

Controlling the Barrels in Donkey Kong - sp332
http://www.donhodges.com/Controlling_the_barrels_in_Donkey_Kong.htm

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kabdib
That's good to know. It's 35 years too late, though. I wrote the Donkey Kong
cartridge for the Atari 400/800 computers, and wish I'd had this kind of
information when I was writing the barrel code.

I think I just added more vanilla barrels, more wild barrels and more
X-velocity jinks to increase the difficulty. I was totally guessing just based
on a few weeks of playing the game intensively.

~~~
fit2rule
There's probably someone out there willing to monkeypatch the ROM, if you ever
want to fix that aspect of your implementation .. ;)

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seccess
There is a really interesting documentary about world record arcade gamers
called "The King of Kong" [0] that follows people who try to get top scores in
Donkey Kong and other arcade games. Its enjoyable and interesting, I highly
recommend it.

[0]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/)

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failrate
I think this is very cool. However, I wish that it could be framed in a
context of strategy at the game. For example, knowing that I can influence the
behavior is only the first step for me to know how I can exploit it for
profit.

When is it advantageous to force a barrel drop?

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saxonp
The most common place to use barrel control is on the platform below Donkey
Kong (where the upper hammer is). When you have the hammer, you want to force
the barrels to come down the ladder closest to Donkey Kong, so you can hit
more of them with the hammer. You can then continue to force the barrels down
that first ladder as you make your way to and up the ladder at the end of that
platform as efficiently as possible.

More advanced players will use barrel control to group 2 or 3 barrels together
so they can jump over them for more points.

Check out The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters to learn more about Donkey
Kong and classic arcade games in general.

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pan69
Didn't Steve Wiebe discover this (on his own?) in the King of Kong
documentary?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Kong:_A_Fistful_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Kong:_A_Fistful_of_Quarters)

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pronoiac
"King of Kong" is coming up here, but you should know that the editing was
selective and misleading:

[http://kottke.org/08/02/king-of-kong-a-fistful-of-
quarters](http://kottke.org/08/02/king-of-kong-a-fistful-of-quarters)

