It has been more than a quarter of a century since I first dropped a quarter in Donkey Kong. I must have been just eleven or twelve at the time. And so it follows that I am older now and, if not necessarily wiser, with age, I find myself overcome, from time to time, by the creeping wisteria of nostalgia, which changes the very garden of memory itself, burnishing ever so slightly the edges of the picture, softening the focus in a damp miasma of colorful, if haltingly recalled, petals.
It was another kind of blossom altogether that first caused our paths to cross at the Cherry Hill campground in Kaysville, Utah. In the early eighties, Cherry Hill was a well-established and growing resort. Campers passed through from many western states to pick free cherries directly on the camping grounds, relax by the pool, enjoy a round of miniature golf or watch a movie in the large outdoor amphitheater. Though we lived only a half hour away, my parents would make a point of passing through Kaysville during cherry season and we’d stay here over the weekend, convening with uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. Often Cherry Hill was a staging area, a place of departure for points further east or west, usually Yellowstone or Disneyland, the Grand Canyon or Las Vegas, Nevada. Each destination seemed to vie against the other for our attention during a summer season that, as kids, was never long enough. City camping is what my mother liked to call it. And each summer saw the addition of a new attraction (two water slides, a row of batting cages, and eventually even some faux river rapids) and, with each season, of course, there were new arcade video games to play.
The Cherry Hill Wild West Game Room was located between the water slides and the miniature golf course and its rise and eventual demise more than likely mirrored the rise and fall of the American arcade phenomenon itself. It was a good time to be young–no longer interested in childish things but having yet to discover the joys (and miseries) of the opposite sex. We would stroll into the game room, still wet from the waterslides, waiting for the line to subside for miniature golf, or just trying to seek some respite from the midsummer heat. The Wild West Game Room ran on tokens and operated from ten am to midnight except on Sundays. It was not large, perhaps less than 1,000 square feet. The games, as I recall, were arranged around the perimeter in a concentric circle and the arcade was probably home to no more than fifty games at its peak. It is strange that after all these years, I can still recall the exact location of each of my favorite games, especially since I couldn’t tell you what I ate for dinner just two nights ago. This arcade served as my introduction to a number of now-classic arcade games including Pengo, Crazy Climber, Ms. Pac-Man, Journey—and of course, our beloved Donkey Kong.
First a stumble, then a leap
Donkey Kong wasn’t the game Nintendo first attempted to release. Eager to capitalize on the growing coin-op business in America, Minoru Arakawa, the executive of NoA (Nintendo of America, located in Seattle, WA), initially backed an uninspired shooter called Radar Scope, which essentially played like Midway’s 1979 hit Galaxian on a perspective grid. While the game was not without its fans, it was simply too late to market and the novelty factor was too low. The game was a bust.
Enter Shigeru Miyamoto, a young artist with a degree in industrial design, who had just joined Nintendo as a staff artist; he was brought into the company by Nintendo’s CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi, a family friend, and charged with rescuing Nintendo’s nascent coin-op business. Miyamoto spearheaded a small team of five who quickly set to work, though the sandbox itself had already been defined: the new game would have to work within the draconian limitations of the Radar Scope hardware. Radar Scope utilized a vertically mounted monitor, and a PCB capable of displaying only 224 x 256 pixels (with a wimpy 3 MHZ Ziglog Z80 CPU) and only 256 colors. The ROMs could only occupy a mere 16K (4 x 4K EEPROMS) of space!
In a perfect match of need necessitating invention, Donkey Kong went from concept to release in six short months. Miyamoto drew his inspiration from cartoons like King Features’ Popeye (which would later appear as a licensed Nintendo arcade game) and movies such as the great King Kong. Miyamoto sketched all of the characters by hand on graphing paper and composed much of the music himself (additional music and sounds have been attributed to Hirokazu Tanaka).
Mario is born—except he’s not called Mario, not yet anyway
The character of Jumpman was dictated by these severe limitations in screen real-estate and graphics processing power. Jumpman himself measures a mere 16 x 16 pixels, a compact and comic carpenter, and an unlikely hero. His nose, hat, mustache, and overalls were all creative incidentals, comic flourishes born of limitations imposed on Miyamoto and his team.
In December 2003, I was in Tokyo and happened by chance to catch the 20th anniversary exhibition on the Famicom Computer at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Ebisu Garden Place. In addition to seeing some of the original conceptual artwork for Donkey Kong, I purchased the museum’s book on the show, which contains an interview with Miyamoto where he talks about the birth of Jumpman (in questionably translated English):
“We have to make his face and nose big so people realize it’s a person; meaning that its body would become smaller. Now to make it look as if it were running, we should make his arms move; meaning that it should be wearing something like overalls, and we should change the colors on the sleeves and the body. [It was only then that] I started to think that this guy looked Italian! [laughter] You need to have a mustache to make his nose visible. It is also convenient, as you don’t have to draw the mouth if you draw a moustache; you only need 2 dots for the nose and 1 dot for the moustache, and the face fits within the range of 8 dots. Then I could use the rest of the dots for his body. I also thought it would not be that visible when Donkey Kong, his nemesis, hits him with the barrel if he is too lean. So this lead [sic] me to make him a very ‘macho’ kind of guy. On the other hand, I could employ a variety of facial expressions for Donkey Kong since I could draw him on a fourfold scale.”
The code, written in Assembly, was overseen by Nintendo’s chief engineer, Gunpei Yokoi, but the game was rushed to market before Miyamoto could perfect the fourth screen—the so-called pie factory (the screen ends as soon as Jumpman reaches the platform—though a new, homebrew release, finally fixes this! More on this later.).
While Nintendo couldn’t have possibly fathomed the magnitude of popularity that awaited Donkey Kong after its release, there were early inklings that they had stumbled upon something special. Within Nintendo, during the short time for beta testing and again in the assembly factory, word quickly leaked about this novel and addicting game and employees would line up for a chance to play or to watch others play.
Why the name Donkey Kong?
At NoA, though, things were less rosy; when executives first heard the name, they envisioned yet another disaster equal to or greater than Radar Scope. I can understand why the folks in Seattle initially greeted the game with skepticism. The title is indeed strange. There are at least two stories behind its origin. One camp within Nintendo claims the title was originally intended to be “Monkey Kong” but was sabotaged by poor engrish translation. The origin of the name and the controversy it eventually generated actually played a large part in the eventual dismissal of a lawsuit Universal Studios brought against NoA for copyright infringement of the King Kong franchise, which, it later turned out, they didn’t own the rights to either. During the trial, Miyamoto gave sworn testimony for the defense claiming the game was named correctly and intentionally, the result of him trying to find synonyms for “Stubborn” and “Monkey” in a Japanese-to-English dictionary.
What remains puzzling is why the debut game wasn’t named after the game’s protagonist (who remained unnamed until well after the release of the game when Jumpman was rechristened Mario after Mario Segali, the owner of a warehouse NoA leased in Seattle). Imagine if J.K. Rowling decided to call the Harry Potter books “Lord Voldemort” instead. Perhaps Miyamoto just found Kong more interesting than Mario, both as a character as well as in the significantly larger number of pixels he had afforded himself to work with to bring out Donkey Kong’s essential expressiveness. Also, it has be said, that villains, by the very dubious nature of their conflicted morality, are almost always more interesting than heroes. And Donkey Kong is no different. So it is no surprise that Kong (and his progeny) eventually became the focus of the 1982 follow-up Donkey Kong Junior, that Mario himself was dropped from the 1983 sequel Donkey Kong 3, and that the home franchise that followed split up the duo, allowing each to develop separately for nearly twenty years before they were once again reunited in the Mario Vs. Donkey Kong game series.
It was an amicable separation and Donkey Kong itself is no tragedy. The name is silly and fun, which is in keeping with the whimsical animations that Miyamoto and his team devised, where sometimes Donkey Kong himself seems to be mugging–if not outright mocking–us game players.
Red Pill or Blue Pill?
NoA worked around the clock to quickly convert roughly 2,000 of the 3,000 original Radar Scope games into Donkey Kong units, which involved applying new side art, marquees, bezels, and replacing the game ROMs inside each machine. These factory-converted Donkey Kong machines, the first out the door in Seattle, were beet red – the original color of Radar Scope – but, as it turned out, Nintendo had nothing to be embarrassed about. The company would eventually move more than 65,000 Donkey Kong arcade units, the third highest sales figure of the Golden Age of Gaming.
NoA sold the game in three models: the upright, cabaret, and cocktail (the latter two available in ugly simulated wood grain cabinets with miserly 13 inch monitors); the majority of the units sold, including the one I first played at the Wild West Game Room in Kaysville, Utah, were uprights in laminate baby blue.
The game made its American debut in the latter half of 1981 at the Spot Tavern in Seattle, and, sure enough, was an immediate and palpable hit, pulling in a diverse group of gamers with its inventiveness and, yes, revolutionary game-play.
Nintendo revolution: a number of firsts
Donkey Kong was Nintendo’s calling card, its ace in the hole, how a hundred-year-old regional playing card manufacturer was able to reinvent itself, eventually blossoming into one of the most widely trusted brands and most influential video game hardware and software concerns in the world (with 387 million hardware units and 2.2 billion software units sold worldwide).
In much the same way that Shakespeare invented the human or Eisenstein invented the language of cinema, most of Miyamoto’s firsts are now taken for granted as commonly accepted and necessary elements of video game grammar, what in fact makes a video game a video game. But it wasn’t always that way. Donkey Kong was the first game with a story line, real characters with unique personalities, and cut scenes to advance the action. It was the first game with multiple levels, each with multiple objectives. Rescue as a theme had been done before in Williams’ break-out hit Defender but here it was more personal and mythic and it immediately appealed to a generation raised on Star Wars, itself heavily influenced by the writings of Joseph Campbell and Carlos Castaneda.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of Donkey Kong. It helped to usher in the Golden Age of Gaming, building on the good will and break-out success of Bally Midway’s Pac-Man to further broaden the appeal of electronic video games. By rewriting all of the rules, Miyamoto and his team single-handedly established a whole new genre of video games: the platform game.
To really understand how revolutionary Donkey Kong was, we need look no further than other games released that same year, the second year of what eventually became known as the Golden Age of Games. As in Hollywood, the game industry, even then, was already mired in trying to repeat past successes—a cardinal sin with the gaming public and one that would eventually lead to the Great Video Game Crash of 1984. Products released this year predominately fell into two all too predictable camps (though there are some wonderful exceptions): space-themed shooters and maze-crazed collectors, basically bifurcating our collective unconscious: we were and remain, in our lizard brains, at least, a species of hunters and gatherers.
The space-themed shooters took for their inspiration Midway’s wildly popular Galaxian, the first color video game, released in 1979 (and probably the first game I ever played—certainly the first game I played repeatedly—I remember riding my bike down the hill to the grocery store each day during the summer to play it). Galaxian knock-offs released in 1981 include games like Astro Blaster, Gorf, Metetroids, and Moon Shuttle, games that, alas, offered little variation on the well-established space shooter theme. In the other corner, we have Bally Midway’s Pac-Man, the biggest game ever, which, in 1981 spawned well-intentioned (well, if the intention was to make a lot of money by catering to existing tastes) clones like Lady Bug, Crush Roller, and MouseTrap. Even the two best and longest-lived games released that year were sequels to Galaxian and Pac-Man: I’m speaking, of course, of Galaga and Ms Pac-Man, both built on top of these existing franchises (and, unlike most sequels, both were actually more popular and arguably even better than their predecessors). In this environment, Donkey Kong truly was a game without peers, a game that richly rewarded its players with its immersive and original storyline.
Unlike many games, Donkey Kong remained a solid earner throughout the arcade years and was therefore afforded the luxury of being almost a permanent fixture, one of the anchor games of any great game arcade and almost always instantly identifiable in its unique baby blue cabinet. But in the class of 1981, Donkey Kong was never voted “Most likely to succeed” and, in fact, while enjoying a long and respectable earning life everywhere, Donkey Kong never occupied the top spot in earnings.
So why is it still so relevant today? Not every game released in 1981 can stand this test of time (ever play Gorf or Scramble recently?). What is it about Donkey Kong that keeps us coming back game after game? Why is the game still so wildly popular that it has become the subject of a recent documentary film (King of Kong), acquired by New Line Cinema (who also optioned the rights to make a fictional version as well) and slated for wide release this summer? Why is the game being re-written with four new levels and other enhancements and improvements intended to be run on the original hardware by a zealous homebrew enthusiast?
Here’s the original text on the arcade flyer that NoA used to pitch the game at AMOA (Amusement and Music Operators Association) and other industry trade shows; it wisely built on Donkey Kong’s strengths, playing up its near-mythic storytelling in haltingly beautiful disco-era marketese:
Donkey Kong from Nintendo
Everyone’s going ape over Donkey Kong! “HELP! HELP!” cries the beautiful maiden as she is dragged up a labyrinth of structural beams by the ominous Donkey Kong. “SNORT. SNORT.” Foreboding music warns of the eventual doom that awaits the poor girl, lest she somehow be miraculously rescued [sic]. “But, wait! Fear not, fair maiden. Little Mario, the carpenter, is in hot pursuit of you this very moment.”Throwing fate to the wind, risking life and limb, or worse, little Mario tries desperately to climb the mighty fortress of steel, to save the lovely lady from the evil Mr. Kong. Little Mario must dodge all manner of obstacles—fireballs, plummeting beams and a barrage of exploding barrels fired at him by Donkey Kong. Amidst the beautiful girl’s constant pleas for help, your challenge is to maneuver little Mario up the steel structure, while helping him to avoid the rapid-fire succession of hazards that come his way. As little Mario gallantly battles his way up the barriers, he is taunted and teased by Donkey Kong who brazenly struts back and forth, beating his chest in joyful exuberance at the prospect of having the beautiful girl all to himself. It is your job to get little Mario to the top. For it is there, and only there, that he can send the mighty Donkey Kong to his mortal doom. Leaving little Mario and the beautiful girl to live happily ever after. “SIGH. SIGH.”So, if you want the most exciting, most fun-filled, most talked about family video game on the market, don’t monkey around with anything but the original Donkey Kong.
Cultural impact
Donkey Kong, perhaps second only to Pac-Man, was heavily licensed during the short-lived heyday of Wave One of the American video game fad, assaulting our consciousness with a blitzkrieg of tacky doodads and must-have licensed merchandise (and cheap bootlegs, too), all priced to move!
As a kid, we’d play Milton Bradley licensed arcade board games (nothing more boring) when we couldn’t talk an adult into driving us over to the nearest arcade. We would watch Saturday Supercade on TV (a line-up of Ruby-Spears cartoons, now all but unwatchable, loosely based on Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Q-Bert and other classic video game characters) while eating our Donkey Kong cereal (little bite-sized barrels made out of corn, which kind of tasted like Captain Crunch) or Pac-Man cereal (more of a Lucky Charms-based product) out of a Pac-Man or Donkey Kong cereal bowl, off our Pac-Man TV tray, scraping what we didn’t want into our Pac-Man- or Donkey Kong-themed trashcan. We had sleep-overs in our Pac-Man sleeping bags and stayed up all night playing bad ports of these beloved arcade games on our Atari 2600 or Commodore 64 (and when we weren’t at a slumber party, we slept in our own beds, covered with Pac-Man pillows and bed sheets).
There was even a hit song (okay, maybe it never reached the top 40) extolling the virtues of the eponymous monkey on the Buckner and Garcia Pac-Man Fever album; musically dubious and lyrically questionable, it plays out with all the juvenile boosterism of a bad cheerleading squad at an attendance-mandatory pep rally in a fetid high school gymnasium but it’s nonetheless cool, despite itself, (and catchy like a viral jingle) since it includes actual samples of Jumpman running up girders, grabbing hammers, and smashing barrels! Too bad they never made a music video.Here then are the lyrics, used without permission (and sprinkled liberally with my snarky commentary):
Wave your hands in the air, stomp your feet on the ground, [Wait, is this a pep rally?]
Climb up the ladder quickly, and then spin yourself around. [Are we doing the hokey pokey or the Donkey Kong?]
Open the umbrella up and answer the phone; [sic: a purse? A purse phone? Wrong number, anyway]
You can do it with a partner, you can do it all alone. [A double entendre/sex/masturbation reference like Prince’s Darling Niki?]
Scale up the wall, just how high can you go? [Extolling the virtues of recreational drug use?]
You’ll surely break her heart if you get up there too slow. [Not to mention what it’ll do to your bonus]
Pound upon your chest and take an elevator ride; [Am I Mario or Donkey Kong?]
You can get off at the top and then you look from side to side. [Another double entendre/sex reference?] Come on, come on.
Come on, come on.
Do the Donkey Kong.
Do the Donkey Kong! [Will it make us go blind?]
Come on, come on.
Come on, Come on.
Do the Donkey Kong.
Do the Donkey Kong. [Surely this can’t be good, what with my heart condition.] Tip-toe through the tulips [uh, what tulips—a reference to Tiny Tim?] and then raise your hands up high;
There’s a fire down below and you don’t want to catch his eye. [Fires have eyes?]
Hide behind each other and don’t even make a sound; [in video games, no one can hear you scream?]
You’re in trouble now, take the elevator down. [First floor, women’s lingerie]
Jump over all the barrels and let out a little scream; [well, I guess I was wrong about that]
Duck underneath the pie, ’cause it’s a coconut cream. [Where’s the duck button? Maybe they’re talking about Duck Hunt?]
You pick the hammer up and then you put the fire out; [Actually, I like this line!]
Now we think you know what Donkey Kong is all about. [Sex, right?]
Donkey Kong was also a de rigueur feature in cool eighties movies like War Games and Gremlins. The game also made a cameo appearance in an episode of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood where a boy explains how to play (no, it wasn’t me). Mr. McFeeley and Lady Elaine then engage in tournament play to see who has the real chops to bust out the high score (kidding).
Merchandising tie-ins included Topps trading cards, pencils, patches you could sew on your Member’s Only jacket, garbage cans, shoe laces, key chains, cigarette lighters, action figures, stuffed dolls, penny banks, coffee mugs, beer steins, cork boards, and t-shirts. Coleco even put out a line of mini replicas of the most popular arcade machines of the day, further fetishizing each arcade game’s side art, marquee, and bezel (lovingly reproduced—too bad the games themselves were almost unplayable); we begrudgingly played them anyway, another way to while the hours away as we hoarded our quarters and waited for the next trip to a real arcade.
The Donkey Kong artwork is indeed great and, if it does not rise to the level of high art, it is still certainly worthy of a place in the Smithsonian as a piece of enduring popular culture, folk art, and as a piece of history of who we were as a nation at the dawn of the great age of the silicon computer chip.
How to play
The instructions on the cabinet are deceptively simple (so simple, most of us didn’t even bother to read them), and afford a few more humorous examples of engrish:
- Insert coin(s).
- Select one or two players.
- Controllers moves Jumpman in 4 directions.
- Jump button makes Jumpman jump.
- If Jumpman reaches top, Donkey Kong takes the lady higher up, and structure changes shape.
- When a certain structures have been cleared, Jumpman saves the lady [sic].
Bonus points awarded based on time remaining.Extra Jumpman when you gain a certain points. [sic]
You couldn’t ask for a more cinematic opening! Soon after you coin up and start the game, Donkey Kong enters a construction site of some kind, a damsel in distress slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Kong begins his quick ascent up a block of six red girders as the ladder rolls up behind him. Kong places the damsel on a pedestal where he alone can admire her beauty. Kong knocks the girders down as he jumps laterally across the screen, pounding his bestial chest in fury. His nipples are staring at us, mocking us with their vague whiff of pure animal sensuality.
Cut. The simple challenge is issued, “How high can you get?” (originally, “How high can you try?”). Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is not so simple: rescue this tall, young red-haired gal (later called “Pauline”—many of the classic video game girls have red hair). Oh and, while you’re at it, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask, can you kindly restore order to the known universe?
Enter Mario, our Jumpman, our everyman, stage left. That you are asked to accomplish these stirring feats of heroism with a squat, mustachioed anti-hero is part of the game’s sense of mischief and its eternal charm. This game is about ascending, striving, and over-reaching. You have to keep on the move. You have no weapons, save for the occasional short-lived blunt force of a large wooden mallet. Otherwise you have to keep running and jumping to avoid the obstacles: barrels, fireballs, barrels on fire, and giant springs—all with your name on them—to rescue the girl.
Girder
There are three strategies for playing the Girder screen: you can play to rack up points by making methodic use of the two mallets—this trick works well, at least until the bonus timer starts to tick faster. Or you can also try to race to the top as quickly as you can in order to collect as many bonus points as possible. Or you can even mix the two strategies, using the top mallet in your place of greatest vulnerability on the screen to guard against incoming barrels.
There is no right or wrong way to climb up the ladders; you can choose any ladder you want, as long as it isn’t broken, though most players cleave to the center of the screen in order to minimize the amount of walking and climbing and hasten the ascent to the top. Before climbing any ladder, be sure to see where the next barrel is in relation to your Jumpman. You don’t need a lot of time to make the climb and you can quickly jump straight in the air to miss a passing barrel, if one happens to be close by.
Kong releases a new barrel every couple of seconds and they group in interesting ways. Sometimes two barrels will abut when one drops off the end while another falls down a ladder. If the two barrels are touching, a running jump will clear both barrels for a 300 point bonus. If the barrels are slightly staggered, you’ll need to employ a slightly trickier move to clear both barrels, pausing to jump straight up over the first and then quickly moving and jumping at the same time to clear the second one. And sometimes it’s best just to retreat, wait for some barrels to pass and attempt a second run.
It’s best to avoid hanging out on ladders, since that makes you most vulnerable to falling barrels. If you decide to grab the mallets, guard your flank so you have enough time to turn around without smacking into an obstacle. Also, keep in mind, while you have the mallet in hand, you won’t be able to climb.
For the first mallet, wait a while until the barrels have aggregated near the hammer in order to get more points (but watch out for that fireball). When you have the second mallet, you can often direct barrels down the broken ladder right after they appear by sharply turning backwards with the mallet. With some practice, this is another way to rack up additional points. Before the second mallet disappears, position yourself near the end of the girder and walk toward the ladder to make the next barrel fall; this will give you enough time to get to the top of the girders to save the girl without getting hit by a barrel or getting stuck on the end waiting for the barrel pattern to change.
Kill screen
If you get good enough, a Girder screen is what will eventually kill you. On the 22nd level, due to a bug in the bonus timer, there simply won’t be enough time to make it to the top of the screen. When the stage first appears, the bonus clocks in at just 100 points and then it jumps to 4000 when Jumpman appears but the countdown stalls out at 3700. Like the proverbial ghost in the machine, a few seconds later, our tiny hero Jumpman asphyxiates, a victim of this always fatal computer bug. Cue death music and death animation again and again in approximate five-second intervals, for each of your remaining Jumpmen. The effect is akin to watching footage of crash test dummies hitting a brick wall.
Rivets
On the Rivets screen, your primary objective is to remove all of the rivets in order to cause Kong to fall comically on his head, reuniting Jumpman, however briefly, with his object of affection (while, overhead, a heart appears), until the whole Sisyphean struggle begins again.
The fireballs appear and move randomly, increasing in speed as the levels increase. Typically, players try to trap as many of the fireballs on the left hand side as possible by first clearing the left-hand side of rivets through zigzagging up the screen, ending with the rivet in the middle where the hammer is located (though I’ve seen players who also like to trap them between the rivet holes—this stunt requires precision timing as you need to jump over a fireball at the same time you’re clearing a rivet. It’s an interesting visual effect but you don’t get any more points by doing it and it is a risky way to lose a Jumpman if your timing is off at all).
The fireballs reappear on the opposite side of where you are standing when you hit them with the hammer. So if you want to trap the fireballs, grab the mallet on the left and walk toward them toward the right side of the screen. As long as you’re facing right when you hit them, they will always show up again on the left hand side of the screen–and that’s where they’ll stay if the rivets have been removed.
If you’re successful in trapping all of the fireballs, in the early levels at least, you can gain extra points by making use of the taunt maneuver (another first?). To taunt Kong, merely place your Jumpman near him on the right or left hand side, hit the jump button and move away from him (it also works just by jumping if you are close enough to Kong, though if you touch him, you will die and have to start the board all over). Each time you jump, you’ll earn 100 points so mastery of a quick succession of jumps is essential to maximize your total point value. Keep jumping until the timer hits zero or you get bored, whichever comes first.
According to Jeff Kulczycki, the taunt works because of a bug in the original code:
The code contains a collision detection routine that can report the proximity of objects to jumpman. This same routine is used by both the “death-collision” routine and “jumped-for-points” routine. This works well since the things that cause death to jumpman also can be jumped over for points (barrels, fireballs). Now, in order to have jumpman die when he collides with the Kong graphics, two invisible objects (a black square which is invisible against a black background) were added near Kong’s feet. The collision routine was modified to include these two invisiible objects when checking for a collision. This achieved the desired death collision with Kong, but it also meant that now these objects were included when checking for jumped-over points.The original thinking may have been that the death collision would occur before the jumped over points. And this should have been true. Since the size that the invisible objects were assigned was the maximum of 16×16, there really is no way for jumpman to clear the object without touching it. Thus he should have died well before the points were awarded. But I think the problem happened later when they increased the “jump zone” after they found out that sometimes barrels were jumped over (with a straight up jump) but they weren’t registering as points.
The object width that was used for jumpman when detecting a death collision is 8 (4×2).
The object width that was used for jumpman when detecting jump-over points is 10 (5×2).As you can see, that gives jumpman an extra 1 pixel margin on either side of him that he can register points in before he’s involved in a death collision.
You can also earn bonus points by collecting Pauline’s purse, hat, and umbrella. Items collected are randomly assigned 300-800 points.
The screen (and, with it, the level) ends when the last rivet is removed and Kong falls on his stubborn head, causing his eyes to alternately bulge in a comic display of man’s dominion over all other species.
Elevator
The Elevator screen introduces the third and perhaps most difficult (in later levels) obstacle in the Donkey Kong universe: the giant spring. Springs bounce on the top of the girder and fall off the edge, providing instant death to our intrepid hero should either of their paths happen to cross. Like the Rivets screen, the Elevator screen again offers the player the opportunity to collect Pauline’s purse, hat, and umbrella for randomly assigned bonus points, though some of the items are located in difficult and dangerous corners of the screen and rarely worth the points lost on the timer to collect.
Most seasoned players try to get to the top of the Elevator screen and rescue the girl as quickly as possible. The fastest hop to the top can be obtained by jumping immediately from the starting position to the elevator, jumping off at the top, jumping across and climbing up, going left and up the ladder to the girl right after the first spring passes overhead. The first time you see someone play the screen this way, it’s a bit of a revelation, since it makes the level last about ten seconds from start to finish. There are some caveats, though: you need to watch out for the fireball on the middle ladder. Since its movement is random, it won’t always be in a position to allow you to make the jump in time, which will require you to either retreat to the left side to collect the umbrella (and climb back down to make another attempt) or climb down the opposite ladder of the fireball in order to avoid it and to prepare for a second run.
When I was young, I always took the second elevator to the bottom and slowly worked my way across, paying careful attention to avoid the spring as it fell down the board. It’s fun to play this way and it allows you to grab the purse (if you can avoid the fireball) but it really adds a lot of time to the screen and severely depletes your bonus. It is far better to immediately jump to the first platform from the top as the elevator begins its descent.
I’ve tried walking up Kong’s escape ladder. That ladder is the exclusive property of Kong and not intended for human use.
Each successive elevator screen is a bit harder before the game plateaus in difficulty on the third elevator screen, which separates the men from the boys. Fortunately, the elevator springs are pattern-based and the patterns are easy enough to learn, though I’d be the first to admit I never knew the trick to the third Elevator as a kid. On the second Elevator screen, just count three springs and then run toward the metal elevator top and then reverse directions and quickly run back and up the ladder. On the third and subsequent Elevator screens, watch where the springs land. Run toward the metal elevator top when the second spring hits for the first time on Kong’s left-most foot (his right foot). Wait there until a spring hits between Kong’s legs and then run back toward the ladder and up to Pauline. Once you’ve mastered this pattern, like all things in the Donkey Kong universe, it works most, but not all, of the time. That’s what makes the game fun, folks.
Pie Factory
This screen was rarely seen by players in the first nine or so months that the game was available in arcades. I remember at the time, kids used to talk of this mysterious level and how cool it was and many of us doubted its very existence (and the home ports didn’t help lay to rest any arguments on this matter since the level wasn’t included in any of the early home console versions).
What is creative and interesting about this screen is the appearance of yet another obstacle, the pie (often called cement pies—I suppose in keeping with the overall “construction site” theme of the game). Like the final level of Marble Madness, which eerily warns you that, “Everything you know is wrong,” on the fourth level of Donkey Kong you have to learn a new way of walking as you deal for the first time with reversible conveyer belts and a new way of climbing as you deal with retractable ladders. On the conveyer belts, Jumpman’s walking speed in cut in half if he’s walking against the direction of the belt (and doubled if he’s not); the effect is similar to walking against traffic on a people mover at the airport—except imagine if the mover changed directions every five seconds. This leads to some interesting play dynamics if you make use of the mallets to obliterate either fireballs or pies.
The best kept secret on this screen is that the fireballs will always come out on the side your Jumpman is on so it’s best to stay put for a while and count the fireballs as they appear (the total number of fireballs should match the level number) and only then begin your ascent upward.
Unlike the other screens, this one ends before you reach the lady. As soon as you hit the penultimate platform, Kong summarily collects Pauline, walks off the screen, and the game moves on. Since this was the last level created, there wasn’t enough time to code Jumpman’s ascent to the top of the final ladder. Honestly, it’s never felt right that the primary objective of the game had changed—having Kong walk off prematurely leaves you feeling robbed, like when the last Pooka leaves the screen in Dig Dug before you have a chance to blast it. Fortunately, there will soon be a remedy for this malady—read on!
Why I still likes me some Donkey Kong
In April of 2000, I purchased my very own Donkey Kong upright arcade machine. It wasn’t the first arcade game I bought (that was Joust) but it was the second or the third (I acquired it around the same time I bought a Q*Bert machine). The game cost me $600 and was shipped from Tulsa, Oklahoma to San Francisco, California (Yes, I probably overpaid and also got screwed on the shipping).
It had been at least fifteen years since I had played an actual Donkey Kong arcade game. In early 1998, I discovered MAME and quickly set about building my own cabinet and when I didn’t like that one, I built two more but they still didn’t feel exactly right. I wanted the verisimilitude of the actual tiny-knobbed four-way leaf-switch controller. I wanted the heavy bass of the low notes of the opening score to stick me in the ribs. But the physical dimensions of the game had shrunk somehow in the ensuing years. As a prepubescent kid, I was height proportional to the middle of the monitor, perhaps a little bit below, so I was always looking up at the monitor while I played it. Now, I stand as tall as the game itself (and, sadly, weigh just a little less).
The first time I turned on the game, I was greeted with the familiar faint buzz of the fluorescent and I quickly dimmed the lights to literally bask in its glow. At last, I was back in the arcade. I coined up, pressed the one player button and Kong began his familiar ascent up the ladder under the dark overture of the opening score, the low-notes vibrating the speaker cabinet and next to it now, my pelvis.
I like how when you have the mallet and hit a barrel or a fireball, time slows down and expands like in The Matrix leaving you with just a few extra nanoseconds to relish the slow destruction and eventual obliteration of that obstacle (Namco managed the same effect in Pac-Man when Pac chomps down on a retreating blue ghost).
I like the essential randomness of the barrels and the fireballs. Donkey Kong, like many classic games, awards patterned-playing but it is not completely a pattern-based game; following the patterns just increases your likelihood of success but it is no guarantee, particularly in the later, more challenging levels. There is some intelligence to the objects and this can even occasionally be used to your advantage as you move and reverse directions in some of the later Girder screens in order to influence when and where the barrels drop.
I like the recursive screens; while there are only four screens, on the first level, you only play the first two screens. As the levels (and difficulty) increase, you get more exposure to the other screens, though, always, to get to a new screen, you must go back and show you can play an earlier, but now harder, screen. The screens roll out as follows: Level 1: Girders, Rivets; Level 2: Girders, Elevators, Rivets; Level 3: Girders, Pie Factory, Elevators, Rivets… and so on.
I like the death animation where Jumpman rolls around with a halo on his head.
I like how Kong recovers from your rescue attempt—without missing a beat, he quickly saunters up the ladder, taking your object of affection with him.
I like the giant Squisshhh sound following the wind-down as Donkey Kong plummets and lands flat on his head at the end of each level. Success! (Though it’s a pyrrhic victory).
I got lucky. The game was in very good condition overall; I’ve always imagined that it had sat in an anonymous warehouse in Oklahoma over the last ten years, quietly gathering dust. The monitor needed a cap kit (didn’t know what those were at the time) and it didn’t have any side art. I eventually scanned and printed my own side art, just a year or so before reproduction side art became widely available. I was learning. A whole new world of jargon, internet collectors and half-mad preservationists and other assorted video game aficionados who had, until then, largely been unknown to me, slowly became more known. There was a community of like-minded arcade collectors out there, like the ecosystem of the forest: people manufacturing kits and add-ons, reproducing control panel overlays and side art, fixing boards, and selling after-market power supplies and other difficult to find parts; few people I met were in it for the money. Some were holdovers from the arcade world itself, lifers, who had run routes or operated their own arcades. Many were just weekend enthusiasts, people with day jobs who, like me, were bitten by the arcade bug when they were younger.
Before this, I’d never peered inside an arcade game before. It is shocking the first time that you do. When you think of a big machine, you expect to see its central nervous system exposed, a dense tangle of ribbons and wires, circuits and chips. Most arcade machines are full, 80% or more, of dusty air. There’s the monitor, the PCB (many games had stacks of them, each with a specific purpose—an I/O board, a sound board, a video board, etc), the isolation transformer, and the power supply. That’s basically it. So I learned a little bit about arcade repair and eventually bought capacitor kits from Bob Roberts for the sound and video in Donkey Kong and recapped the monitor. Later still, I bought Scott Brasington’s Double Donkey Kong so I could play both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior on the same machine (the only thing that didn’t feel right about the game afterward is that some of the sound samples in Donkey Kong came from Donkey Kong Junior since the hack is based on a Donkey Kong Junior boardset) and, even more important, save my high scores in non-volatile ram whenever I powered down; the game took on new meaning for me afterward as I continually tried to trump my highest score. The game stayed in the corner of my bedroom in my apartment on Haight Street for a number of years and I got progressively better at it. I remember the night I finally cracked 100,000 points; my joke, at the time, was that it was a good time to retire from playing Donkey Kong but, of course, I didn’t (my high score now stands at 335,300, not a great score by any means—around one-third of the all-time high score); the thing is, I still enjoy playing it. I don’t play every day; sometimes, even weeks or months go by without a single game, but whenever I do get caught up in it, I can easily lose an hour or two—or even an entire afternoon—playing it.
A few years after that, I bought a second Donkey Kong board to add Jeff Kulczycki’s new Foundry screen, which itself was nothing short of a revelation (I had for years fantasized about making my own Donkey Kong levels but didn’t have the programming talents to do it—and suddenly I was able to play a fifth and new level in Donkey Kong, the first in twenty years!).
D2K: Jumpman Returns
Fast forward to present. Just in time to usher in another twenty-five years of great Donkey Kong play, Jeff Kulczycki is expected to release a much anticipated sequel to Donkey Kong later this summer called D2K: Jumpman Returns. I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to preview Kulczycki’s work-in-progress and I’m extremely pleased with the results—and you will be too. The software is intended to be played on original Donkey Kong arcade hardware as a standalone release. Kulczycki has programmed four challenging new levels from scratch after reverse engineering the original code, a first-time feat in what has become almost a cottage industry of after-market add-ons targeted at the community of classic arcade game collectors. Where typically this focus has been on allowing compatible multi-game support (to save precious storage space) and to save or extend the high score table, Kulczycki significantly raises the bar by programming new levels, a new title screen, new cut scenes, new intermission sequences, and a new ending, along with a number of other tweaks, refinements and the occasional Easter egg—you can tell he’s had a lot of fun with this along the way. Kulczycki manages to extend the game possibilities in exciting and unforeseen ways while still remaining true to the spirit of this revered classic and its time-tested game play. Miyamoto himself would be proud.
Mixer
The first thing I noticed about the new screens is that they are hard! The truth is that they get easier after you play the game for a while and that they’re probably no harder than the original levels in Donkey Kong, it’s just that we’ve been playing Donkey Kong much, much longer. So I was met with a bit of déjà vu as I was making incremental progress through the new screens, dying frequently in the process. In many ways, it was no different than learning how to survive on the original Donkey Kong screens a quarter of a century past—except this time, I didn’t have to use my allowance and lunch money.
The Mixer plays like a cool b-side to the original Pie Factory screen. In addition to time-honored favorites like fireballs (which increase in number and speed as the level increases), new obstacles include falling pies and a pie compressor that drops the rubble from the construction site into the giant pie tins. There are two conveyer belts on this screen, which play very much like the conveyer belts in the Pie Factory screen, except with different timing. As you race Jumpman to the top, you get another opportunity to collect Pauline’s umbrella, purse, and hat (why is she always leaving these things around on the construction site so carelessly?—actually that question is finally answered in one of the new intermission sequences).
For those who may have played this level at California Extreme in the last two years, Kulczycki has made the level somewhat easier since there were a number of complaints about the pixel perfect timing previously required to get past the pie compressor. It still requires practice but is definitely easier than before (but it gets more challenging when a fireball appears on the conveyer on the second level).
Conspicuously absent from this screen–well, from all of the new screens–is Jumpman’s trusty mallet. Many fans may not miss the mallet and may share Kulczycki’s distaste for it but there are a few screens, including the Mixer, where an appropriately placed mallet could add to the already engaging game play.
Foundry
Many Donkey Kong enthusiasts are likely already familiar with the Foundry screen since it was released a few years back as a standalone screen, which Kulczycki added to Miyamoto’s original four. Kulczycki says the Foundry was inspired by the robot factory scene in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. As in the movie, our intrepid hero must stay clear of flying fireballs which are randomly released from the furnace below while also moving from conveyer to conveyer across the screen. The conveyers look like horizontal versions of the elevators in the original Elevator screen but they introduce yet another unique element of game play by requiring the player to deftly move and jump (and occasionally retreat) from passing conveyer to conveyer in order to avoid getting pushed off by a conveyer, getting singed by an incoming cloud of fire or falling to an untimely death. On the first level, the fireballs fly out one at a time. On subsequent levels, they move in pairs and much faster, increasing the likelihood of getting burnt to a crisp32222. The object remains to collect Pauline’s items and get to the top of the screen before the bonus timer runs out. Ironically, the higher you go on this level, the easier it becomes and there isn’t much in the form of obstacles to get in your way in the top half of the screen; that said, this screen is certainly not without its merits, including the flying fireballs, the beautiful blue color scheme, and the faithfulness of the game play—it moves, sounds, and feels like a natural extension to Donkey Kong, with the possible exception that Jumpman can now jump a pixel or two farther than he could previously (and, believe me, he’ll need it to get across the screen).
Refinery
The Refinery screen is exciting and will certainly be a favorite of Donkey Kong fans everywhere. I played it a few times, just struggling to determine how to get past the screen after shutting off all of the safety valves. The screen probably owes its major inspiration to the original Rivets screen, though imagine if the rivets field was split in half with a bank of elevators now running down the middle of the screen. Instead of rivets, the screen uses safety valves that must be turned off by walking over them in order to stop the dangerous flow of oil that is feeding a fire at the top on both sides of the screen. The fuel appears in the form of small blue dots that pulse up the pipeline, somewhat reminiscent of the electrical spark that travels horizontally through the line in the fourth screen of Donkey Kong Junior and, like them, deadly to the touch. Once all the safety valves have been turned off, each shut valve will flash blue before the fires finally sputter and die, allowing Jumpman to climb to the top and jump over and climb up to the final platform to rescue Pauline (the damsel, she isn’t shy, will flip to face you, depending on which side of the screen you’re on). The oil pulses speed up in subsequent levels, adding to the challenge. The fireballs and fuel dots as well as the timing of the elevators are all obstacles that can prevent you from clearing the screen.
The Incinerator is my favorite of the new screens. It plays like a cross between Popeye and the original Girders and Pie Factory screens and introduces yet another objective in order for you to rescue the heroine.
The lower half of the screen consists of three levels of alternating conveyer belts, all falling toward a raging fire in the middle of the screen. So when Jumpman first appears on the screen, he is already heading for the fire. If that weren’t enough, the conveyer is populated with both pies and springs which Jumpman needs to avoid (the pies can be jumped, the springs just need to be avoided). As Jumpman progresses up the screen, he also needs to be careful that nothing falls on him from above as he crosses over the chasm. Jumpman’s objective is to gather Pauline’s valentines as he progresses up the screen. Each heart, once touched, reappears on the pulley just above, adding a little extra weight to the girder to move the counter-balanced girder on the other side up, eventually allowing Jumpman to cross safely at the top and rescue Pauline.
Pie Factory redux
Oh, and Kulczycki’s release also finally solves that pesky problem with the Pie Factory screen, too. Now Jumpman has to go all the way to the top to rescue Pauline. Along with this, came a bit of a discovery and some new learning since to complete this, you need to be mindful of your timing. Kong moves back and forth across the screen on the conveyer belt and the ladder opens and retracts. If you touch Kong on his swing back, you’re dead (and, in later levels, Kulczycki added a fireball to this platform, just to keep things interesting). There are a lot more surprises in store for Donkey Kong fans in this release and a lot of the fun is in the discovery so I don’t want to reveal too many more details here. Keep an eye on Kulczycki’s website for more information on this exciting upcoming release.
Son of Kong – video game ports, bootlegs, and arcade sequels
There were two sequels to Donkey Kong released in the arcade: Donkey Kong Junior, which was released in 1982, and Donkey Kong 3, released in 1983. In 2005, TeamPlay also released a licensed anniversary multi-game arcade machine which allowed players to play Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, and Mario Bros. from the same machine.
Donkey Kong also inspired a clone that was released shortly after by enterprising bootleggers out for a fast buck: Crazy Kong. Crazy Kong was released by Falcon in 1981. While all of the elements of Donkey Kong are present, the game plays poorly due to some graphical glitches with the ladders and Kong himself looks as if someone has sewn his mouth shut (note: some people insist this isn’t a bootleg but an actual licensed product for release in ancillary markets but if that is true why was the classic game play corrupted?).
Donkey Kong on home systems
Donkey Kong was available on play on most home systems. I remember saving up my newspaper route money to buy it on the Atari 2600. Skaggs was having a sale so I scraped together my money and went down to get it. The Coleco box art was cool, featuring a picture of the arcade game. The cartridge itself was white, my very first Coleco cartridge. At the time, I had my Atari hooked up to a small 9” black and white TV. I plugged it in and started playing. The graphics were terrible, an immediate disappointment, which would have been more forgivable if the game itself had played anything like the arcade original. It didn’t. The opening and closing animations were gone. It was missing two screens: the Elevator screen and the Pie Factory screen. On the Girder screen, there were no fireballs. Donkey Kong looked like a blocky robot. On the Rivets screen, the fireballs traveled back and forth in predictable patterns and couldn’t climb ladders. The game stunk.About the same time, my cousin got a Colecovision. Donkey Kong was shipped with the system and, by comparison, it was a work of art. It was also missing the Pie Factory and on the Girders level, Kong appeared on the wrong side of the screen. These sins could almost be overlooked since the game played pretty true to the original. I never liked the Colecovision controllers, though; it always felt awkward to be jumping with the buttons on the side.In 1982, we got a Vic-20 but I don’t remember playing Donkey Kong on it. In 1983, we got a Commodore-64 and we played all the classic arcade games on it; Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Crystal Castles, Spy Hunter, Tapper, and Congo Bongo were some of our favorites (not to mention the Commodore-64’s native games like Summer Games, Bruce Lee, Space Taxi, and Spelunker).
Consoles:
Colecovision (1982) : Does not have the Pie Factory screen, but a rare “Super” offering does. The Elevator screen does not have the springs; it has one or two Fire Monsters on Donkey Kong’s level instead. Mattel Intellivision (1982) : Has only the Girder and Rivet screens. Atari 2600 (1983) : Has only the Girder and Rivet screens. Atari XEGS Atari 7800 (1988) : Does not have the Pie Factory screen. Nintendo Famicom (1986) : Does not have the Pie Factory screen. Nintendo Famicom (1988, “Donkey Kong Classics”) : Nintendo Famicom’s 1986 offerings of both “Donkey Kong” and “Donkey Kong Jr.” in one cartridge. Nintendo Game Boy (1994) : features multiple stage settings, starting with the original four. Nintendo 64 (1999, “Donkey Kong 64″) : unlockable extra. Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2002, e-Reader Series) Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2004, Famicom Mini Series) : Identical to Nintendo Famicom’s 1986 offering; does not have the Pie Factory screen. Nintendo Famicom Disk : Does not have the Pie Factory screen. Nintendo Wii (2006, “Virtual Console”).Computers: Tandy Color Computer (1982, “Dunkey Munkey”) Tandy Color Computer (1982, “Donkey King”) Tandy Color Computer (1983, “The King”) Tandy Color Computer (1983, “Monkey Kong”) PC [Booter] (1983) PC [Booter] (1983, “Gorilla Gorilla”, a part of the “Friendlyware PC Arcade” suite) : Uses ASCII characters for graphics. Offers 3 different types of games: Game 1 is the traditional - You start on the Girder screen. Game 2 - You start on the Rivet screen. Game 3 - You start on the Elevator screen. The Pie Factory screen is omitted. Commodore VIC-20 (1983) Apple II (1983) Atari 800 (1983) Commodore C64 (1983) TI99/4A (1983, “Donkey Kong”, Atarisoft) BBC B (1984, “Killer Gorilla” - Micropower) Acorn Electorn (1984, “Killer Gorilla” - Micropower) Amstrad CPC (1986) Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1983, “Kong” - Ocean) Sinclair ZX-Spectrum (1986, “Donkey Kong” -Ocean) : is slightly closer to the original Arcade game than Ocean’s earlier offering from 1983, “Kong”. Making their 1986 version probably the second worst conversion of Donkey Kong ever sold! MSX PC [MS-DOS] (1997, “ChampKong” - CHAMProgramming) Others:VFD handheld game (1982) released by Coleco. LCD handheld game (Game&Watch) released by Nintendo : double screen.
Parting shots and thoughts
In Six Feet Under, David and Nate Fisher do their best to honor the requests of the recently deceased and their bereaving next of kin. Over the course of five seasons, they hold funerals for bikers and Buddhists, Atheists, Jews, and Born-Again Christians. Each situation is handled uniquely, professionally, with tact and, yes, grace. While I hope to be cremated when the time comes, I suppose being buried in an empty Donkey Kong game arcade cabinet would also suffice; surely, a unique request but one I would imagine the fictional Fisher and Sons Mortuary, at least, would do its very best to honor.
