
A basement hacker transformed Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/09/how-a-basement-hacker-transformed-donkey-kong-for-the-atari-2600/
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joezydeco
There are a number of excerpts being pasted all over the web as a promotion to
the book, like this one:

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nd9d/the-story-
behind-t...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nd9d/the-story-behind-the-
tireless-slog-of-porting-double-dragon-to-genesis)

The editing on these stories is a little slack and technically incomplete. But
it's an interesting piece of videogame history and probably worth a lookover.

It also goes without saying that the essential book on Atari 2600 programming
is _Racing the Beam_ :

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-
beam](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam)

And, as someone else has mentioned in this thread, Steven Kent's book is
really well done:

[https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-History-Video-Games-
Pokemon/...](https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-History-Video-Games-
Pokemon/dp/0761536434)

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edent
I had no idea that Coleco was originally The Connecticut Leather Company.
Reminds me of Nokia pivoting from rubber boots to mobile phones.

~~~
reaperducer
I wonder if Radio Shack had a similar evolution.

One of the auction sites lists all TRS-80 stuff under Tandy Leather Factory.

~~~
technothrasher
Tandy Leather Factory is still in operation as a leather goods chain of
stores, but completely separate from RadioShack. But they're both spun out
from the Tandy Corporation, started in 1963 from the original Tandy leather,
which was founded in 1919.

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mynameishere
When I was a kid I had his "Game Maker" game and it still seems like an
ambitious application:

[http://www.garrykitchen.com/product_history/garry_kitchens_g...](http://www.garrykitchen.com/product_history/garry_kitchens_gamemaker.html)

...it had it's own programming environment, sprite and background maker, and
music composition tool.

~~~
dep_b
I never used that one but I worked with stuff like SEUCK and to think back at
it now it was pretty awesome you really could do all of this stuff with some
graphical editors and get something that was a bit simple in terms of gameplay
but would look and sound pretty decent. Lost countless hours inside that
program....

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raldi
So it looks like he did eventually figure out a way to slant the ramps. I
wonder how.

~~~
mzs
This comment explains a bit: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/09/how-a-
basement-hacker...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/09/how-a-basement-
hacker-transformed-donkey-kong-for-the-atari-2600/?comments=1&post=37965987)

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momania
> Some vintage techie posing with an Apple II computer.

Yeah, just some techie. LOL

~~~
LocalH
Kinda got the impression that was fairly tongue-in-cheek, lol

~~~
rbanffy
"One-time Atari employee" would also fit.

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rurban
For more background the full King of Kong documentary is on YouTube.
[https://youtu.be/ONWu0pXxRRs](https://youtu.be/ONWu0pXxRRs)

One of the best documentaries ever

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nailer
Did Donkey Kong actually come out on the 2600? I would have imagined Nintendo
would have shut it down, like they did id software's Mario Bros PC port.

~~~
protomyth
Nintendo had Donkey Kong for the Atari 8-bit computers. I have the official
cartridge. It's actually a pretty good version.

~~~
einr
And in fact, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and even Mario Bros. were released
for the Atari 7800, which came out _after_ the NES and was meant to be a
competitor to it, due to Atari still having the license.

~~~
LocalH
Also pretty sure that if there isn't actually code heritage, the 7800 versions
of those games were ported using the NES version as a reference. Is it
possible Nintendo either programmed the 7800 version themselves, or actually
provided the NES source code for Atari to modify for 7800 hardware? The
similarities are too big to ignore (and too specific to the NES version versus
the arcade version, which other computer and console ports tended to be more
similar to).

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bluedino
Is the book this excerpt is from, _Arcade Perfect_ , any good? The Amazon
reviews are mixed.

~~~
royjacobs
It's a fun read. The interviews are decent, the technical background writing
contains a bunch of errors.

