macdlsa, on Wed Jun 15, 2011 2:19 PM, said:
NOTE:
seeing the wonderful hacks and homebrew games that have been "baked" in the last years and more I wonder why there isn't still a "full version" of DK ! I know it could certainly be better, or at least more arcade-perfect, even than the ColecoVision's !!!
I think there are a couple reasons we haven't seen as many attempts to improve Donkey Kong as there have been for Pac-Man and Space Invaders.
1. The original 2600 Donkey Kong is very playable, and looks and plays more like the arcade version than I'd have expected possible on the 2600. Yes, we were underwhelmed in 1982 by the missing screens and animations, but we still played it like crazy, unlike Pac-Man. It's an amazing feat in 4K, and I think Garry Kitchen should be proud. Almost 30 years later, the sound effects he made are still being used as generic video game noises on TV all the time.
2. Nintendo enforces their trademarks more ardently than Namco or Taito.
Nonetheless, I've seen some graphics demos that look even more impressive than your mockups (the one I was immediately able to find in my collection was Ivan Machado's) and someone's already put out a ROM of the elevator level based on the Coleco version, albeit not playable.
macdlsa, on Wed Jun 15, 2011 2:19 PM, said:
That does look sweet. The score and bonus on screen at the same time will probably not be possible without flicker. It could actually be possible to improve Donkey Kong's sprite, or at least the parts of it that aren't on the same scanline as any playfield stuff, since he's quad-width anyway. I seem to remember the Colecovision version flickering when Mario was on the same level as him, so maybe it's okay to flicker Mario's player to give him a lighter tan face/ears, chest and feet, and maybe even give him blocky little whites in his eyes by making clever use of the playfield as well. On the first level, the ladders pretty much have to be the same color as the slanted girders, or the bottoms of the ones at the lower end of each girder will have to be drawn using something else, making a pretty complicated kernel. The oil cans have to either be the same color as the playfield, or not occur on the same scanlines as other playfield items (an alternating line thing here would be fine for me, don't know about others), or be made out of a player, which will create flicker when Mario and a barrel/fireball are on the same level as one. I'm sure there are other practical issues as well but those are what jumped out at me.
I think it could certainly be more playable than the Colecovision version given the same space (16K) or even less. But if I were to try it (and I did get as far as starting work on a kernel for the girder screen a few years back; that or Moon Cresta would probably be my next 2600 project now that someone else came up with a Ballblazer that makes my demo look dumb) it'd be from scratch, and I probably would be trying for something like "Congorilla" or, I don't know, "Super Pick-Axe Pete" rather than "Donkey Kong Arcade". Doing something that takes comparatively little work and getting more attention than people who actually write brilliant stuff... been there, done that.
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that forces me to stay at home...) and, if wife and daughter let me do it, I could do many PC jobs that I couldn't do in other times... 
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