
- The Elevators Level is different in that
the fireball on the right side of the screen is not present. But most
notably is the right-side elevators. In DK, the elevator platforms are
evenly spaced and constantly flowing. In CK, however, the right-side 'vators
are not evenly spaced. Great stretches go by without any
flowing by.
Falcon's authorized Donkey Kong clone shows Donkey Kong in a massive
cage...
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...but not for long, as he knocks down his bars and breaks out!
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How Nintendo Annoys Me
There were a lot of clones of DK on home
computers throughout the 80s and beyond, and while some of them were very
good (and others utterly dreadful), none captured the same feel. Granted,
nobody can simply copy it pixel for pixel and program for program, but
better attempts might have been nice. The best version I ever played was
on the TRS-80 Color Computer, a game programmed by Tom Mix (of Tom Mix
Software). This was by far the best clone ever made.
You'd think Nintendo would have jumped
on the success of DK and re-marketed the game as a home video version. In
fact, they did, for their Nintendo Entertainment System, but it was
terrible. They redesigned the game to fit a horizontal TV screen,
squashing the levels and stretching them wider. To boot, as I recall, they
only duplicated the Barrels and Rivets levels (maybe they did the
Elevators, but not the Conveyor Belts; it's been a while and the game was
so bad I couldn't bear to play it for long). Overall, the whole feel of
the game was like something that vaguely looked like DK but just plain
wasn't.
Mario did make Nintendo money, though,
with later games like Mario Bros. and, of course, the mega-successful
Super Mario Brothers 1, 2, and 3. In fact, these latter three really
formed the cornerstone of Nintendo's home gaming empire, and there hasn't
been a home video system they've put out since that hasn't had a stack of
Mario titles attached to it. (For the record, I greatly enjoyed the
various side-scrolling Mario Brothers games, but the 3D varieties, while
impressive from a technical standpoint, once again are examples of how the
feel of a game is lost).
To this day, Nintendo hasn't come out
with a true duplication of their own historical game. It isn't like
perfect clones can't be done; Microsoft re-did Ms. Pac-Man and others, and
they were superb—better, even, than their predecessors. But nobody has
touched DK. The MAME emulator is the best version, simply because with the
Donkey Kong ROM, you're not playing a clone—you're playing the actual
arcade game itself.
At the same time, Nintendo has declared
war on "software pirates" who play illegal copies of the DK ROM on MAME.
I'm a big fan of the abandonware concept, and since Nintendo doesn't seem
to have any ambitions to clone their own game, who the hell knows why
they're so mad at the "pirates." At any rate, is IS illegal, and they DO
own it... oh well. |
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