Do The Donkey Kong

By Scott Stilphen

*Thanks to Greg Bendokus and Ross Sillifant for helping with the article.

It's summer 1981 and I'm at my favorite local arcade.  As I walked in, I saw a new game, front and center.  There's a small crowd around it, and at first I couldn't see what the name of it is.  When I finally saw the marquee, my first thought is, what a strange name for a game.  As I caught glimpses of the screen, the Kong part made sense, as the game depicted what looked like a giant ape climbing on top of a building carrying a woman ala King Kong, but I didn't get the Donkey part.  There were no donkeys in sight (in the game, that is.  The arcade was another matter) and the ape wasn't doing anything particularly stupid but rather aggressively kidnapping someone and attacking the player with barrels.  For years it was thought the name was originally meant to be Monkey Kong, but a misunderstanding with the name due to a poor Telex (pre-Fax tech) message between Nintendo and the company printing the cabinet artwork led to the "M" in Monkey being misconstrued as a "D".   Another version of the story blamed a mistake in the translation process from Japanese to English.  Donkey Kong's developer Shigeru Miyamoto denies both of these, as he claims naming it Donkey Kong was meant to convey "stupid ape" or "stubborn gorilla" (as in 'stubborn as a mule'), depending on which interview you read.  American cartoons at the time sometimes depicted a character doing something stupid and 'transforming' into a donkey, or jack-ass as more commonly labeled.  Whatever the true origin story is, it was and still is a weird name.

The game's building wasn't the smooth concrete structure of the Empire State building but an unfinished structure comprised of different sections of steel girders, the lattice visual appearance of it being more visually appealing than solid beams would have.  The buildings inhabitants were cartoon-ish in appearance - a large ape that jumps around waving his arms and occasionally rolling and throwing barrels down at you, a woman in a pink dress yelling "HELP!" over and over, and a construction worker in red and blue overalls and a red hat.  I had only seen 2 different screens in the game, the ramps and rivets, with the rivets screen looking more like a traditional building.  The game looked and sounded awesome and offered the ability for the player to jump, which was new.  Also new was the fact that you weren't just shooting aliens and monsters or collecting money and valuable items - you now had to rescue somebody!  For a mere quarter, I can be a HERO!  Well, it was a step down from being the defender of a planet, but it was a new motivation to play... as if I needed any.

On my next visit to the arcade, I had a chance to play it, and my experience matched my initial thoughts.  Only years later could I articulate just how well the game was designed and programmed.   I thought it was amusing that the entire building would remain standing as long as a single rivet was left in place.  I wondered how it would have looked and played if the building had started to partially collapse once you started removing rivets, but that was certainly a limitation of the hardware (in 2015, John Kowalski would create a modified version of the game called Donkey Kong Remixed which featured this very idea on the rivets screen).  After that, seeing the elevators screen for the first time was another welcome surprise, making me wonder just how many different screens were in the game.  Quite some time would pass before I saw the 4th screen, which was commonly - and incorrectly - referred to by everyone I knew as the "pie" screen.  Pies?  On a construction site?  Sure, and the burn barrel in the center of the screen is for baking them, right?  Over 40 years later, and I still see references to them as pies.  These aren't pies you want to eat because they're concrete... unless you want to turn your stomach into a hardball.  The game's flyer also has an interesting caveat in that it mentions Mario must dodge plummeting beams and exploding barrels, and the flyer's artwork shows burning barrels rolling down the ramps, neither of which are in the game.


Nintendo's Donkey Kong.  The cabinet refers to the player as Jumpman, but the flyer refers to him as a carpenter.  Riveter would have
been more appropriate, considering this is an unfinished steel structure and the only wood found is in the barrels Kong is throwing down.

Besides the obvious influence of King Kong, Donkey Kong actually borrowed some idea from a few earlier games.  Atari's 1975 Steeplechase involved horses running down a track with players having a single control - a jump button - to navigate their horses over barriers.  Nichibutsu's Crazy Climber was released in October 1980 and gave players 2 joysticks to maneuver your climber up the outside of 4 different buildings and dodging various dangerous obstacles and animals.  You have a limited amount of time to reach the top of the building.  3 of the 4 buildings have pieces of steel girders raining down upon you.  King Kong himself is hanging out on 2 of the buildings, looking to punch you from it.  Universal Company, Ltd's Space Panic was released a month after Crazy Climber and featured 5 horizontal platforms with different configurations of ladders between them.  The player is pursued by space monsters that must be killed by digging holes into a platform, waiting for one to fall in, and then quickly burying it before it can get out.


(LEFT) Atari's Steeplechase; (CENTER) Nichibutsu's Crazy Climber; (RIGHT) Universal's Space Panic.

There have been several articles and books covering the details of how Donkey Kong was created, and the subject is a worthwhile rabbit hole to fall in (check out this 2011 Gamasutra article for starters), but I'll try to be brief in my summary.  Nintendo wanted to export their arcade games to the U.S., under their Nintendo of America subsidiary, to repeat the success they had with them in Japan.  One of their early efforts with this was a shooter called Radar Scope.  Some 3,000 machines were shipped to the U.S. in 1980, but thanks in part to another Japanese export called Space Invaders, American gamers were inundated with shooters, with arcades full of variations of the slide-n-shoot theme the likes of which hadn't been seen since the days of Pong.  The result was slow Radar Scope sales, leaving some 2,000 machines sitting in storage.

A young designer at Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto, started at Nintendo in 1977 and worked on the graphics artwork for Radar Scope and Sheriff as one of his first projects (it's worth noting that Sheriff might be the first game to show a damsel in distress, as shown between rounds), and he was tasked with designing a replacement game to use the same hardware with the idea of converting the unsold machines.  Miyamoto drew on American culture for inspiration from stories, movie, comics, and cartoons - Beauty and the Beast, King Kong, and Popeye.  The result was Donkey Kong. 


A 1979 Hanna-Barbera cartoon called Building Blockheads featured King Features Syndicate's characters Popeye and Olive Oyl competing with Bluto
to build the world's tallest building.  Objects such as rivets, hammers, cement mixers, and cranes carrying steel beams are depicted.


Miyamoto's early concept sketch for Popeye's Beer Barrel Attack Game.  One notable difference is, instead of hammers, there's cans of spinach.


2 more early sketches, this time with Bluto replaced with Donkey Kong.

Head engineer Gunpei Yokoi and a budget of $267,000 were allocated to the project, and Ikegami Tsushinki Co., Ltd. was subcontracted to program the code based on Miyamoto's design (Ikegami also developed Radar Scope), with the plan to have the game completed by mid-June.  The hardware was designed by Masayuki Uemura, whom Yokoi had recruited in 1972.  The game was originally developed to be based around Popeye.  In late March 1981, Miyamoto proposed the game design for what he called "Popeye's Beer Barrel Attack Game" (LINK).  Nintendo then looked into possibly licensing the 3 main characters (Popeye, Olive Oyl, Bluto) for use with the game, but when that fell through, Miyamoto redesigned the characters.  The programming team at Ikegami Tsushinki Co. complained that having a game with 4 screens was like creating 4 separate games.  When the game was completed, new cabinet artwork was created with plans to initially release it in Japan (on July 9th, 1981), before sending it to the U.S. (July 31st, 1981).  It soon became the highest-grossing game in Japan in 1981, and it was the top game in the U.S. in 1981 and 1982.  A total of 132,000 machines were sold worldwide.  It was a monster success to be sure, and with the potential profit involved, sequels, knockoffs, and merchandising followed.  As with Pac-Man the year before, Donkey Kong's popularity quickly spread with magazine articles, strategy books, stickers, toys, cereal, and eventually home versions.  The cereal's "crunchy barrels of fun" weren't exactly that but rather particularly nasty-tasting stuff with sharp edges.

   
There were 3 stand-alone strategy books, and probably a dozen 'compilation' books that offered strategies for Donkey Kong and other games.


Topps packs of cards, stickers, and gum were the playground currency of grade schoolers everywhere.


 Ad for Ralston Purina's Donkey Kong cereal.  Also known as "Purina human chow".  Ralston Purina was more known for
 making pet food (Nestlé now owns them).  I'd sooner eat dog food than give that cereal to my dog.


(LEFT) Some boxes of Donkey Kong cereal included a chance to win your own Donkey Kong arcade machine!
(RIGHT) CBS Saturday Supercade (1983-84) featured characters from several popular video games at the time, including Donkey Kong.

Since the earliest days of the video game arcade business with Pong, every time a successful video game came along (Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian, Pac-Man, etc), there were people looking to ride on someone else's coattails, and it was no different with Donkey Kong.  Donkey Kong combined 3 important features that at the time weren't common and instantly popularized them - the ability to jump over things, a 'world' comprising of more than one screen, and a storyline as told by cut scenes or animations.  By the end of 1981, the platform genre was what everyone wanted, and the next few years would see several companies rushing to meet that demand, with mixed results.  Before I cover some of the arcade and home clones and knockoffs, I have an amusing aside to one particular variant - Congorilla.


Congorilla arcade game and manual.  See?  They're not stealing from King Kong or Donkey Kong or any Kong.  There's nary a Kong in sight!
I don't see how simply changing the character from an ape to a gorilla changes anything, besides borrowing from Mighty Joe Young this time around, and neither did the judge.

There was a local bar/restaurant near my house called Emma's on the Trail.  I had been there for dinner once with my family a few years earlier (and we had takeouts from there a few times afterwards but that was it), and remember the place wasn't very busy and looked rather drab.  Emma's had been one of the go-to places back in its day, as the owner, Billy Emma, was one of the first in the area to bring in entertainment.  The parking lot is larger than the building, so it must have been something back then, but by then, its days were numbered (it would be out of business a few years later).  Anyway, jump(man) to 1982 and video game mania is running wild, especially for me.  Donkey Kong is the new king of the video game world, but my trips to my favorite arcade were limited to about once a month.  My family had moved a good 15 minutes from town, and the area was more wooded/country.  Biking back to town where arcade games were more prevalent wasn't an option (and believe me, I thought about it).  I owned an Atari VCS as did a few friends in the area, but whenever I had a chance to play arcade games, that always took priority, especially when there were none in my immediate area...  until the day I found out there was!  A local kid told me that Emma's had an arcade game, and not just any game, but Donkey Kong!  I couldn't believe it.  It couldn't be true.  Could it?  Well, there was only one way to know for sure.  So my 12 y.o. self did what any 12 y.o. would do.  I got a pocketful of quarters, and I headed to the ba-ar...

There it was.  Except, it didn't look the same.  For one thing, it was called Congorilla.  Now, you can see by the photo the marquee says "Congorilla".  Even the manual included with it says "Congorilla".  But that's not what the title screen said - the machine I first saw in early 1982 said Crazy Kong Part II on the title screen!  For another, the cabinet wasn't the familiar blue one, but rather this typical woodgrain one that I'd see some other arcade games in.  The colors on the game screen were different, but otherwise the graphics looked the same.  I dropped in a quarter and start playing.  Whoa.  Is the speaker bad?  This doesn't sound the same at all!  And why is it every time my character jumps, it sounds like I'm kicking a chicken or something?  I'm not a good Donkey Kong player at this time in my life, and an even worse Congorilla player.  That doesn't matter, though.  I'm playing a video game - an arcade video game - and there's nothing I'd rather be doing right now.  I quickly exhausted the few quarters I had on me, and left the bar, which is empty except for the bartender.  It's like a Saturday afternoon in the spring, and the place only seemed busy at night on the weekends.  I know that as soon as I can earn more allowance or money from doing chores, I'll be back.  My next time at the bar would be quite different, though, for unbeknownst to me, I was about to get kicked out of it.  As soon as I entered and got halfway to the machine, the bartender (maybe a different one.. I don't remember) made it quite clear I wasn't wanted there and had to leave immediately.

"Hey!  You're not supposed to be in here... get out!"

I must have been 5 shades of confusion.  I was just in there a week or so ago, and there wasn't a problem, but now there was?  I don't belong here?  Of course I do.  There's an arcade game right there!  Well, what my 12 y.o. self didn't know until much later was anyone under 18 can't be in a bar, and that's that.  Doesn't matter if you simply want to play an arcade game - something designed for anyone to play but specifically targeted to my demographic.  Doesn't matter if it's the middle of the day and the place is empty.  Well, I wasn't about to challenge some surly bartender on my inalienable rights to play video games.  Besides, being in the comfort of my home playing my Atari was better than being in some dingy bar, especially one that looked like it hadn't seen the business end of a mop in years, and smelled like fresh air got kicked out long before I did.  Anyway, it wouldn't be long before I learned a home version of Donkey Kong was on the way soon, thanks to Coleco.

SEQUELS

While all the various home versions were being developed, Nintendo was hard at work making a few arcade sequels to follow up on the runaway success with Donkey Kong.


Nintendo's Donkey Kong Junior.  Another 4 screens of action, plus 2 animated cut scenes instead of the original's one.


Scene from King Kong with Kong in chains.  "Ladies and gentlemen!  Boys and girls!  Step right up and try your luck with the free key you were given!"

Donkey Kong Junior was again designed by Miyamoto and came out a year later in the U.S., in August of 1982, and flipped the script.  This time around, the carpenter (now officially known as Mario) is the antagonist and you control Donkey Kong's protégé.  Jumping is still an integral part of the gameplay, but instead of climbing ladders, you're now climbing vines, pipes, and chains.  A few notable gameplay features were created.  One involves dropping fruit on enemies.  These take the place of the hammers from Donkey Kong and allow you to go on the offensive.  All 4 screens feature fruit.  Another screen involves a spring from the Donkey Kong elevators screen where if you jump on it and with proper timing jumping off it, you can land on either a lower or higher floating platform.  Some of the platforms and vines on this particular screen aren't stationary but instead moved back-and-forth.  The last new aspect is found on the last screen where you must push keys up to locks while climbing.


Ralston's Donkey Kong Junior cereal was an improvement in both taste and texture.
Although the apple and banana pieces tasted like neither fruit, they tasted better than the jagged 'wooden' barrels of the original.

Considering this is a direct follow-up to the events in Donkey Kong, are we to assume Donkey Kong consummated a relationship with the kidnapped lady?  Did we cross some strange boundary here, moving beyond kidnapping to a subject involving bestiality?  If so, seeing Kong in a cage no bigger than himself is a good first step.  But that's a direction even Nintendo wouldn't take, so I suggest an alternate backstory where Kong and his mate had a real feces-flinging falling out, and Kong ends up at a construction site where the workers had stockpiled themselves with beer barrels from a local brewery.  Kong goes on a ripper, grabs one of the worker's girlfriends, and the game is afoot.  The flyer has this excerpt: "Watch how Junior strategically maneuvers his way to the top at high speeds. How he wrests the key away from Mario.  The key that gives Papa the freedom to once again beat his chest and chase girls!"  Is it really worth it for you to break your dad out of jail if he's going to continue to be a cheating louse?  I mean, do you understand why he's in jail, junior?  Miyamoto again goes to King Kong for "inspiration" for the final screen.


Nintendo's Sky Skipper.  Miyamoto certainly had a thing for gorillas...

Another Nintendo game, Sky Skipper, was developed right after Donkey Kong and was released a month later, in August 1981.  Gorillas are again the villain.  The game uses the same hardware as Popeye.  Donkey Kong uses a 3 MHz Z-80 CPU and discrete logic for sounds, whereas both Sky Skipper and Popeye uses a 4 MHz Z-80 CPU and a 2 MHz AY8910 sound chip.


Nintendo's Popeye.  Ironic how quickly King Features Syndicate changed their tune about licensing their Popeye characters...

Donkey Kong's success meant Miyamoto and Nintendo would get a Popeye-based game, and they did a year later, when Nintendo released Popeye in December 1982.  I wonder who called who first, Nintendo or King Features Syndicate?  The game only has 3 screens.  Conversions were made for several consoles and computers at the time (Atari VCS, Atari 400/800/5200, Colecovision, Commodore 64, Intellivision, Odyssey2, and Texas Instruments TI-99/4a).  Parker Brothers got both the home console and computer licensing.


Nintendo's Donkey Kong 3.  Stanley getting crazy ape bonkers with pesticides.  So, Kong is up there batting beehives, but I'm the one who gets stung?


Scene from North by Northwest with Cary Grant getting the mother of all crop dustings.
If Nintendo wanted to make a game involving pesticides, they could do no worse than rip... I mean, take inspiration from this movie.

Just as Donkey Kong was born from the ashes of Nintendo's failed shooter, Radar Scope, things came full circle with Donkey Kong 3 the following year, in October of 1983.  Again designed by Miyamoto, it combines the popularity of the Donkey Kong character, the excitement of Namco's Galaga, and the adventurous setting of... a greenhouse full of bees?  Mario is out.  Junior is out.  Hell, even Luigi is out.  Enter... Stanley?  Donkey Kong 3 is certainly an odd little shooter that has a lot more in common with games like Stratovox than it does with Donkey Kong.  One look at Stanley would make the case for inbreeding being the subversive topic this time around.  Or maybe Stanley has been huffin too many pesticides.  In spite of it being unpopular, there was a version for the Nintendo NES and even a Game & Watch version, as well as an extremely rare sequel for the Sharp X1 called Donkey Kong 3: The Great Counterattack that was discovered in 2018 (LINK), but other than the completists out there, nobody's really looking to have this one in their collection.  Seems Nintendo exhausted the King Kong wellspring at this point, but luckily there were decades ahead with games involving the main characters, and plenty of new (and better!) characters as well.

PIRATE VERSIONS

Rather than try and cover every official Donkey Kong and Mario game ever made for every system (which would make one dandy college thesis), I'll continue covering all the Donkey Kong clones and pirate versions, up to and including the official NES version.

Congorilla machines were very common in my area (Northeast PA), and all the ones I've personally see had Falcon's Crazy Kong Part II boards.  In the early 2000s, one of the local arcade operators I worked for had 2 similar Congorilla machines, and both had Falcon boards in them; considering the operator was the closest to Emma's, there's a good chance one of those machines was the very same one I played back then!  The cabinets also had the infamous license sticker on the back of the cabinets, which of course "wasn't worth a plugged nickel" in the U.S.  The KLOV entry for Congorilla mentions these were produced by Orca.  I'm not sure how accurate that info is, as I'm reasonably sure Orca only produced games and boardsets, but I know there's several bootleg variations of Falcon's Crazy Kong ROMset, one of which was made by Orca (the title screen simply says "Crazy Kong 1981").  Another similarly titled version was made by Alca.   And although there's a Congorilla manual, there was never a Congorilla ROMset or boardset as far as I know.  The Congorilla name (as well as the cabinet artwork) was something one of the pirate companies I mentioned came up with.


Falcon's Crazy Kong Part II shows an extra "GIVE UP!" message and attract mode animation screens showing Kong busting out of a cage.


Alca's version of Crazy Kong.  Both Kong and the carpenter are white as a ghost.  I wonder if Nintendo's lawyers spooked them.


Other than the title screens, Monkey Donkey and Donkey King look and play exactly the same as Alca's version.
Also, Monkey Donkey doesn't have a monkey instead of an ape/gorilla because monkeys have tails.


Orca's version of Crazy Kong.


Big Kong starts with the cement factory screen, and then you get unique ramps and elevators screens.  The rivets screen has the carpenter getting a little nosey with the lady.

Other bootleg variations of Falcon's Crazy Kong have been found under the names Big Kong and Monkey Donkey.  Most of the variants have different colors and unique glitches (ex. you can walk behind Kong on the rivets screen).  Big Kong has a unique glitch/trick where you can jump off the 2nd ramp and warp to the elevators screen!  All of the Falcon boards and bootleg boards use the same hardware as Crazy Climber (fans of that game will recognize some of the sounds effects.  Perhaps that's where Falcon got the idea to call it Crazy Kong?)  They also have Kong graphics with "holes" in it where you can see the building graphics behind him.  There's also Crazy Kong bootleg variants that use either Galaxian or Scramble hardware.  If you thought Donkey Kong sounded bad with Crazy Climber sound effects, just wait until you try it with Galaxian's (will my ears never stop bleeding....?)  What's really interesting with all of these bootlegs is, they all seem to share either the same Falcon Crazy Kong code, or a variation of it.  I've yet to see one bootleg that uses the original Donkey Kong code, and if none do, this all goes back to Nintendo's deal with Falcon.  For example, all the cut screens showing how high you've climbed say "How High Can You Get?"  This is what the original Japanese version of Donkey Kong says; the U.S. version asks the more grammatically correct question "How High Can You Climb?"

LAWSUITS

As to what or who caused this mass influx of Donkey Kong arcade versions, the answer is Nintendo Co., Ltd. (unintentionally) created this problem.  Sure, Donkey Kong would have been bootlegged otherwise, but damn, Nintendo bootlegged themselves before anyone else had the chance to.  Nintendo was struggling to meet the demand for Donkey Kong machines and they decided to grant a license to Falcon Industries of Japan in September 1981 to create and sell a variant of Donkey Kong called (you guessed it) Crazy Kong.  The agreement stipulated Falcon could only sell copies in Japan, as only Nintendo of America (a subsidy of Nintendo Co.) had the rights to sell Donkey Kong in the U.S.  Nintendo Co., Ltd. supplied stickers to Falcon to attach to their Crazy Kong pcbs.  The stickers were printed in the English language and indicated that the Crazy Kong circuit board was manufactured under a license from Nintendo Co.  Falcon's version was based on the latest version of the Japanese ROMset (set #3), as evident of a ladder trick found in that version (LINK).  It wasn't long before Falcon violated their agreement with Nintendo and exported Crazy Kong boards to the U.S., where they ended up on the hands of companies like Direct Connection and Arctic International (who were based in New Jersey and had previously been in legal trouble with Williams Electronics LINK).  Falcon made no mention of the boards being illegal outside of the U.S., and being the license stickers were in English, anyone buying them assumed they were legal.  One such Falcon board purchaser was Elcon (Electronic Concept Industries), who purchased their boards from Arctic in November 1981.  Elcon was founded in Michigan in the 1970s by Andre Dubel and incorporated on September 2nd, 1977.  Before long, the illegal boards were everywhere.  Most arcade operators looking to buy a Donkey Kong machine either couldn't afford the retail price for them, or they were unavailable due to the high demand for them, soon found out about the bootleg machines, and the machine of choice in my area was Congorilla.

Needless to say, Nintendo soon found out what Falcon was doing and terminated the licensing agreement with them, on January 29th, 1982 to be specific.  Nintendo of America sued Elcon and several other businesses (the only case with information online is the one against Elcon):

Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Falcon Industries, Inc., Civ. No. 81-6359 (Feb. 12, 1982)

Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Artic International, Civ. No. (April 8, 1982)

Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Entertainment Industries, Civ. No. 82-631 (April 8, 1982)

Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Ingerman, Civ. No. 82-0937-C (June 26, 1982)

Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Elcon Industries, Inc., Civ. No. 82-72398 (October 4, 1982) (LINK)

Elcon argued that Ikegami Tsushinki Co., Ltd. - best known for creating high-quality television cameras (LINK) - created the game because they found that name in the program (LINK), but Nintendo showed evidence to the contrary and that Ikegami Tsushinki Co. only provided technical help with the programming.  The following excerpt is from the Nintendo of America v. Elcon Industries case files:

Nintendo Co., Ltd. expended over $100,000.00 in direct development of the game, and Nintendo Co., Ltd. hired Ikegami Tsushinki Co., Ltd. to provide mechanical programming assistance to fix the software created by Nintendo Co., Ltd. in the storage component of the game.  The name "Ikegami Co. Lim." appears in the computer program for the Donkey Kong game.  Individuals within the research and development department of Nintendo Co., Ltd., however, created the Donkey Kong concept and game.  The operation of the Donkey Kong game includes the use of the audio-visual material which was originally created for use in the game by Nintendo Co., Ltd.

On July 27, 1981, Nintendo Co., Ltd. assigned all of its rights, title and interest in and to the United States copyrights in the Donkey Kong game to the plaintiff.  The United States Copyright Registration No. PA 115-040 identifies Nintendo Co., Ltd. as the author of the entire audio-visual work[1] and indicates that plaintiff obtained ownership of the copyright through the assignment from Nintendo Co., Ltd.  The copyright registration was issued to plaintiff with an effective date of July 30, 1982.  It covers the entire audio-video presentation of the Donkey Kong game.  Plaintiff has complied with all statutory requirements to perfect its copyright claim, including the display of a copyright notice on each game unit it distributes.

[1] The Canadian application for registration of copyright for the Donkey Kong game filed by plaintiff states that Mr. Gunpei Yokoi is the author of the game.  The evidence shows that Mr. Yokoi is one of the employees of Nintendo Co., Ltd. who did the creative work on the game.


Nintendo's famous wanted ad that appeared in the April 15th, 1982 issue of PlayMeter.  It also appeared in RePlay.


News blurb from the August/September issue of Video Games Player (pg. 9).

Although Shigeru Miyamoto is often regarded as one of the most successful video game designers, he owes a huge debt of thanks to Yokoi not only for helping him create groundbreaking titles like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. but with how to design games (LINK).  As for Ikegami Tsushini's role in creating Donkey Kong, some believe Ikegami was contracted to develop the entire game based on concepts designed by Nintendo (from Miyamoto), but the Nintendo vs. Elcon court case downplayed Ikegami's involvement to more along the lines of code refinement and bug fixing.  Yet all other evidence seems to point in the direction of Ikegami developing Donkey Kong entirely (as well as other early Nintendo arcade games).  Why would Nintendo pay Ikegami some $90,000 (out of a budget of $267,000) to help fix a program, and why would Ikegami's logo be in Donkey Kong's graphics code?  This site and Masumi Akagi's 2005 book It Started With Pong claims not only did Ikegami program Donkey Kong, they later sued Nintendo in 1983 (in the Tokyo District Court) for $580 million for using their code to develop Donkey Kong Junior without crediting or paying Ikegami, but it was not until 1989 that the Tokyo High Court gave a verdict that acknowledged the originality of program code.  In 1990, Ikegami and Nintendo reached a settlement, but the terms of which were never disclosed.  Allegedly there wasn't anything more than a verbal contract between the two, which makes Ikegami Tsushinki's involvement in Donkey Kong difficult to pinpoint, but this account goes in-depth as to how much work Ikegami spent on making Miyamoto's ideas into a functional and very playable game.  If accurate, Ikegami's role with Donkey Kong was far more significant than Nintendo led everyone to believe, and any settlement on Nintendo's part would be an early example of them silencing a rival.  Even Atari's lawsuit filings in its prime pale in comparison to Nintendo's litigious actions in the past 4 decades.


Junior King was another Donkey Kong Junior pirate version.  Other than a lack of any company info and some color variations, it looks identical.

This is a quick aside to another excerpt from the Nintendo of America v. Elcon Industries case files:

Prior to July of 1981, Nintendo Co., Ltd. created and began manufacturing an audio-video game called Donkey Kong and first published the game in Japan on July 9, 1981. An English translation of the Japanese term Donkey Kong is "crazy gorilla."

"Kong" is indeed a slang term for "gorilla" in Japanese.  The name "Kong" is also associated with the Congo, an African country known for its gorillas.  So if you were wondering where the name "Congorilla" came from, that would be it.

Falcon maintained they had no control over someone else buying their boards and exporting them to the U.S., but the judge wasn't buying it.  Falcon even went on to bootleg Donkey Kong Junior, under the name Crazy Junior.  This resulted in Falcon's CEO being arrested and sent to jail.

PLATFORM GENRE

Donkey Kong's production numbers were hardly a secret, which is why Nintendo's competitors were looking a similar game of their own, as were companies looking to develop home versions.  The following are games that took key elements from Donkey Kong and repurposed them, or showed them in a new angle.  Some had storylines or a clear goal, and even some animation segues.


Amenip's Woodpecker (LEFT) and Naughty (RIGHT).

Amenip released Naughty (called Naughty Mouse in MAME) AKA Woodpecker sometime in 1981.  Though this game was unlikely influenced by Donkey Kong, it's interesting in that it's more similar to Space Panic.  There's very little information about this game.  A version of Woodpecker was released by a company called Palcom Queen River.  In both versions, you control a mouse who has to convert all the egg nests into Casa De Rodentes.  There's only one screen with each, but Woodpecker is more playable as you can go on the offensive by pressing the fire button; not so with Naughty, as you're only option is to run for your life, and it's nearly impossible to even clear the first screen.  The game's premise was more fully realized with Mappy.


Atari's Kangaroo.  The game featured 4 different screens and as well as cut screens and whimsical animation.

Kangaroo is arguably the most popular copycat.  Released in June 1982, the premise was to guide a mama kangaroo up 4 sections of a tree filled with platforms and ladders to rescue her baby kangaroo, whose been blindfolded and being held in a tree fort.  Apparently, kangaroos are either born with boxing gloves or trained to be boxers at an early age, since baby k is shown wearing gloves.  There's bonus fruit you can grab, if you can avoid the apple-throwing monkeys and the big ape with boxing gloves (he can steal your gloves, but you can steal them back).  Now, why the monkeys would kidnap baby k is unknown.  Perhaps their motivation was to cajole mama k into boxing their big boxing ape, or maybe they had already previously boxed each other and the ape lost, and this was the monkeys' way of avenging their betting losses.  Tree boxing might not exactly be the UFC of the jungle, but much leather will be thrown.

This was made by Japanese company Sun Electronics.  Atari, looking to cash in on the Donkey Kong craze like everyone else, decided Sun's game was close enough, licensed it, and fast-tracked it into production with only 1 week of playtesting.  This of course did nothing to boost the morale of Atari's in-house game designers, who typically spent a year or more developing a game, and then often endured months of rigorous location testing by Atari's Marketing group to win their approval for release.  Where management saw a very colorful looking and sounding Donkey Kongesque game on its surface, the coin-op designers were aghast to see a game with poor sprite hardware and gameplay that needed more fine-tuning, leading one of the engineers, Rich Adam, to write a particularly stinging memo about it:

There is an epidemic raging through the Coin-Op Marketing and Engineering Management Staff.  The disease is called License Fever.  It destroys the brain cells of its victims, crippling their thought processes.  These poor souls can no longer distinguish between a product that is junk and one that has the quality the public identifies with Atari.

How could a healthy, logical person make a decision to build a game of the caliber of Kangaroo based on one weeks collections report?  Such a decision must be the result of a sever cranial dysfunction.

The impact of Kangaroo to Coin-Op's reputation in the field is discouraging to think about.  More serious, however, is the impact within Engineering.  The project teams that develop games here work extremely hard.  For these individuals to have to compete with trash games like Kangaroo and Fly Boy for Engineering support creates a very real morale problem.

The mere consideration of these half-done games as a marketable product is confusing to Engineers who are used to much higher standards.  Result: Even lower morale.  The most recent example of this problem is the decision to remove Lunar Battle from field test so that Fly Boy and Maze Invaders could be tested at that location.  Lunar Battle was tested long enough to get only two full weeks of collection reports.  Based on this huge data base, the earnings curve looks like this (straight down).  The project team on Lunar Battle was deprived of crucial information about game times, the game times curve looks like this (straight up).  Information was lost on average scores, average scores curve looks like this (straight up).  Information was lost on the ability of the player to max out the difficulty of the game.  But nobody did it, in the three weeks that it was tested.  As a member of the Lunar Battle project team I feel cheated out of that essential data.

The point here is this: In light of all the priority which is being given to these inferior games I must ask myself, "Why am I working so hard to make a quality product?"

Kangaroo sold in higher numbers than other Atari hits at the time, such as Crystal Castles and Millipede, and in slightly less numbers than Dig Dug and Star Wars.  Kaneko's Fly-Boy actually saw production under the name Fast Freddie, but in extremely limited numbers, whereas Atari's equally poor Maze Invaders was never released.  But if you ask arcade collectors and players these days, they'd likely choose to have any of those other games if given a choice, and if Donkey Kong is an option, there's no contest as to which they'd prefer.  As for Lunar Battle (the early name for Gravitar), its production was cut short due to poor sales (about half of Kangaroo's numbers) and the remaining empty Gravitar cabinets were repurposed for Black Widow (with stickers of new artwork on the sides of them).  Cute games were in, and shooters like Major Havoc (another Atari game with an incredibly long development, which actually shipped unfinished) were out.  Actually, the tide had begun to turn with Pac-Man, and cute games were never Atari's forte.  A review in the 1st issue of Creative Computing called it relatively non-violent, which is hilarious considering the idea for the game can trace its roots to what's animal abuse/manipulation from the late 1800s (LINK 1 and LINK 2), and your character is wearing boxing gloves, and the only way to advance in the game is to punch the crap out of something or someone.  Regardless, the game was popular in both the arcade and at home, and Atari made a small fortune picking up Donkey Kong's banana peelings.  There was even a Kangaroo Saturday morning cartoon show.  I must have missed the Gravitar one...

Besides an Atari 5200 version, there was also a version for the Atari 400/800, but it wasn't done by GCC... exactly.  Atari programmer James Leiterman converted it for the 8-bit computers, and it was eventually released via APX. The only minor graphics difference between them is the 5200 version has red strawberries whereas in the computer version they’re more purplish. From James Leiterman:

General Computer was contracted to only do a 5200 version.  While at Atari, I had written a reverse disassembler that converted binary files back into source code with some documentation.  I went through and corrected the mistakes of the tool to build the 800 version and sent it over to APX.  They published it with no credit back to me as I requested.  So, essentially, it was an internal hack!  Mine had red strawberries while theirs had a purplish red or some non-red color.


Taito's Jungle King.

Taito's Jungle King was released in August 1982 and featured 4 different scrolling scenarios with Tarzan swinging from vines, swimming with alligators, running up a hill while jumping over boulders, and jumping over natives to rescue a woman held hostage.  Conversions were made for several consoles and computers at the time (Apple II, Atari VCS, Atari 400/800/5200, Colecovision, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, IBM PC, and Texas Instruments TI-99/4a).


Nihon Bussan/AV Japan's BurgerTime.

Nihon Bussan/AV Japan's BurgerTime was released in November 1982 and licensed by Bally/Midway for the U.S. market.  The game was originally titled Hamburger in Japan, but was renamed before being exported internationally.  It featured 6 different screens where the player must make burgers by walking over different ingredients, which fall down to plates at the bottom of the screen.  Hot dogs, eggs, and pickles will chase you around.  You can't jump over them but you can temporarily stun them by throwing pepper at them.  Conversions were made for several consoles and computers at the time (Apple II, Aquarius, Atari VCS, Atari 400/800/5200, Colecovision, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Intellivision, and Texas Instruments TI-99/4a).


Century Electronics' Logger.  Still photos belie the absolutely wooden gameplay experience being offered here.

Century Electronics (not to be confused with Centuri Electronics) showed this blatant rip-off at the November 1982 AMOA show called Logger.  It's unknown if Nintendo went after them, but I can't imagine why they wouldn't have.  I only saw one of these, and that was within the past few years, so I doubt very many were made.


Orca's Springer.  You've seen one level, you've seen them all.

Orca wasn't content with simply doing an illegal knockoff variation of Falcon's Crazy Kong.  Released in December 1982, Springer was their attempt at doing a legit knockoff variation.  Jump from cloud to cloud, kicking dragons and collecting objects in an effort to reach the sun.  There's also dangerous objects such as cups falling from above, and what looks like a tube of toothpaste (or a hypodermic needle?) floating across the screen.  The arcade version has an impressive number of different levels (over 30).  Tigervision made home versions for the Atari VCS (3 levels), Atari 400/800 (10 levels), and Texas Instruments TI-99/4a.  The gameplay with all of them is rather horrible.


Sigma Enterprises' Ponpoko.  If you can get to the last level, you deserve a beer...

Sigma Enterprises' Ponpoko was released in January 1983.  It's a simple platformer with 20 different screens that has you collecting different fruit (except for level 20, in which beer is the item to collect!).  All you can do is run and jump.  You have no offensive capabilities, other than the option of doing a small or big jump.  The game is more similar to Space Panic in that you don't have an end goal to achieve.  After you reach the final level, the same level keeps repeating.


Universal Playland's Mouser.

Universal Playland (UPL) released Mouser in February 1983 that features 4 different screens having different platforms connected by ladders (with the 3rd screen having a lift connecting 2 platforms).  This is another animal variant of Donkey Kong.  The objective is to rescue your girlfriend cat who has been catnapped by mice that throw or roll things down at you, or appear to slide boxes at you and then disappear as soon as you get close to them.  There's even an opening animation setting the stage.  Spoiler alert - when you finally reach her after completing the 4th screen, the mice replace her with a pig.  Those black plague-carrying swine!


Konami's Roc'n Rope.

Konami's Roc'n Rope was released in March 1983.  There are 4 different screens, and the storyline is you're an archaeologist who needs to return the tail feathers of the "Roc" bird (also called the Bird of Fortune).  You have to use your Rope Gun to climb up each ledge, avoiding the cavemen and dinosaurs (referred to as monsters on the flyer).  You're only weapon is the Flash, which (very) temporarily blinds an enemy.  There's also a pterodactyl flying by and dropping rocks (shouldn't that have been called the Roc bird?).  Every time you reach the rockless Roc bird, it flies away with you hanging on to its tail feathers for dear life.  When you reach it the 4th time (and every 4th time after that), you're shown a full-screen animation of the Roc bird flying.  Good graphics aren't everything, and boy, does this game prove it.  More time should have been spend fixing the flawed design.  Conversions were made for the Atari VCS and Colecovision consoles.


Kaneko's Jump Coaster.

Kaneko's Jump Coaster was released in May 1983.  It's a 3-screen platformer where you collect bags of money while avoiding monkeys and coasters, with the goal of either reaching your girlfriend (for 1,000 points) or going for the big bag o money for 10,000 points.


Sunsoft's Arabian.

Sunsoft's Arabian was released in June 1983 and was developed by Sun Electronics.  You play a prince who must rescue his princess who's being kept in a castle.  It features 4 screens where you're climbing ladders, poles, and vines, and running platforms (both stationary and moving) while jumping and slashing enemies.  You have to collect 7 jugs to complete each screen.  There's also an animated scene for rescuing her.


Sega's Hopper Robo.

Sega also released Hopper Robo in August 1983 that includes elements from Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior.  You play a robot who must collect boxes.  There are different platforms you can jump up and climb onto, or you can jump on giant springs to bounce up to a platform.  Hammers are occasionally thrown down at you.


Sanritsu's Dr. Micro.

Sanritsu's Dr. Micro was released in 1983.  It's a 3-screen platformer that has you chasing after a mad scientist instead of the typical fair maiden.


Taito's Elevator Action.

Taito's Elevator Action was released in July of 1983.  You start at the top of a 21-story building (apparently zip lining down from a higher building) and fight your way down to the street.  If you love running around and jumping while firing a gun and grabbing documents, and have a passion for riding elevators and escalators, this is your game.  No apes or gorillas this time around, only goons who all have the same tailor.


Atari's Crystal Castles.

Also released in July 1983 was Atari's Crystal Castles.  It's a mix between Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.  The buildings are three dimensional and you must collect all the gems in the maze.  You also have a jump button.  Some screens feature lifts that allow you to access other sections.


Centuri Electronic's Hunchback.

Century Electronics released Hunchback in September 1983 and it's essentially Activision's Pitfall! with a medieval makeover.  The company was only around for about 4 years and this was their most popular title (in a lineup of forgettable titles).  Check out this article about the company from All In For A Quarter's Keith Smith.


Sega's Congo Bongo.

Sega's 1983 Congo Bongo re-imagines Donkey Kong in a 3-D jungle landscape.  A gorilla sets you on fire, inventing the Burning Man festival in the process.  There are 4 different screens that you must traverse with the goal of setting a gorilla on fire, as payback (and if you're successful, better hope nobody tells PETA about it...).  Sure, the graphics were mind-blowing back then, but the gameplay can often be unforgiving.


Atari's Peter Pack-Rat.

Atari's obscure Peter Pack-Rat was released in 1985.  The game's objective is to navigate different layouts of platforms, ladders, and pipes to collect objects and return them to your nest.  The graphics and sound effects were cutting edge at the time, but the playability was a step back.

ARCADE HACKS

There have been several hacks and modifications done to the original Donkey Kong:


Jeff Kulczycki's Donkey Kong II: Jumpman Returns.

The earliest was Donkey Kong II: Jumpman Returns (AKA D2K) in 2006 by Jeff Kulczycki.  Besides having a new opening animation and extra 'intermission' animations between screens (one of which is similar to the hotfooting animation scene from Congo Bongo), it includes 4 new screens as well as variations of the originals.


John Kowalski's Donkey Kong Remix.

John Kowalski revisited this 2007 Tandy Color Computer 3 Donkey Kong project in 2015, and released an arcade version of his efforts in 2016 called Donkey Kong Remix.  Besides the 4 original screens, it includes the 5 modified screens, as well as 3 bonus screens.


John Kowalski's Donkey Kong Remix.

John Kowalski also released a modified version of Donkey Kong Junior, called Donkey Kong Junior Remix, in 2017.  Like his Donkey Kong Remix, it includes the 5 modified screens as 3 bonus screens, as well as the 4 original screens.

At least 14 other variations of Donkey Kong Remix have been made since:

Donkey Kong II
Donkey Kong II Pauline Returns
Donkey Kong Christmas Remix
Donkey Kong Pauline Edition
Donkey Kong Spooky Remix
Donkey Kong Deluxe Black Hammer Edition
Donkey Kong Deluxe Builders Edition
Donkey Kong Deluxe Drunken Master Edition
Donkey Kong Deluxe FHMC Edition
Donkey Kong Deluxe Miner 2049er Edition
Donkey Kong Deluxe Personal Edition
Donkey Kong Deluxe Rearranged Edition
Donkey Kong Deluxe Wild Barrel Edition

The Pauline variations call back an earlier hacking effort by video game designer Mike Mika.  Back in 2013, he hacked a role-reversal version of NES Donkey Kong to allow the player to play as Pauline trying to rescue Mario, thanks to a suggestion by his daughter, who was familiar with a similar option in NES Super Mario Bros. 2 where one could play as Princess Toadstool (LINK).

Owners of the original arcade game can purchase Ultimate Donkey Kong 3DK Multigame - an add-on board for their machine (LINK) that include Donkey Kong Remix and the 14 other variations.  John also sells his own multigame boards of different compilations through his own site.

Another prolific Donkey Kong hacker, Paul Goes, created no less than 20 different variations:


Paul Goes' Donkey Kong Twisted Jungle.

Donkey Kong Accelerate
Donkey Kong Anniversary Edition
Donkey Kong Barrelboss
Donkey Kong Barrelpalooza
Donkey Kong Championship Edition
Donkey Kong Crazy Barrels Edition
Donkey Kong Duel
Donkey Kong Freerun Edition
Donkey Kong Hearthunt
Donkey Kong Into The Dark
Donkey Kong On The Run
Donkey Kong Pac-Man Crossover
Donkey Kong Randomized Edition
Donkey Kong Reverse
Donkey Kong RNDMZR
Donkey Kong Skip Start
Donkey Kong Springfinity
Donkey Kong Sprites & HitBoxes
Donkey Kong Twisted Jungle
Donkey Kong Wizardry

Most of these mainly offer different colors and graphics, with minimal changes to the platforms.  He also hacked Crazy Kong Pt. II to have more accurate graphics and colors!  Check out his site for more details.


Fred X. Quimby's hack of Donkey Kong to use the graphics (Mario, girlfriend, barrels, and fireballs) and sound f/x from VCS Donkey Kong.

Lastly, on the subject of Donkey Kong arcade games, Fred Quimby created this version.

COLECO HOME VERSIONS


Coleco's first Colecovision magazine ad
.

Like every CES show, the 1982 Summer CES in Chicago, IL was full of surprises, with the biggest going to Coleco's announcement of their Colecovision system.  It wasn't just an announcement, either, as Coleco was on the floor showing the Colecovision and several games!  If that wasn't enough, the 'drop mic' moment was their system included what was then the greatest pack-in game, Donkey Kong, and it looked fantastic!


Coleco's Colecovision Donkey Kong.

Yes, it looked great at the time, especially considering no other home versions of the game yet existed.  I'm rather surprised the video game magazines at the time weren't running cover stories about it.  Although those screenshots raised the bar in terms of detailed graphics in home video games, the one glaring issue everyone noted was that the ramps screen had Donkey Kong on the wrong side.  The rivets screen was also missing 1 level, leaving only 6 rivets to remove instead of 8.  As is often the case, mere screenshots don't tell you the whole story.  When I first played it (after already playing the VCS version), I recalled how slow it ran.  Even the theme music played slower (but then again, that describes most of my experiences playing Colecovision games in that every time I play one, I feel my life leaving me).  Going up and down ladders was like having teeth pulled (the undocumented trick of hesitating after you first climb before moving again made you move faster, which helped).  That is, if you're lined up correctly with it (there's little margin for error).  What certainly didn't help most players with that was the Colecovision's stubby joystick controllers.  There were also some strange design choices that were made, as though more consideration was made as to how good it looked in screenshots.  On the ramps screen, the oil barrel is already ablaze right at the start, but there's no animation to the flames.  The fireballs on the ramp screen already start moving around before the intro music even stops playing, and they have a nasty habit of appearing right next to you if you're on the sides.  On the elevators screen, there's no springs, but there is an extra foxfire on the top girder, which tends to hang out around the only ladder to access it.  After several more times around, an extra foxfire is added to the elevators and rivets screens, with the extra foxfire on the elevators screen being added to the top girder.  Throughout all of this, there's plenty of flickering graphics of both yourself and the enemy objects.  Collision-detection is also rather poor, especially when using the hammer; on the ramps screen, you have to literally be right on top of fireballs to kill them.  Finally, the instant you complete a screen, you immediately start the next screen.  There were also only 3 of the 4 screens; as with most conversions, the conveyor belts screen wasn't included, nor are there any animations, or "How High Can You Get" screens.  Most articles at the time simply chose to ignore these issues.  One author in particular, Steven Kent of The First Quarter and The Ultimate History of Video Games went so far as to claim Coleco made a "flawless" version of Donkey Kong; it's hardly flawless, and Coleco was already planning on a Super Game Module for the system to allow for improved games.

Coleco paid $25 million for the home rights for the game that included both console and handheld versions.  But wait!  There's more!  Coleco also announced plans to sell their games for both the Atari VCS and Mattel Intellivision, with Donkey Kong at the top of their list.  Along with Donkey Kong, there was Carnival, Frenzy, Looping, Mouse Trap, Mr. Do!, Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle, Smurfette's Birthday, Turbo, Venture, Wild Western, and Zaxxon - all for the VCS.  Coleco's early catalog featured a different list of games - Carnival, Cosmic Avenger, Donkey Kong, Lady Bug, Mouse Trap, Smurf, Turbo, Venture, and Zaxxon.  According to at least 1 account, Coleco showed cartridges for all 9 games at the show.  Whether or not there was anything inside the cartridges, or what games were actually shown, I don't know.  It proposes an interesting question.  If Coleco did demonstrate an early version of Smurf at that CES, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to consider Activision's David Crane saw it and quickly set out making Pitfall.

Reading Atari's assessment of the June 1982 CES show of both themselves and of the competition, it's clear they recognized Coleco's entry into the video game market was strong and took them seriously.  How could they not?  Coleco's showing was nothing short of staggering, and with the console announced price of $200 when the VCS was still selling for approximately $135, especially considering Coleco planned to offer a VCS adapter for their system, there was no reason anyone would want to buy a VCS at that point.  To one-up themselves, they also announced plans for owners to expand it into a full-fledged computer!  And yet, if you read Atari's assessment, they were still focused on Mattel's Intellivision as their main competition... and they proved as much when the pushed out their 5200 system in November of that year, with 360-degree joysticks to rival the Intellivision's 'paltry' 16-direction joypad controllers.  Atari's 2 main critiques about Coleco were equally clueless ("They want to be all things to all people" and "Never delivering on their promised advertising").  By the end of the year, you couldn't escape their advertising, and the result was Coleco sold 2 million consoles in less than 6 months.  The Colecovision was available by the end of July in New York and Boston, and soon expanded to other large cities (Chicago, Los Angeles) before wide release nationwide in September and October.  Not only did Atari lose out on nabbing the Donkey Kong license, they were about to lose the next generation console race, and badly.  But, before all that happened, the first horse out of Coleco's stable was VCS Donkey Kong...


Atari's June 1982 CES review of Coleco's showing.


Article by Jim McCullaugh in the 6-19-82 issue of Billboard (pg. 4)


Michael Blanchet's column from the 6-23-82 edition of the Hartford Courant.


July and August announcements in The Video Game Update newsletter.

The story of how Coleco got the home console license for Donkey Kong over Atari highlights yet another colossal Atari fumble.  Atari had the inside track on getting it, but Nintendo wanted to license it to someone who could make both video and electronic handheld games.  Atari certainly had experience making handheld games, even though they had all but stopped all development of them by that point.  Could they have offered that option to Nintendo?  Of course.  At the time (1981), Atari had Alan Alcorn heading up his R&D division where holographic Cosmos handheld was being developed, and Atari was on the verge of consolidating all their handheld development under a new division, Electronic Toys & Games.  As we now know, Atari's CEO Ray Kassar only had eyes for the VCS, and the Cosmos was cancelled at the 11th hour to being released. 

In the 4th part of the 2024 The Legend of SwordQuest podcast, "Descent Into Darkness", former Warner Bros. exec Manny Gerard recalled how Kassar let the opportunity to license Donkey Kong get away:

Colecovision.  I'll never forget.  I was sitting at a meeting at Atari when the first Colecos hit the street.  So, they went out and bought one, and they walked into the conference room, and they took it out of the box, and they opened it up, and they looked on it, and the engineer who looked at it said it's clearly a piece of shit.  It was there.  Having another competitor is not good, but what it had was Donkey Kong.  And when I went in to (see) Kassar, who ran the company, I said, we knew how good Donkey Kong was.  We had the most arrogant programmers in the world in the coin-op division, and they were telling us this was one of the great games of all time.  Why did you let the game go?  And he said to me, "Well, they (Nintendo) wanted $2 a cartridge per royalty.  We weren't going to pay that."  I said, Ray, what are you, stupid?  The gross margins are 88% on the cartridges, and that was going to be one of the best games anybody ever saw.  And forgetting that Coleco got it.

This is exactly the sort of inaction you get when you hire the wrong person for the CEO job (it was Gerard who suggested Kassar fill the position after he fired Nolan Bushnell).

The deal Coleco struck with Nintendo for the home console rights to Donkey Kong included paying $200,000 up front, plus $1.40 per cartridge and $1 per handheld.

COLECO AND NINTENDO HANDHELDS


(LEFT) Coleco's Donkey Kong handheld game
; (RIGHT) screenshot.


(LEFT) Coleco's Donkey Kong Junior prototype handheld game
; (RIGHT) Nintendo's Donkey Kong Jr. released handheld game.


Nintendo's Mario's Cement Factory handheld game.  This uses the same design as Nintendo's Donkey Kong Jr. handheld.

ATARI VCS/2600

 
(LEFT and CENTER) Coleco VCS Donkey Kong box; (RIGHT) Coleco's Atari VCS catalog.  Despite having a picture of the arcade game
and the "PLAYS LIKE THE REAL ARCADE GAME" statement, you got a game that played like it at its basics, but didn't look or sound quite like it.

Like how most people remember seeing VCS Pac-Man for the first time, I remember the first time seeing VCS Donkey Kong.  A good friend of mine at the time, Joe Malarkey, begged his parents to get him a copy.  At the time, General Radio in Wilkes-Barre, PA was one of *the* places for video games, as they often stocked nearly everything.  Toys 'R' Us were years away from opening a location in the area, so places to buy games were usually limited to department and TV stores, with General Radio being the latter.  His mother had seen a newspaper ad for the game and mentioned it to him, which was basically a starter's pistol to "Let the begging begin!"  I was over his house and witnessed this notable moment.  His father half-heard the discussion going on and inquired about this "Honkey Donk" game, which had us roaring with laughter.  Before long, plans were made to drive down to General Radio the following morning to get the game.  I stayed over his house that night and went with him to the store the next morning.  So eager to get there, we arrived before the store even opened (ads show they opened at 8:30am Monday - Saturday).  I remember standing out front and looking through the large glass windows.  The game counter was halfway back in the store along the left wall, far enough for us not to able to see the treasure it contained, especially with the lights out.  The store was rather large and the floor space mostly consisted of TVs, VCRs, stereos, appliances, movies, records, cassettes... it was basically Best Buy before there was Best Buy.  To 12 y.o. me, it was a huge store :)  Come 8:30, the store opened and we rushed over to the video game counter.  A few minutes later, we followed a salesman over to a floor TV model in the middle of the store where a VCS was hooked up.  He plugged the game in and powered everything up for my friend to try the game first before his mother bought it.

As the TV warmed up, we saw the ramps screen with the main characters slowly appear on the screen.  A tinge of disappointment immediately washed over me.  Though not as shocking as when first seeing Pac-Man, it was still a letdown from how detailed the arcade version was (and especially moreso after seeing the Colecovision's version a few months later).  My first thought was the game area looked 'small'.  The playfield had large, blank spaces on both sides, where previously every other game I'd seen would fill the entire screen.  Garry Kitchen's reason for this was to approximate the original vertical orientation of the arcade game.  The jumpman character (now known as simply the carpenter for his penchant for hammering, but soon to be given an Italian name more famous than Rocky Balboa) looked recognizable and the rolling barrels were okay (even if they more closely resembled pepperoni pizzas), but the girl-to-be-rescued never once moved or cried out for help, frozen in shock at what looked like a giant gingerbread man standing next to her.  Hey, the hammer was there, so at least it has that!  Anybody can jump... people, animals, robots, aliens... anybody.  Not many games involve the use of hammers, and even less carpenters are useful without one.

The game starts and you get right to it.  You don't see Donkey Kong climbing a ladder to the top of the building and seeing him jumping up and down creating the ramps, or any baring of gorilla teeth.  There's no "How High Can You Get?" screen.  But as my friend started playing, I noticed when the barrels reached the bottom and touched the large oil drum in the lower-left corner, the drum didn't explode and start tossing out fireballs.  Nothing happened with it.  Okay, maybe that's a difficulty switch thing, much like how the saucers in Asteroids were optional.  He didn't get to the top of the screen, and I don't remember if he asked if there were more screens.  The box only showed 1 screen, so maybe the salesman confirmed there were more, or if we looked at the manual and saw there were more.  In any case, he got the game (a few months later I did as well), and within minutes of getting back to his house, we played the game and saw the rivets screen.  The fireballs showed the same lack of animation as the girlfriend, plus they didn't climb the ladders, which meant the hammer on that screen was only good for killing one fireball.  Yep, that was kind of lame, as was not having the satisfaction of seeing the building collapse when you knocked out all the rivets.  The restriction of only having 3 lives meant you had to get really good at the game to get a good score.  There were also none of the bonus prizes that are found on the arcade's rivets screen.  In other words, it's a pretty stripped down, bare-bones version.


Actual VCS Donkey Kong game screenshots, compared to actual gingerbread man screenshot.  You have to admit, the resemblance is uncanny.


Photo of typical slack-jawed gamer circa Christmas 1982, perhaps playing Donkey Kong?

From a programmer's point-of-view, it's a real technological achievement with the technical limitations in which to develop it.  From a gamer's point-of-view, it's a somewhat disappointing version of the arcade game, featuring only 2 of the 4 screens and only 3 lives.  Plus, kids don't understand things like technical limitations, time-to-market concerns, or budgets.  You save or beg for a copy of a game that has the same name as that fantastic game you saw at the arcade, and you expect that copy to look, sound, and play the same.  But as with most every game back then, that was rarely the case. 

Nonetheless, it was a far more playable and enjoyable game than what the 800lb video game market gorilla Atari had to offer with their Pac-Man.  As with most VCS games at the time, the graphics weren't always the main draw, the gameplay was, and in this category, Donkey Kong was acceptable.  The reviews at the time were all over the place and ran the whole gamut, with the biggest gripes concerning the poor graphics and with only having 2 screens.  Had the Colecovision not debuted with Donkey Kong as its pack-in game a mere 2 months later, I suspect opinions would have been more positive, but when the neighbor just got a Corvette and you're still driving a hand-me-down sedan, it's hard not to be biased.

The programmer for VCS Donkey Kong was Garry Kitchen.  The game was contracted out to Woodside Design Associates (Steve Kitchen's company), who then contracted his brother Garry's company, Imaginative Systems Software.  Coleco provided him with a Donkey Kong machine to use for reference, and he also spent a lot of time on the game so that it looked and played as close to the arcade version as possible.  He mentioned incorporating the slanted ramps on the barrel screen was a real challenge, and originally had just straight (horizontal) ramps once he realized how hard having slanted ramps would be to program.  He reached out to Activision during development in the hopes of securing a full-time job with them.  The VP of Product Development at Activision, Thomas Lopez, came out to meet with him, and Garry showed him his progress with Donkey Kong.  When leaving, the rep mentioned that if he worked for Activision, those ramps would have been slanted... which was all the motivation Garry needed to figure out how to do it.  The game had to be finished by a specific date w/o question and he spent the last 72 hours straight (no sleep, no breaks) sitting in a cubicle in Hartford, Connecticut with the owners of Coleco standing over his shoulder waiting for the finished game.  In October 2020, Kitchen wrote an article about the game's development, titled "How I Spent My Summer of 1982: The Making of Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600".  He claimed he started programming the game in May and spending 3 months on it.  The problem I have with that is, that timeline doesn't add up to when the game was actually released; by all accounts, the game was on the market in late July / early August (link).  We know from the rushed development of Atari's VCS E.T. it took a good 8-10 weeks from the time a program was finished to when it ended up in stores.  Knowing this, it's more likely Kitchen finished programming the game in May.


Earliest newspaper ad for Coleco's VCS Donkey Kong, from the San Francisco Examiner 7-23-82.


General Radio ads from the Citizens' Voice newspaper, 8-12-82 (LEFT) and 9-30-82 (RIGHT).

 
General Radio's first advertisement for the Colecovision 9-2-82.


General Radio & Electronic Co. at 587 S. Main St., Wilkes-Barre, PA


Auto Zone now has a location where General Radio used to be.

According to Garry, Coleco wanted the game on the market in time for Christmas, which is why he was only given 3 months in which to develop it, and also why he was only given 4K to use instead of 8K.  To Garry's credit, he tried to convince Coleco to use an 8K ROM since they were available by that time, but they refused due to the added cost.  When he made it clear it would be impossible to include the other 2 screens without the extra ROM, he was told they didn't care because they were going to sell as many of them as they could make!  Garry pleaded the other 2 levels were needed for the integrity of the game, but was told it didn't matter (VIDEO).  Both of these reasons given to Garry were rather weak.  VCS Donkey Kong was released in July - plenty of time for the holiday shopping season, right?  As for their concerns over the extra cost of using 8K, for one thing, Donkey Kong was the hottest video game in the world in 1981.  For another, Coleco debuted the Colecovision at the 1982 Summer CES show, along with carts for both the Atari VCS and Intellivision, so the first 4 VCS games Coleco released were either already done or close to being done by then, and they were worried about the cost of an 8K ROM?  Exactly how much did they invest in the entire Colecovision project?  And they were worried about 1 VCS title?  Pul-eeze.  I think their 'vision' was a little near-sighted.  Besides, Coleco knew just from seeing how Atari fumbled having the license to the previous hottest video game in the world and how many VCS Pac-Man carts they sold that any version of Donkey Kong was going to sell millions.  Garry's comment about integrity issues applied to both Coleco and Atari in that both company's leadership cared more about profit than the quality of their products.  One would assume spending millions to acquire licenses would be all the motivation they would need to make every effort to make the best game or system they could, but if the games in question are already proven smash hits in the arcades, the only thing that mattered to them was having those names on their games; if the game looked or played even remotely the same, that was good enough.

Billboard magazine debuted their Top 15 Video Game chart list with their September 11th, 1982 issue.  At that moment, Donkey Kong was already on the market and debuted at #3 on the list.  The following issue didn't feature the chart, but the issue after that did, and Donkey Kong was now #1.  It remained #1 for at least 6 weeks, up to November 6th, 1982.  The November 13th, 1982 issue again didn't feature the Top 15 list, but the following week had Donkey Kong at #2, supplanted by what became the sales juggernaut with Activision's Pitfall.  Donkey Kong would remain on the Top 15 chart well into 1983.


Billboard Top 15 Video Games charts for 9-11-82, 9-25-82, and 11-20-82.

So how did VCS Donkey Kong sell?  Over 4 million copies were sold, earning Coleco wholesale revenues in excess of $100 million dollars, even accounting for the brief VCS cartridge recall.  Garry mentioned that of the more than 500 SKUs Coleco had on the market that year, VCS Donkey Kong accounted for 25% of Coleco's revenue!  Coleco also sold 550,000 Colecovision systems by the end of the year (or in a staggering 4 months' time), and nearly as many in the 1st quarter of 1983.  A news blurb in the September 1983 issue of Electronic Games mentions Coleco sold its 1 millionth Colecovision in March of that year:

COLECO COLECOVISION/ADAM


News blurb from the September 1983 issue of Electronic Games (pg. 8).

You're probably asking yourself, "What recall?"  The 2nd issue of Arcade Express mentions Coleco had to recall the initial shipments of cartridges due to a problem with the original VCS (6-switch) models.  A statement in the January 1983 issue of Electronic Games (pg. 21) confirms it was a problem with the original shells.


Coleco Donkey Kong recall blurbs from Arcade Express (LEFT) and Electronic Games (RIGHT).

I asked Garry if he could confirm/deny the recall issue:

I was not aware of this at all.  Must have been a physical issue with the housing, as the code was never modified or updated.

Since Donkey Kong was Coleco's first VCS release (with their 2nd, Venture, not being released until September, along with Mouse Trap in October, and Carnival in November), the recall only affected Donkey Kong.

Coleco would go on to sell over 2 million Colecovision systems before a combination of the video game industry crash and Coleco's ill-fated decision to focus on their ADAM computer project ultimately cut the console's life short, with Coleco declaring bankruptcy in 1988.

At the Winter 1984 CES show, Coleco unveiled the 3rd expansion module for their Colecovision, called the Super Game Module.  The planned pack-in game with it was to be Super Donkey Kong.  This was an improved version of their original, now including all 4 screens as well as the opening and end animations.  Several other titles were being worked on, including Super Buck Rogers, Super Donkey Kong Junior, Dragon's Lair, and Super Smurf Rescue.


(LEFT) Coleco press release letter about the Super Game Module #3; (RIGHT) photo of Super Donkey Kong wafer tape.


Coleco magazine ad that mentions the Super Game Module.


Coleco's ADAM Super Donkey Kong.

Super Donkey Kong includes the opening and end animations.  It also has the animation for completing a level and showing Kong grabbing the girl and climbing higher, but only for the ramps screen!  That's right.  When you complete the conveyor belts and elevators screens, it immediately goes to the next screen.  Also, when you complete the ramps screen, Kong's face turns yellow before he climbs up.  As for the added conveyor belts screen, it shows every indication of being unfinished.  For one thing, Mario's walking sound f/x is completely different.  Kong also has the previously mentioned yellow face.  The conveyor belts themselves don't even run!  Which means there's no pans of concrete to be avoided.  There's a hammer, but you can't grab it.  Neither can you grab any of the prizes.  There's also no extension ladders, but that's the least of this screen's issues.


News blurb from the Jan/Feb 1985 issue of Computer Games (pg. 35).

With the introduction of their ADAM computer system at the Summer 1983 CES show, the Super Game Module was immediately cancelled, and the games that were developed for it eventually were released for the ADAM.  At the show, Coleco demonstrated Super Donkey Kong on their ADAM unit, which threw Atari into a fury.  You see, Coleco only had the home console rights for Donkey Kong, and Atari had secured the home computer rights.  So even though the ADAM was literally a Colecovision system at its core, showing Donkey Kong on it wasn't going to fly as it violated Atari's home computer licensing agreement, and Atari immediately made that clear to Nintendo's CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi's attention, who in turn demanded Coleco President Arnold Greenberg cancel plans to release the ADAM version.  Coleco complied and Super Donkey Kong and Super Donkey Kong Junior weren't released.

ATARI VCS/2600 SEQUEL


Coleco's VCS Donkey Kong Junior.

Coleco's VCS Donkey Kong Junior is a less-playable version of the Donkey Kong arcade sequel.  This was programmed by Harley H. Puthuff, Jr. and released in October 1983.  Although the screens are scaled back a bit, it was surprising to find 3 of the 4 original arcade screens in this version.

An old, unfounded rumor from over 40 years ago continues to re-emerge, and I feel any article about Donkey Kong should at least address the topic, so here we go.  The September 1983 issue of Videogaming Illustrated magazine (pg. 5) claimed Coleco was deliberately screwing up VCS versions of games that you can also buy for their Colecovision:


Rumor from the September 1983 issue of Videogaming Illustrated (pg 5).

The article doesn't mention its sources, and nobody has ever come forward to claim credit for writing this.  And why would someone?  The rumor is complete nonsense and the unnamed person who wrote it either did it to generate controversy or simply wanted to disparage an entire company's efforts over one bad game.  As for the author's comments about Donkey Kong Junior being "absolutely swill", that's a bit harsh.  No, it doesn't have the gameplay that Donkey Kong has, even with the addition of a 3rd screen thanks to Coleco going to 8K ROMs.  Sometimes having a larger ROM doesn't guarantee success.  The problem with Donkey Kong Junior is it doesn't play the same for one significant reason - there's no fruit to drop!  That's a gameplay element that's on every screen in the arcade version.  That would be like omitting the hammer in Donkey Kong or the energizers in Pac-Man.  It's a crucial element of the game for dealing with enemies, and without it, you're just running for your life with no way of going on the offensive.  Garry knew that and made sure the hammer was included in his version.  So how did this Donkey Kong Junior rumor morph into a Donkey Kong rumor?  That's an easy one to answer - which game was more popular and made more money?  Besides, King of Kong Junior doesn't quite have the same marquee power.  Coleco could have given Garry Kitchen 16K to port Donkey Kong, and it still would have been vastly inferior to the Colecovision version, so there was no need to 'sabotage' their versions for other systems.  Think about the logic behind such a plan.  Coleco didn't have any in-house programmers, and they sub-contracted out to other companies to do games for other systems.  Now, imagine Coleco subcontracting a job to someone with the explicit demand to do the worst job programming it as possible.  No company or programmer would have accepted a job with that requirement if they wanted to be in business for long.  The better the game turns out, the more copies are sold and the more money everyone makes, right?  If they wanted to sell the least amount of copies as possible, they could have chosen to .... not release it :)

Someone recently refreshed that conspiracy old claim on the 2600 Facebook group and even posted a video on YouTube of him asking Garry Kitchen about it.  I won't mention his name or include any links to his channel.  Suffice to say, he's your typical clickbait peddler who doesn't need any more attention.  I don't remember anyone having the gall to ask Garry such a ridiculous question before... until now.  For one thing, there was never any debate about whether or not Garry intentionally did a poor job with it.  I think in most cases, programmers did the best they could with the limitations they had.  Garry talked about how he set out to make the best version he could, and the public drubbing Atari got for their VCS Pac-Man was even more of a reason he wanted to do his best.  For only being 4K and spending all of 3 months programming it, it's really an impressive effort.  Show me a current VCS programmers who can bang out a game like Donkey Kong in 3 months, using the same tools that were available to Garry.  Not everyone can program and design games like Garry, or Rick Maurer, or Bob Polaro, or several others.  You have to keep in mind, for every successful designer back then like Rob Fulop and Dave Crane, there were 4 Tod Frye's.  You want to dump fuel on this dumpster fire of a rumor, or at least re-imagine it into a more believable story?  Let's talk about the Intellivision version of Donkey Kong and how truly awful that is.

ATARI VCS/2600 KNOCKOFFS

As in the arcade, manufacturers of home games were looking to replicate the success and playing experience of Donkey Kong, with some games being more blatant copies than others.  There were also the same assortment of variations in gameplay, with elements from other games being incorporated.  I'll first cover all the VCS/2600 titles.


Tigervision's VCS King Kong screenshot and photos of the box.  The only remarkable thing was the box art, and how the
back of the box depicted the reverse angle of the front.  How many sales would Tigervision have lost if the box included a screenshot?

Tigervision's King Kong was released in August 1982, around the same time (within days or weeks) of Coleco's VCS Donkey Kong being available, and is notable only for being the first home Donkey Kong knockoff.  There was a small video game store in a strip mall in Edwardsville, PA that I only visited once.  I've long since forgotten the name of the store, and I don't think it was in business for very long, but when I went in, they had a copy of King Kong in their glass display counter.  This was before anyone had Donkey Kong yet.  I didn't have nearly enough money to buy it, but I would have if I did, and I'm almost certain I would have been disappointed at spending that much for it once I got home and played it.  Considering General Radio's ad for both games, with King Kong's box art featured prominently, I have to wonder how many people ended up buying King Kong over confusing it for Donkey Kong, or how many were sold on those days where Donkey Kong wasn't immediately available due to being sold out, and rather than waiting for more to arrive, settled for King Kong.  King Kong was a poor-man's version of Donkey Kong, and by poor-man, I mean, if you paid retail price for this back in the day, you wasted both your time and money, because chances are you didn't spend more than a few minutes total playing it.  Original retail price for it was $19.95 (which seems like the price it was when I first saw it), but was later changed to $34.95.  Greed runs in that tiger's blood, for sure.

I was reading about the lawsuit between Nintendo and Universal regarding Donkey Kong and King Kong (the movie):

UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC. v. NINTENDO CO. LTD. and Nintendo of America, Inc. No. 82 Civ. 4259 (RWS) (July 29, 1985) (LINK)

It's a well-known court case where Nintendo's attorney Howard Lincoln made a name for himself (and ultimately earned himself a position on Nintendo's board) by urging founder and president of Nintendo of America's Minoru Arakawa to fight the lawsuit, which they did by ultimately proving King Kong was in the public domain and thus Universal City Studios had no trademark right to it.  What's ironic is Universal sued RKO Pictures in 1975 for the exact opposite reason - arguing and proving King Kong was in the public domain!  Jump to present day and Nintendo collaborated with Universal for the latter's newest theme park, Super Nintendo World, a portal in Universal's new Epic Universe theme park, set to open May 22nd, 2025 (LINK).

Tiger Electronic was mentioned, since they licensed the use of the King Kong name for their handheld game prior to the case being filed by Universal against Nintendo on June 29th, 1982.  Well, it turns out Tiger's handheld King Kong game was even more of a copy, which got the attention of Nintendo's legal department and forced Tiger to change the game.  The following excerpt is from the Universal City Studios v. Nintendo Co. Ltd. and Nintendo of America, Inc. case files:

Robert Hadl (Universal VP of legislative matters ) learned that Tiger Electronics had licensed King Kong for a handheld game.  He decided that Universal's earnings from it were too low and that the license's granting of exclusive rights to Tiger would impede the agreement with Coleco.  On May 4, Sid Sheinberg (president of MCA and Universal City Studios) sent Tiger a mailgram demanding that they send their game in for further approval.  Universal reviewed it and decided that King Kong was too similar to Donkey Kong.  On May 8, Sheinberg revoked Tiger's license, but Tiger president O. R. Rissman refused to give in and challenged Universal's claim that it owned the King Kong name.

Knowing that a court battle lay ahead, Hadl contacted Rissman, the errant Tiger licensee, to compromise on the handheld King Kong game.  Hadl wanted to remove the exclusivity provision of the license and to distinguish the handheld game from Donkey Kong so as to weaken any potential counterclaims that one of Universal's licensees had violated Nintendo's intellectual property rights.  Rissman complied, giving the hero a fireman hat, replacing barrel graphics with bombs, and making the game platforms straight instead of crooked.  This design was approved in early June 1982.

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Robert W. Sweet also ruled that Tiger's King Kong was an infringement of Donkey Kong: "Donkey Kong's particular expression of a gorilla villain and a carpenter hero (with or without a fire hat) who must dodge various obstacles (whether bombs or fireballs) while climbing up ladders (whether complete or broken) and picking up prizes (umbrellas or purses) to rescue a fair-haired (whether knotted or pigtailed) hostage from the gorilla is protractible against Universal and its licensees.

Whether Tiger was in the running for the Donkey Kong license is unknown.  Perhaps they were, and were upset about losing out to Coleco.  In either case, Tiger clearly wanted a Donkey Kong game of their own and simply figured they'd make one and call it King Kong instead.  In Tiger's VCS game, King Kong climbs up the building at the start, just like in Nintendo's.  Both have a 5-note tune that repeatedly plays, and both have a damsel at the top of the building to rescue, with King Kong's damsel actually running around and waving her arms.  There's also a bonus/timer ala Donkey Kong.  That's where the similarities end, though.  With this variant, all you get is one screen.  Instead of hurling barrels, King Kong is throwing bombs, with some being 'magic' bombs that can give you a boost up to the next level.  The real surprise is when you climb halfway up the building, King Kong climbs up (into space?) and wraps-around (the planet??) to the bottom.  Right at that moment, any bombs onscreen start rolling UP the building!  Yeah, if the premise of King Kong wasn't surreal enough to begin with, it now becomes unreal.

Tiger's VCS version of King Kong is a straight-up conversion of their handheld.  Speaking of which, on Rik Morgan's excellent Handheld Games Museum website, he has an interesting photo on his entry for Tigervision's King Kong game with the following comments:

I found this in a Tiger games catalog with some screenshots.  It's obviously the first stage from Nintendo's Donkey Kong arcade game, and it looks like it might also be able to do the 'rivets' stage.  The catalog shows the screenshot on a sticker, and under the sticker you can see that the screen was originally designed with ramps, just like the first stage in the arcade game.  Maybe the design change was done to implement the rivets stage.

I asked Rik about this and he provided a LINK to the catalog page he mentioned, along with more comments about it:

If you look, you can see that the entire bottom 3rd of the page is a sticker covering what was originally printed. Holding it up to light, I was able to see that the old level had ramps. I'll have to get this catalog out of storage and try to scan or photograph this page with a bright light behind it so we can really make out what it's covering...


Activision's VCS Pitfall!


Activision's VCS Pitfall II: Lost Caverns.

If there was one thing Activision was good at back then, it was knocking off arcade games.  You have to consider the 4 founders of Activision (David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Bob Whitehead, and Alan Miller) worked for Atari prior to leaving and starting Activision.  They soon realized how successful making coin-op conversions was, having translated several of Atari's own arcade games to the VCS and 400/800 computers, and they continued with that approach right from the start.  The most successful VCS game Activision did was Pitfall!  It was programmed by David Crane and released in September 1982, 2 months after Coleco's VCS Donkey Kong; it quickly surpassed Donkey Kong in sales (eventually selling 3.5 million copies) and spent 64 weeks on the Best Sellers list, at #1.

Pitfall's success was in no small part due to being influenced to old Tarzan movies and the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Equally important was Donkey Kong's influence, as both involve running, jumping, climbing ladders, and collecting bonus items.  In addition, you also had screens with a vine that you could jump on and swing over hazards.  Where Donkey Kong's 'world' scrolls vertically one screen at a time, Pitfall's scrolls horizontally 1 screen at a time, and offered 256 "unique" screens.  And like Donkey Kong, the game was converted to several different platforms.  The success of both games drove home the desire for more games with the running and jumping mechanic.  Crane would later make a sequel, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns, which was released in 1984.  It introduces some new gameplay mechanics such as swimming and floating, but removed the vine swinging (but it would return in the Atari 400/800/5200 version).  It also included another first - save points in the form of red crosses.


Games By Apollo's VCS Infiltrate.

Games By Apollo's Infiltrate was released in September 1982 (though copyright dated 1981) and was programmed by Donley B. Hoffman.  It's a platform game where you constantly have to constantly grab enemy documents that alternately appear on the top and bottom levels.  Instead of ladders, you use elevators.  Interestingly, this game predates Taito's Elevator Action by nearly a year!  This was actually not developed by Apollo, but rather bought from an outside source.


Fox Video Games' VCS Fast Eddie.

Fox Video Games' Fast Eddie was released in October 1982 and was programmed by Mark Turmell.  It's a variation of Donkey Kong's ramps screen except you jump over enemies and collect objects in order to reach a key at the top of the screen.


Data Age's VCS Airlock.

Data Age's Airlock was released in October 1982 and designed by J. Ray Dettling.  Escape a sinking sub by running back-and-forth and unlocking a series of doors.  If you do, the game ends; if you don't, the game ends.


Funvision's VCS Inca Gold.

Funvision's 1982 Inca Gold was another bad Donkey Kong rip-off, and reviewers back then didn't hold back on how they really felt about it.  I'm not sure if this is one is original, but most versions either changed or hid the Funvision logo.  With this one, you have 2 different screens in which to climb up and a large crab-like creature apparently tossing enemies your way.  There's always a total of 4 of either floating diamonds or smaller crab-like things that stick to the platforms and ladders.  Your character is about as blatant a copy of Mario, as if there was any doubt as to what game the designer was trying to replicate.  The original PAL version has yet to be archived, so the only version currently available is an NTSC one from Zellers.  The game is known by several different pirate names (Pac Kong, Pac-Kong, Spider Kong, Spider Maze, Spider Monster, Tonky Kon).  Pac-Kong is unique in that all the graphics were changed and the music was removed, but a rather glaring glitch was introduced - you can't jump across large gaps from right-to-left, only from left-to-right!


Coleco's VCS Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle.

Activision's Keystone Kapers was released in April 1983 and was Garry Kitchen's first game for them.  He considers it similar to Pitfall but more of an action game.  Like with Pitfall, you run, jump, and collect items, with the goal of catching a criminal.  The 'world' is a department store that's 8 screens wide and with 4 floors.  There are escalators on both ends and an elevator in the middle.


Coleco's VCS Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle.

Coleco's Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle was released in April 1983.  James Wickstead Design Associates were subcontracted to design and develop it, and was programmed by Lawrence Schick and Henry Will IV.  Although this has more in common with a side-scroller like Pitfall and there's no objects to collect or offensive capabilities other than running and jumping, there are some screens where you jump up steps or on furniture and shelves.  The goal is also to rescue Smurfette, so there are some similarities with Donkey Kong as well.  What's interesting is, Coleco announced plans to release a Smurf game months before Pitfall came out, so I wonder what design ideas they had for the game, if any, prior to Pitfall's release.


Tigervision's VCS Miner 2049er.


Tigervision's VCS Miner 2049er Vol. II.

Tigervision's Miner 2049er was released in 1983 and based on Bill Hogue's original Atari 400/800 version.  It only features 3 of the original 10 screens; a sequel, Miner 2049er Vol. II, came out in April 1984 and only featured 3 more screens.  Miner 2049er's development originally started out with making a Donkey Kong knockoff, but when Hogue realized it was too similar, he revamped the design.  There's still plenty of running, jumping, ladder climbing, and bonus object collecting, though.   The game was produced in at least 15 editions by different licensed publishers.  The manual states the game is licensed in conjunction with CompuVid.  Bill doesn't recall who programmed the VCS versions.


Atari's VCS Kangaroo.

Atari turned to General Computer Corp. (GCC) for their VCS and 5200 Kangaroo conversions.  The VCS version was programmed by Kevin Osborne and Josh Littlefield and released in July 1983.  It's a decent conversion of the arcade game, but it's lacking the 3rd screen, as well as some features (opening animation, intermissions, bouncing apples, boxing ape) and the lush arcade graphics, but the game itself is very playable and contains the essence of the arcade game.  The purple background color certainly didn't add any visual appeal, though.  Reviews for it echo most of my comments, but again most ratings were positive.


Atari's VCS Jungle Hunt.

Atari again relied on GCC for their VCS Jungle Hunt conversion.  This was programmed by Michael Feinstein and John Allred and released in July 1983.  It's a decent version of the Taito arcade game, even more than the 400/800/5200 version in some aspects.  It features layered (parallax) background graphics in 3 of the 4 scenes, plus music in the last 2 scenes (the 400/800/5200 version has neither).  Some elements were left out, such as the monkeys appearing on the ropes (even though one is shown in packaging artwork), the air bubbles in the river, and the boiling pot, not to mention the lush background graphics. but it captures the essence of the arcade game.  The manual mistakenly refers to the jungle as the Deadly Forest (in spite of the game being called JUNGLE hunt), and the ropes as vines (vines in a forest?).


M Network's VCS BurgerTime.


Philip Blackman's VCS Chaotic Grill.

M Network's VCS BurgerTime was released in July 1983.  It was programmed by Ron Surratt  Decent conversion that includes 5 of the 6 different screens.  The hot dogs and eggs from the arcade version are here, but instead of pickles you have bread sticks and cheese.  Enemies can spawn right on top of you if you happen to find yourself in corners where they appear.

An excellent homebrew version of BurgerTime was done by Philip Blackman in 2024.  Called Chaotic Grill, it uses twice the memory size as M Network's version and includes all 6 screens.


BIT Corporation's VCS Open Sesame.

BIT Corp's VCS Open Sesame! was released in 1983 and is yet another knockoff.  Again there's only 1 screen with this one, but there is a bonus/timer.  The objective is to drop 10 ropes before you can reach the treasury on the top level.  Every level has a guard to avoid (you can also avoid them if you're at the top of a rope).  Occasionally a magic ball will bounce down across every level, and if you grab it while standing on a level, you'll turn white and a tune will play.  You can then knock out the guard on that level, but you only have a limited time (much like with the energizer in Pac-Man).  Each completed level increases the speed of both your player and the guards . Between screens is where the game is really notable as you're shown a very colorful screen of the treasury and words "Open Sesame" playing from the speaker; this was the 1st VCS game to feature digitized speech, with Atari's Quadrun the only other one (which was released the following year).  All in all, it's not a bad game, but the framerate isn't very stable and often the screen will jump, especially when the magic ball is bouncing or when the treasury screen appears.  There are also several glitches in the game, especially when things start speeding up, as you'll sometimes see a guard wrap-around the screen, or you'll grab a magic ball at the same time you touch a guard, with both of you dying.  The game is also known by several different pirate names (Apples and Dolls, I Want My Mommy, Teddy Apple, Tom Boy).  I Want My Mommy lacks the digitized voice and treasury screen, and only has 2 screens (with a large apple at the top of the 1st, and a large teddy bear at the top of the 2nd).  The objective now is to get the lowest score possible by completing the 2 screens as fast as possible (spoiler alert - the lowest score possible is 1,160).  The second screen finds your legs are a bit longer, so safely hiding at the top of a rope when a guard passes by is no longer possible.


Tigervision's VCS Springer.

Tigervision's VCS Springer was released in October 1983 and is a conversion of an obscure arcade game by Orca.  Jump from cloud to cloud collecting bonuses and kicking dragons in an effort to reach the sun.  For some reason, the fire button controls jumping with this version (instead of kicking), which is sure to frustrate all the coin-op fans out there (both of you).  Doesn't matter, because the gameplay is far too frustrating.


Coleco's VCS Roc'n Rope.

Coleco's VCS Roc'n Rope was programmed by Ed English and released in July 1984.  It's another simplified conversion of the somewhat obscure Konami arcade game.  The box refers to the Roc bird as the Bird of Fortune, but the manual refers to as the Golden Roc.  The pterodactyl flying by and dropping rocks from the arcade version isn't present, even though it's depicted on the box art.  There's also only 3 of the 4 screens.  As expected, there's also no animation of the Roc bird flying away once you reach it.  Combine that with the already frustrating gameplay of the original and only having 1 button to control 2 different functions, plus ledges that, although they show ladders (or what look like ladders but are actually supposed to be vines) for climbing down to a lower ledge, they aren't functional!  Oh, and about that 3rd screen that shows what looks like a bridge connecting the 2 middle ledges?  Yeah, that's more fake artwork.  The *only* positive thing I can say about this version is I like the sound effects of the bonus points being added up.  That's the only quality thing being offered IMO.  Couldn't Ed have at least changed the background color?  And why is there a lake at the bottom of every screen?  Maybe that was Ed's way of telling us even he knew this version was all wet, because the end result is a game that's nobody's favorite.  Of the 3 VCS games that Ed English did, this one is by far the worst.  His Mr. Do! was an acceptable version, and his Frogger is known for being a fantastic version (and it's only 4K).  To add insult to injury, what's with the box art?  Amidst the cartoonish background is a photo of an actual guy; neither the arcade machine nor the flyer for it has such a photo.  The box also shows the Golden Roc as blue in color.  I think everyone involved phoned this one in.


Coleco's VCS Roc'n Rope box.  Avert your eyes lest you be blinded.

ATARI VCS/2600 HACKS

As with VCS Pac-Man, there's been several VCS Donkey Kong hacks over the years to improve the graphics.  There's also been a few attempts at adding the missing screens, but none that are fully playable:


Fred X. Quimby's effort to add the elevators screen in 2005 went unfinished.

 


Anonymous efforts to improve the graphics and add the missing levels.

Perhaps some homebrewer out there can finish Garry Kitchen's original plan for completing the game (with 8K and no other modern hardware improvements).

There's also a Pauline Edition hack:


VCS Donkey Kong Pauline Edition

ATARI VCS/2600 HOMEBREWS

There's been 2 significant homebrew attempts at making new versions, though neither have been completed/sold:


Andreas Dietrich's 2012 Donkey Kong VCS .

Andreas Dietrich's Donkey Kong VCS is an impressive 32K SARA-chip version of the arcade classic with all 4 screens, and all 4 screens scroll vertically, though the ramps screen has flat platforms (similar to Garry Kitchen's original version).  Pretty much all the animations and little touches from the arcade version have been included, even the 2 different ending tunes!  Programming started in late 2012 and work has continued on it since.  Andreas had this to say about it:

There are actually three Easter eggs in the game.  The biggest one is a secret ending tune (from the arcade) which you can unlock. The third is just a message in the binary code.  This message is not in the regular binaries posted here ;)  It is only included if you build the cartridge version of the ROM form source with ‘make cart’.


Michael Haas's 2013 DK Arcade 2600 homebrew

Michael Haas' DK Arcade 2600 is a more faithful 32K version of the arcade game done in Batari BASIC with DPC+.  Programming started in 2013 and is still unfinished (last worked on in 2019).  You can control your character while jumping, which isn't accurate.  The collision-detection is also too sensitive, and there's still glitches in regards to climbing ladders (sometimes you'll be off to the side of the ladder), but what's available here is impressive.

MATTEL INTELLIVISION


Coleco's Intellivision Donkey Kong.

Only 2 screens are present in this conversion, and what's there is pretty awful.  The fireballs are only comprised of right-facing sprites.  The company responsible for laying that egg, Roklan Corp, didn't even want to do it, and ended up hiring someone with zero Intellivision programming experience.  So why did Roklan even accept the contract?  Coleco basically begged them to do it and Roklan VP Ronald Borta threw an insane figure at Coleco to do it, which they accepted.  It's amazing what people will do for money.  The story goes none of Roklan's programmers actually saw any of that sweet royalty money, though I heard Mr. Borta did okay for himself...


Coleco's Intellivision Donkey Kong Junior.

Years later, Carl Mueller Jr. would go on to create drastically improved homebrew versions of both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior for the Intellivision.

MATTEL INTELLIVISION KNOCKOFF


Imagic's Intellivision Beauty and the Beast.

Imagic released Beauty and the Beast for the Intellivision in 1983.  It was programmed by Wendell Brown, who used the Intellivision's strength to create very detailed images of a Donkey Kong variant more closely based on King Kong's story and more similar to Crazy Climber.  The building is nicely shown in a 3-D perspective.  The Beast (AKA Horrible Hank) throws down boulders that you must avoid or jump over.  You climb up floors through any open windows.  The Beauty (AKA Tiny Mabel) tosses down hearts.  If you snag one, you'll briefly be invincible to any hazards.  If you reach the top of the building, you'll see Hank plummeting to his death.

MATTEL INTELLIVISION HOMEBREWS


Intelligentvision's Intellivision Donkey Kong Arcade.

Intelligentvision released Donkey Kong *** (AKA Donkey Kong Arcade) for the Intellivision in 2011.  It was programmed by Carl Mueller Jr. started development on it in 2002.  An early version was attempted using the Intellivision's built-in EXEC, but it soon became clear that it wasn't up to the task.  He finally decided to develop his own graphics engine, and was able to push the console to its limit.  Donkey Kong Arcade includes all 4 screens, the opening and end animations, and intermissions, as well as the How High Can You Get screens.  In addition, the game includes the option of playing as different characters -  Toni and Bruno.  Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses.  Toni moves faster and Bruno can survive falls from higher heights, and one of them can jump with the hammer!


ELektronite's Intellivision D.K. Arcade.

Elektronite re-released this as D.K. Arcade for the Intellivision in 2012.   According to programmer Carl Mueller Jr., the game has been significantly improved over the original Intelligentvision version.  It has much better controls, near perfect implementation of the fireball AI, voices, the 30 Hz refresh rate code, and US and Japanese modes of play.  It also has a bit smoother framerate, and a few bugs have been removed, most notably the black screen of death.  You can also point-scab on the rivets screen.  Basically, when there are four fireballs already on the board, get close to Donkey Kong and jump over either one of his feet to rack up points.  This is also the behavior in the arcade, except that it does not require you to have any particular number of fireballs on the board.  He made the change because he didn't want people to be able to point-scab without there being any risk.  You can also influence the behaviors of the barrels as in the arcade version.


Elektronite's Intellivision D2K Arcade.

Elektronite released D2K Arcade (AKA DIIK) for the Intellivision in 2012.  It was programmed by Carl Mueller Jr.  Includes 5 new screens, plus all the new features from D.K. Arcade.  This is basically a version of Jeff Kulczycki's Donkey Kong II: Jumpman Returns (AKA D2K) arcade hack.


Elektronite's Intellivision D2K Arcade: Special Edition.

Elektronite released D2K Arcade: Special Edition (AKA DIIK S.E.) in 2016  It was programmed by Carl Mueller Jr. and includes 2 new screens for a total of 11, making for a complete version of the arcade Donkey Kong II: Jumpman Returns.  It also has the original Intellivision version, a new intro, and a new "how high can you get screen".  It also had the ability to save 2 high scores, but that has been removed for compatibility with emulators.  Check out Carl's site for more information.


Elektronite's Intellivision Donkey Kong Junior Arcade.

IntellivisionRevolution released Donkey Kong Junior Arcade for the Intellivision in 2018.  It was programmed by Carl Mueller Jr. and includes all 4 screens as well as the opening and end animations.

NINTENDO FAMICOM/NES

Nintendo would release its fabled Famicom console in Japan in July 15th, 1983.  The hardware was designed by Masayuki Uemura, who had designed the original arcade hardware, and he designed the console's hardware to faithfully recreate Donkey Kong.  The first 3 games released for it were Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, and Popeye.


Nintendo's Famicom/NES Donkey Kong.

Nintendo released Donkey Kong for the Famicom/NES at its launch.  Though it looks and plays nearly identical to the arcade version, it's missing the conveyor belts screen, the opening animation, and the cut scenes after completing the first 2 screens.  There are other noticeable differences, such as Pauline being on a lower girder in front of the double ladders on the ramps and elevators  screens, and a small floating girder on the rivets screen.  The lower hammer on the ramps screen is now placed at the left side of the screen 1 ramp higher.  Whether these were omitted/changed due to lack of time or ROM space, I don't know.

ATARI 400/800


Atari's 400/800 Donkey Kong ad.


Atari's 400/800 Donkey Kong.

Atari would finally avenge its failure to secure the home console rights of Donkey Kong by nabbing the home computer rights, and Atari's own version is arguably the best for any system at that time.  Programmed by Landon Dyer and released in December 1983, it included all 4 screens as well as the opening animation showing Kong creating the ramps, as well as Kong's fall from the rivets structure.  The only animations missing are those of Kong climbing up carrying Pauline and of her and Mario meeting after Kong's fall.  Landon worked a lot on the smoothness of Mario's jumps - something about spending lots of time tweaking the algorithm to adjust it perfectly.  From Dyer:

My first project was the Donkey Kong cartridge for the 400/800, one of the 8-bit line's first 16K games.  I was basically the only programmer working on it;  Mona Lundstrum did the artwork, Brad Taylor (Fuller?) did the sounds, and Rich Harvey assisted with some of the attract-mode and bitmap unpacking stuff.  DK took about five months to finish, and was some of the hardest work I've ever done.  At one point in development, DK was 20K - far too big to fit.  I spent a few weeks scrunching it; my roommate was always amused when I would come home and triumphantly announce, "I saved twenty bytes today!"  There were five bytes left in the ROM at the end.

ATARI 400/800 SEQUELS


Atari's 400/800 Donkey Kong Junior.

Atari also got the home computer rights to Donkey Kong Junior and released their version in 1983.  Programmed by Kevin Sacher and Jeffery P. Milhorn, it's a decent version of the arcade game, but not as polished as Donkey Kong was.  From Landon Dyer:

I didn't have any code in DKjr.  The lead engineer on DKjr was a real piece of work (he was indeed laid off pretty early in the Great Fall).  I remember him trying to write a bunch of DKjr in FORTH [shudder], having lots of performance problems [duh], and being very secretive about his work (he wouldn't let his boss look at it).  I vaguely recall some foo-fah-rah about him wanting to be paid more (I think he succeeded in this).  I'm pretty sure that all of the nasty, hideous FORTH garbage was tossed out, and that the poor junior engineer, Jeffery P. Milhorn, who had to share an office with the Real Piece of Work finished things off pretty well, with no apparent psychological damage.  Kevin Sacher (who was managing the group by then) might have helped complete it as well.

ATARI 400/800 KNOCKOFFS


Datasoft's 400/800 Canyon Climber.

Datasoft's Canyon Climber was programmed by Tim Ferris and released in 1982.  It has 3 Donkey Kong inspired screens set in the Grand Canyon.  The first is similar to the rivets screen where you have to plant charges at the ends of 4 suspension bridges while avoiding or jumping over mountain goats and then run to a charge box to blow them up.  The second screen has the familiar ramps and ladders with natives shooting arrows at you.  Some platforms have shields that can give you temporary protection from them.  The third screen has you jumping crevices and climbing ladders ala the elevators screen to reach the top, only for a mountain goat to knock you off.


Big Five Software's 400/800/5200 Miner 2049er.


Big Five Software's 400/800/5200 Bounty Bob Strikes Back.

Big Five Software's Miner 2049er was programmed by Bill Hogue and 4 other people and released in 1982.  It's often described as a cross between Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, but is also similar to Space Panic.  Bounty Bob is running and jumping around in an underground mine, picking up objects and avoiding mutant organisms.  There are 10 different screens featuring transporters, a lift, and a cannon.  The game was produced in at least 15 editions by different licensed publishers.  According to an article in the August 1983 issue of Electronic Games, the original version started with one guy, a bounty hunter, chasing another, and it was too much like Donkey Kong. The concept was reworked but the "Bounty" name stayed and became Bounty Bob.  A 5200 version came out in 1983.  A sequel for both the 400/800 and 5200, Bounty Bob Strikes Back!, came out in 1984.  The platforms in this one are more 3-D.  Miner 2049er would go on to inspire its own knockoffs, such as Mr. Robot and his Robot Factory.


Activision's 400/800/5200 Keystone Kapers.

Activision's Keystone Kapers was released in 1983 and was programmed by Alex DeMeo.  The 5200 version came out in 1984.  As with most of Activision's VCS conversions to superior hardware, the graphics upgrade is minimal.


Atari's 5200 Kangaroo.

Atari released their 5200 version of Kangaroo in 1983.  It was programmed by Allen Wells.  The 5200 version of the arcade game could have been better.  There's no opening animation, intermissions, or boxing ape, and the 3rd screen doesn't have the branch that breaks (from too many monkeys hanging from it).  GCC basically "phoned in" this one.

There was also a version for the Atari 400/800, but it wasn't done by GCC... exactly.  Atari programmer James Leiterman converted it for the 8-bit computers, and it was eventually released via APX. The only minor graphics difference between them is the 5200 version has red strawberries whereas in the computer version they’re more purplish. From James Leiterman:

General Computer was contracted to only do a 5200 version.  While at Atari, I had written a reverse disassembler that converted binary files back into source code with some documentation.  I went through and corrected the mistakes of the tool to build the 800 version and sent it over to APX.  They published it with no credit back to me as I requested.  So, essentially, it was an internal hack!  Mine had red strawberries while theirs had a purplish red or some non-red color.


Atari's 400/800/5200 Jungle Hunt.

Atari's 400/800/5200 Jungle Hunt was programmed by Alan Merrill and released late summer 1983.  I knew having music playing throughout the game was too much to ask for, but some things that were left out left me baffled, such as the lack of layered (parallax) background graphics, or the top graphics not scrolling during the boulders scene, or the fact that you play through the last 2 scenes in near-total silence.  The few sound effects that are present are pretty awful.  The sound of swimming across the water sounds like a stick on a washboard, and am I using a knife or a gun?  Either the sound guy, Andy Fuchs, was on vacation for most of this game's development, or he forgot the system actually has FOUR sound channels, not 1 or 2.  Yes, all the scenes are there, but the gameplay (esp. the ropes scene) is far too clunky to be enjoyable.  The last screen is also missing the 3rd cannibal that appeared in later levels in the arcade version (firing arrows down upon thee).  And why does the player's graphics always flicker?  Lastly, check out the whopping 2 frames of animation for the boiling pot.  Wow, way to go all out, there.  Atari should have farmed this port out to GCC (actually, Doug Macrae claims Carlos Smith did this).  When the VCS/2600 version outshines some computer versions (the C-64 version is nearly identical), you know something (or someone) got lost in the jungle.


Atari's 400/800 Springer.

Atari's 400/800 Springer was released onto the world in 1983, to the infamy of Tiger Electronics' name, to the utter damnation of their product line.


Epyx's 400/800 Jumpman.


Epyx's 400/800 Jumpman Junior.

Epyx's 1983 Jumpman couldn't be any more obvious in what game inspired programmer Randy Glover, could it?  It's called JUMPMAN!  You have to run and jump around 30 different levels comprised of girders, ramps, platforms, ropes, and ladders to diffuse all the bombs while being shot at.  A cartridge-based sequel designed for lower-end machines, Jumpman Junior, came out later that same year, but only featured 12 levels.


Electronic Arts' 400/800 Hard Hat Mack.

Electronic Arts' 1983 Hard Hat Mack was another Donkey Kong derivative that featured 3 screens with many of the same gameplay elements - a construction site with running, jumping, elevators, conveyor belts, and springs.  One screen has you riveting gaps in beams instead of removing them.


Atari 400/800 The Brave Carpenter.

It's unknown who made this BASIC version under the name The Brave Carpenter, or when.  It includes 4 screens and a rather poor rendition of Donkey Kong's screen entrance music.  3 are similar to the ramps, rivets, and elevators screens, with the 4th consisting of ramps with sections that appear/disappear.

ATARI 7800


Atari's 7800 Donkey Kong.

Late to the Donkey Kong scene was Atari's 7800 Donkey Kong.  Atari was able to license it for their console and released their version in 1988.  Donkey Kong is missing the conveyor belts screen and the collision-detection is much too critical; forget the generous overlap found in the arcade version.  The sounds effects are also somewhat grating, as the programmer simply used the TIA like most programmers instead of pushing it to deliver more appropriate sounds.  No doubt the frugal Jack Tramiel wasn't going to spend more to have a POKEY chip included onboard.  Years later, an enhanced homebrew version would include more accurate sounds thanks to using a POKEY.


Atari's 7800 Donkey Kong Jr.

Much like their version of Donkey Kong, Atari's 7800 Donkey Kong Jr. came out in 1988.  This time Atari made sure to include all 4 screens, but for some reason abbreviated "Junior" as "Jr."

ATARI ST

On the Atari ST computer side, there are 3 Donkey Kong knockoffs:


Cerebral Vortex Software Development's ST Crash Time Plumber.

Crash Time Plumber was released in 2016 by Sebastien Lucas of Cerebral Vortex Software Development.  From the screenshots, it looks to be a re-imagined version, much like Andreas Dietrich's Donkey Kong VCS.


Munsie Entertainment Software's ST Kid Kong.

Kid Kong was released in 1993 by Dave Munsie of Munsie Entertainment Software and looks to be the most accurate of the 3 clones.  Although still missing the conveyor belts screen, it does includes the opening animation of Kong jumping to create the ramps, and even a bonus screen where you run around collecting hearts while Kong throws down a torrent of barrels.  Dave Munsie was basically the equivalent of Champ Games for the ST.  Check out his impressive list of arcade titles for it on Atarimania.


The Other Valley Software's ST Monkey Business.

Monkey Business was released in 1985 by The Other Valley Software, the same year the ST was.  It features high resolution characters (compared to the original Donkey Kong) but it only has 3 screens.  It was programmed by Ron Fortier, who is more familiar to 400/800 owners as the creator of Bruce Lee, Conan, and Zaxxon.  The only other title TOVS released was Delta Patrol, which was a Defender clone.

On the Atari ST computer side, there are 3 Donkey Kong knockoffs:

ATARISOFT


Atari's Atarisoft ad.

After seeing their competitors maximizing their software licenses by releasing versions for different consoles, Atari finally wised up and leveraged some of their arcade hits and licensing and created both console and home computer versions of them for competitor's computers.  Atari released versions of Donkey Kong for the Apple II, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, IBM PC, and Texas Instruments TI-99/4a.



AtariSoft's Commodore 64 Donkey Kong.

The Apple II and C-64 versions were done by Michael Cranford and Douglas D. Dragin and released in 1984.  It includes all 4 screens as well as the "How High Can You Get" screens and end animation.



AtariSoft's Commodore 64 Donkey Kong.

The Commodore 64 version was done by Douglas D. Dragin and was released in 1983  All 4 screens are included.  Though it looks good and includes the opening and ending animations, the gameplay is a different matter.  First off, Mario moves too slow.  Secondly, trying to use ladders is an act of frustration because you have to be in some pixel-perfect spot to climb up or down one.  The only solution is to move in front of a ladder and start wiggling the joystick until you find it.  This as you can imagine doesn't bode well when there's a barrel about to roll over you, or a foxfire about to roast your mustache.  The first time I reached the cement factory, I found it crawling with 5(!) fireballs.  If it weren't for the screen lacking the extension ladders, it would be very difficult to deal with.  I'm also not sure why Pauline is yelling numbers ("1103").


AtariSoft's Commodore VIC-20 Donkey Kong.

The Commodore VIC-20 version was done by Jon Newbill Jim Stozenfield and released in 1983.  It only has 2 screens (ramps and rivets).


AtariSoft's IBM PC Donkey Kong.

The IBM PC version includes all 4 screens, including the "How High Can You Get" screens and the ending animation.  The conveyor belts has the extension ladders.


AtariSoft's Texas Instruments TI-99/4a Donkey Kong.

The TI-99/4a version was done by Douglas Brian Craid and Howard E. Scheer of K-Byte and released in 1983.  All 4 screens are included.  Although Mario and Pauline get together at the end of every screen, there's no animations.  There's also no springs on the elevators screen, and no extension ladders on the conveyor belts screen.  Also, the fireballs are some of the nastiest in any version I've ever played and are nearly as aggressive as the monsters are in Baby Pac-Man.

OCEAN SOFTWARE

In 1986 Ocean Software licensed Donkey Kong from Nintendo and made their version for several computers:


Ocean Software's Amstrad CPC Donkey Kong.

Ocean Software released Donkey Kong for the Amstrad CPC in 1986.  It was programmed by Arcana Software Design and includes all 4 screens (in Japanese order - ramps, conveyor belts, elevators, rivets), including opening, ending, end of level animations, as well as the "How High Can You Get" screens.  The conveyor belts screen even has extension ladders.


Ocean Software's ASCII Corporation MSX Donkey Kong.

Ocean Software released Donkey Kong for the ASCII Corporation MSX in 1986.  It was programmed by Sentient Software Ltd. and includes all 4 screens (in Japanese order - ramps, conveyor belts, elevators, rivets), including opening, ending, end of level animations, as well as the "How High Can You Get" screens.  The conveyor belts screen even has extension ladders.


Ocean Software's Commodore 64 Donkey Kong.

Ocean Software released Donkey Kong for the Commodore 64 in 1986.  It was programmed by Arcada Software Design.  Although it looks and sounds worse, the gameplay is faster and more accurate.

There were also several Donkey Kong versions for most non-Atari consoles and computers:

ACORN


MicroPower's Acorn Electroni Killer Gorilla.

MicroPower Ltd. released Killer Gorilla for the Amstrad CPC in 1984.  It was programmed by Adrian Stephens.  It includes all 4 screens and in the original Japanese order.  It also includes the end animation and the cut scenes between levels, but no opening animation.  It also includes the How High Can You Get screens (called How High Can You Try?).  The conveyor belts screen includes extension ladders.  There's no opening animation but the end animation is included and has the text "GIVE UP" appearing above Kong, the same as Falcon's Crazy Kong Part II arcade variant.

AMSTRAD


Tynesoft's Amstrad CPC Climb-It.

Tynesoft Computer Software released Climb-It for the Amstrad CPC in 1984.  It only has 3 screens (no rivets screen), but the conveyor belts screen has extension ladders.


MicroPower's Amstrad CPC Killer Gorilla.

MicroPower Ltd. released Killer Gorilla for the Amstrad CPC in 1984.  It was programmed by Duncan Gamble.  It includes all 4 screens and in the original Japanese order.  It also includes the end animation and the cut scenes between levels, but no opening animation.  It also includes the How High Can You Get screens (called How High Can You Try?).  The conveyor belts screen includes extension ladders.  There's no opening animation but the end animation is included and has the text "GIVE UP" appearing above Kong, the same as Falcon's Crazy Kong Part II arcade variant.

APPLE


On-Line System's Apple II Cannonball Blitz.

On-Line Systems released Cannonball Blitz for the Apple II in 1982.  It was programmed by Olaf Lubeck.  The game was conceived in Lubeck’s spare time, when not working at the Los Alamos National Labs as a scientific programmer.  While it plays similar to Donkey Kong, it offers some new additions.  You play as a rebel.  Kong is now a large redcoat soldier, and the lady is a flag you have to capture (when you reach the top ramp, a balloon will appear that you grab to take you up to the flag).  Barrels are now cannonballs, and fireballs are cannons (that inexplicitly can climb up and down ladders).  The ramps screen uses seesaws instead of ladders.  You stand on one end and wait for a cannonball to roll down and bounce you up.  The rivets and elevators screens are similar.  There's animation when you complete the rivets and elevators screens.

BALLY ASTROVISION/ASTROCADE


WaveMakers' Bally Astrocade Monkey Jump.


WaveMakers' Bally Astrocade Gong the Kong.

WaveMakers released Monkey Jump for the Bally Astrovision/Astrocade in 1982.  It was programmed in Bally BASIC by Mike Peace and is pretty basic indeed.  There's 2 screens - ramps and rivets.  The 2nd screen has to be loaded separately and is called Gong The Kong.  The packaging makes no mention of this 2nd level, the manual even barely mentions it.

BBC


MicroPower's BBC Micro Killer Gorilla.

MicroPower Ltd. released Killer Gorilla for the BBC Micro in 1983.  It was programmed by Adrian Stephens.  It includes all 4 screens and in the original Japanese order.  It also includes the end animation and the cut scenes between levels, but no opening animation.  It also includes the How High Can You Get screens (called How High Can You Try?).  The conveyor belts screen includes extension ladders.  There's no opening animation but the end animation is included and has the text "GIVE UP" appearing above Kong, the same as Falcon's Crazy Kong Part II arcade variant.  It also features some of the same sound effects as Falcon's variant.

COMMODORE


Tynesoft's Commodore 16 Climb-It.

Tynesoft Computer Software released Climb-It for the Commodore 16 in 1984.  It only has 3 screens (no conveyor belts screen).


Melbourne House's Commodore 16 Roller King.

Melbourne House released Roller King in the U.K. for the Commodore 16 in 1985.  It was programmed by Andrew Lacey.  There's only 2 screens.  Both have flat girders, with one having ladders and the other elevators.  Software for the C16 was generally compatible with the C116 and Plus/4.


Anirog Software's Commodore 64 Kong.

Anirog Software released Kong for the Commodore 64 in 1983.  It was programmed by Jef Gamon.  It has 4 screens.  There's no opening animation but has the end animation.  The How High Can You Get (called How High Can You Try) screens are included.


Victory Software's Commodore 64 Kongo Kong.

Victory Software Corporation released Kongo Kong for the Commodore 64 in 1983.  It was programmed by Mike Wacker.  There are 4 different screens, all of which are variations of the originals.  If you complete the 4th, there's an end animation.  On later levels, keys have to be collected to open doors.  This was also released under the Mogul label.


Interceptor Software's Commodore 64 Krazy Kong 64.

Interceptor Software released Crazy Kong 64 in the U.K. for the Commodore 64 in 1983.  It was programmed by Ian Gray.  It has 3 screens.  All are variations of the ramps, conveyor belts, and elevators screens.


Supersoft's Commodore 64 Crazy-Kong

Supersoft released Crazy-Kong for the Commodore 64 in 1983.  It was programmed by Nigel Fisher.  It has all 4 screens and the ending animation.


Bubble Bus' Commodore 64 Krazy Kong.

Bubble Bus released Krazy Kong for the Commodore 64 in 1983.  There's only 1 screen - ramps.


Mr. Computer Products' Commodore 64 Mario's Brewery.

Mr. Computer Products Inc. released Mario's Brewery for the Commodore 64 in 1983.  It was programmed by Jeremy Thorne.  There's only 2 screens and no animations or any other extras.
 


Sierra On-Line's Commodore VIC-20 Cannonball Blitz.

Sierra On-Line released Kongo Kong for the Commodore VIC-20 in 1982.  It was developed by Syndein Systems and International Computer Group and was programmed by Jon Newbill.


Interceptor Software's Commodore VIC-20 Crazy Kong.

Interceptor Software released Crazy Kong in the U.K. for the Commodore VIC-20 in 1983.  It only has 1 screen, which is a combination of the ramps, conveyor belts, and elevators screens.


Compute's Gazette Commodore VIC-20 Hardhat Climber.

The January 1984 issue of Compute's Gazette released Hardhat Climber for the Commodore VIC-20.  It was programmed by Paul L. Bupp and Stephen P. Drop.  It only has 1 screen - a variation of the ramps screen.


Anirog Computers' Commodore VIC-20 Krazy Kong.

Anirog Computers released Krazy Kong for the VIC-20 in 1983.  It was programmed by Darrell.  I don't know if there's a 4th screen.  The jump function is so unbelievable unpredictable, it's ... crazy.


Nüfekop's Commodore VIC-20 Krazy Kong.

Nüfekop released Krazy Kong for the Commodore VIC-20 in 1982.  There's only 1 screen - ramps.

DRAGON DATA


 Microdeal originally released it as Donkey King but were soon forced to rename it.  The news blurb is from the June 1983 issue of Dragon User.



Microdeal's Dragon Data Dragon 32 The King.

Microdeal released The King for the Dragon Data Dragon 32 in 1983.  It was programmed by Tom Mix of Tom Mix Software in 1982.  It includes all 4 screens.  Tom Mix Software made several arcade knockoffs of other games, such as Pac-Man and Scramble, but Donkey King (AKA The King) was likely their most popular, as they later used the above Donkey Kong-inspired graphics for their company logo between 1983 and 1984.


Intellectronics' Dragon Data Dragon 64 Dunkey Munkey.

Intellectronics released Dunkey Munkey for the Dragon Data Dragon 64 in 1982.  It was programmed by Harvey Brofman.  There's only 1 screen (rivets).  It includes the opening animation and the How High Can You Get screen (called Can You Save The Kidnapped Girl).

GCE VECTREX


GCE's Vectrex Spike.

General Consumer Electronics released Spike for the Vectrex in 1983.  It only features 1 screen with pseudo-3-D ramps.


Vectrex Vector Kong.

Thomas Sontowski released Vector Kong for the Vectrex in November 2023.  It includes all 4 screens, the opening and end animations, and the "How High Can You Get" screens.  The game runs on the VecFever cartridge, which contains its own CPU; the Vectrex CPU is mainly used for generating the display.  Even the sounds effects and music are very close to the original.  Steven Kray also created 4 specific overlays for the game, 1 for each screen!

KAYPRO


Yahoo Software's Kaypro Ladder.

Yahoo Software released Ladder for the Kaypro in 1982.  This was one of the pack-in games for the Kaypro computer.

MAGNAVOX ODYSSEY2


Magnavox's Odyssey2 Pick Axe Pete!

Magnavox released Pick Axe Pete! for the Odyssey2 in 1982.  It was programmed by Ed Averett, who created this popular Donkey Kong-inspired platformer.  You play a pickaxe-swinging miner.  There are three doors from which boulders are coming, bouncing down the mine-shafts.  These can either be destroyed with the pickaxe or jumped over (once you lose the pickaxe).  Getting the key that appears at the top allows you to enter one of the doors to advance to the next level.  What the game lacks in detailed graphics, it makes up for with its gameplay.

SINCLAIR


Blaby Computer Games' Sinclair ZX Spectrum Killer Kong.

Blaby Computer Games released Killer Kong for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1983.  It was programmed by Gary Capewell.  There's 5 different screens, which are all basically variations of the same screen.


Anirog Software's Sinclair ZX Spectrum Kong.

Anirog Software released Kong in the U.K. the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1983.  It was programmed by S.J. Dann.  There's at least 2 screens -  ramps and elevators.


Blaby Computer Games' Sinclair ZX Spectrum Kong.

Ocean Software released Kong for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1983.  Includes opening animation and How High Can You Get screens.  There's at least 2 screens - one with true ramps and one with flat girders.


Artic Computing's Sinclair ZX Spectrum Monkey Biznes.

Artic Computing Ltd. released Monkey Bizness for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1983.  Programmed by Nigel P. Johnston.  It features 5 different variations of the ramps screen.

SINCLAIR RESEARCH


Microdeal's Sinclair Research Sinclair QL The King.

Microdeal released The King for Sinclair Research's Sinclair QL in 1986.  It was programmed by CHR Consultants.  It has the How High Can You Get screens (called How Far Up Can You Climb?)

TANDY


Whiteware's Tandy Color Computer Dunkey Munkey.

Whiteware  released Dunkey Munkey for the Tandy Color Computer in 1983.  It was programmed by J. White.  It includes the opening and end animations and the How High Can You Get screens (called Can You Save The Kidnapped Girl?) but there's only 2 screens.  You play the rivet screen twice and then a variation of the elevator screen.


Computerware's Tandy Color Computer Junior's Revenge.

Computerware released Junior's Revenge for the Tandy Color Computer in 1983.  It was programmed by B.J. Chamblew.   It includes all 4 screens as well as the opening and end animations.


Ken Kalish's Tandy Color Computer King Cuthbert.

Ken Kalish re-released his Color Computer Monkey Kong as King Cuthbert.  Other than the title screen, it's exactly the same.


Ken Kalish's Tandy Color Computer Monkey Kong.

Med Systems released Monkey Kong for the Tandy Color Computer.  It was programmed by Ken Kalish.  It only includes the ramps and rivets screens.


Superior Software's Tandy Color Computer Skyscraper.

Superior Software Inc. released Skyscraper for the Tandy Color Computer in 1981; it's also compatible with the Color Computer 3.  It was programmed by Brandt J. Fine.  There's only 3 screens (ramps, rivets, and elevators) and no animations, but it has the How High Can You Get screens.


Tom Mix Software's Tandy Color Computer 2 Donkey King.

Tom Mix Software released Donkey King for the Tandy Color Computer 2 in 1982.  It was programmed by Chris Latham.  It has all the animations except the opening one.  It also has the How High Can You Get screens (called How Far Up Can You Climb?).


John Kowalski's Tandy Color Computer 3 Donkey Kong Remixed.

In 2007, John Kowalski translated the original arcade code to run on a Tandy Color Computer 3 and added variations of the original screens.  See his site for more information.


Computerware's Tandy Color Computer 3 Return of Junior's Revenge.

Computerware released Return of Junior's Revenge for the Tandy Color Computer 3 in 1986.  It was programmed by "Alph and Jammin".   It includes all 4 screens as well as the opening and end animations.


Wayne Westmoreland and Terry Gilman's Tandy TRS-80 Donkey Kong.

Wayne Westmoreland and Terry Gilman released Donkey Kong for the Tandy TRS-80 in 1982.  It has all the animations except the opening one and Kong carrying the woman up at the end of each level.  It also has the How High Can You Get screens (called How High Can You Go?).

TANGERINE COMPUTER SYSTEMS


Severn's Tangerine Computer Systems Oric-1 Dinky Kong.

Severn released Dinky Kong for the Tangerine Computer Systems Oric-1 in 1984.  It was programmed by Adrian Sheppard.  There's only 1 screen, which is a combination of the ramps and rivets screens.  Every time you complete it, you get a slight variation of the same screen.

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS


Sierra On-Line's Texas Instruments TI-99/4a Cannonball Blitz.

Sierra On-Line released Cannonball Blitz for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a in 1984.  It was programmed by James G. Landowski.  It's identical to the original Apple II version except the final animation isn't included.


Greg Kean's Texas Instruments TI-99/4a Kong.

Greg Kean released Kong for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a in 1983.  There's only 2 screens and both are variations of the ramps screen.

TIMEX SINCLAIR


PSS's Timex Sinclair ZX81 Crazy Kong.

There's 2 different versions of Crazy Kong. Both use text graphics.  One is by PSS and was released in 1982 and programmed by Chris P. Cullen.  There's at least 2 different screens.


Christoph Zwerschke's Timex Sinclair ZX81 Crazy Kong.

The other has the same name and was programmed by Christoph Zwerschke and was released in 1983.  It consists of a vertically-scrolling screen that you have to reach the top in 3 minutes before it burns down.


Christoph Zwerschke's Timex Sinclair ZX81 Wrath of Kong.

Greg Brooks Software Inc. released Wrath of Kong for the Timex Sinclair ZX81.  It was programmed by Greg Brooks and offers variations of the ramps screen.  The 2nd screen has sections of the ramps that intermittently open up.


DnD's Timex Sinclair ZX81 Zonkey Kong.

DnD (Don and Dave) started development of Zonkey Kong on a Timex Sinclair 1000 back in the early 1980s.  In 2020, they finally finished the game and released it for the Sinclair ZX models.  There's at least 2 different screens.


Lightning Software's Timex Sinclair ZX80 Kong.

Lightning Software released ZX80 Kong for the Timex Sinclair ZX80 in 2010.  It was programmed by Paul Farrow and includes all 4 screens, the "How High Can You Get" screens, and all the animations.  The game was later updated and re-released by Cronosoft in 2020.


I.R. Kendrick's Timex Sinclair ZX81 Kong's Revenge.

I.R. Kendrick released Kong's Revenge for the Timex Sinclair ZX81 in 1983.  It has different configurations of the same ramp screen.

THOMPSON


Loriciels' Thompson MO5 Intox & Zoé.

Loriciels released Intox & Zoé for the Thompson MO5 in 1984.  The second part of this game features a Donkey Kong ramps screen variation.

 


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