Donkey Kong (VCS vs. Coleco)

[JJohnson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErdZEOTpKL8

 

I was playing my Coleco DK on the Atari 2600, and looking at this video, it looks like the Colecovision got a much, much better version of the game for their system.  My question is why theirs is that much better, is it the system specs, or programmers couldn't/wouldn't do better on the Atari 2600? 

[edladdin]

https://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/rvg-interviews-garry-kitchen/

[H.E.R.O.]

Donkey Kong & Pac-Man were the two games I received with my Atari 2600 birthday gift. Played them on a 13 inch black 'n white tv. 

 

Those were good times.

 

Then next game I got was Pitfall and things got blown wide open.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

https://medium.com/swlh/how-i-spent-my-summer-of-1982-59638293f358

 

Donkey Kong and Pac-Man have both been discussed a lot (I mean a lot) on this forum. Dig through the old threads if you're really interested. Don't believe that "Coleco made the 2600 port bad on purpose to make the Colecovision look better" garbage that still gets spread around sometimes. The Colecovision has more powerful hardware, allowing for much nicer looking graphics. Also, Coleco only gave Garry Kitchen 4K for the 2600 port, limiting him to just the 2 screens. But it's one of the first 2600 games with an asymmetric playfield, has pretty hi-res graphics for the VCS and no flicker. Technically, it's a pretty impressive game for the time and the platform.

[+SpiceWare]

18 minutes ago, KaeruYojimbo said:

But it's one of the first 2600 games with an asymmetric playfield

 

Not really, Donkey Kong's from 1982.  Of the original 9 games from 1977 both Basic Math and Surround used an asymmetric playfield in the game area, and most of them used it for the score.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

32 minutes ago, SpiceWare said:

 

Not really, Donkey Kong's from 1982.  Of the original 9 games from 1977 both Basic Math and Surround used an asymmetric playfield in the game area, and most of them used it for the score.

I guess I just assumed they used the player graphics for score. To be honest, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Basic Math. Maybe it would be more accurate to say Donkey Kong had a detailed asymmetric playfield which was unusual for the time?

[zzip]

13 hours ago, JJohnson said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErdZEOTpKL8

 

I was playing my Coleco DK on the Atari 2600, and looking at this video, it looks like the Colecovision got a much, much better version of the game for their system.  My question is why theirs is that much better, is it the system specs, or programmers couldn't/wouldn't do better on the Atari 2600? 

Specs.   Donkey Kong was the flagship game for Colecovision, so Coleco had an incentive to make it as good as possible.   That means they also had a perverse incentive to make the 2600 and Intellivision as bad as possible, which was a popular conspiracy theory back then,  but Garry Kitchen said that didn't happen.

[+SpiceWare]

38 minutes ago, KaeruYojimbo said:

I guess I just assumed they used the player graphics for score.

 

Due to the SCORE setting for the playfield, we know TIA was designed with the idea of using it for the score.

 

 

I toggled SCORE mode on/off to color the kings in Medieval Mayhem.

 

 

Quote

To be honest, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Basic Math.

 

Me either

 

Quote

Maybe it would be more accurate to say Donkey Kong had a detailed asymmetric playfield which was unusual for the time?

 

That might be true as it uses up a lot of ROM to get that detail in there.

[Video]

Coleco was simply a way more powerful machine than 2600.

 

I never bought the idea that coleco made the 2600 version had on purpose. It could have been better, but it was playable and followed the largely "good enough" mantra for the time.

 

Imo, the coleco version even looks better than the Nintendo version.

 

What is weird is the intellivision version. It should have been better, but seems much like the 2600 version. Maybe a cheap conversion of something?

[1980gamer]

I don't really think Gary was this issue for the 2600 version.  But if Coleco limiting the Cart size isn't sabotage, what is?  It would always be inferior to the CV anyway!

As for the Intellivsion.  NO WAY they didn't intentionally screw the pooch.

 

Here is a homebrew version for the intellivision:  http://www.intellivision.us/intvgames/dkarcade/dkarcade.php

 

At least we had Imagic's Beauty and the Beast back then.

[1980gamer]

Yes, the Colecovision version was very well done!  Too bad the video chip had the 4 sprite limit per scan line.

 

I also really like some of the bugs in the original version.

The double up for fast latter climb.  Grabbing objects  from the girder above.  "Jumping" Barrels above you.

"Dropping" off the end of girders and living.. and a fast way to release the hammer.

 

To me the 4th screen is pretty useless anyway...  But I wish it had the springs on the 3rd screen.

 

[high voltage]

I mean, who would come up with these stupid things? 

If they make the Atari version look bad on purpose, it would look bad for Coleco. Why would they damage their own company?

Obviously NES users would say this rubbish.

[1980gamer]

Your kidding right?

This happens all the time! And yes it is very intentional.

 

Specifically talking Coleco.  They can sell you what they feel is good enough for you to buy it.  But ultimately drive you to the Colecovision.

 

Mom knows her kids want Donkey Kong.  The box looks great!  Little Joey and Sally will love this, it is $30 not the $179 for the new Console they asked for.

The kids play it for a little while and still beg for the Colecovision!

 

You realize as stupid as that philosophy was for Coleco that IS what they did and went bankrupt for being so arrogant or stupid, you pick!

 

True 3rd party developers where not in this position.  They want to sell as many units as possible for any console.

 

Mattel did a better job making the 2600 version of games.  But clearly did not put forth the best possible efforts for Bump n Jump or Burgertime for the Colecovision.

Look at the motivations

1. The 2600 had a huge base of potential customers. ( Coleco should have capitalized on this )

2. Even the very best possible for the 2600 was not going to equal the Intellivision or Colecovision.

3. The Colecovision was a real threat to the Intellivision as it's big marketing push was better graphics than the 2600.

4. Smaller installed base of Colecovisions, less risk and don't help them get a foot hold.  ( same thinking as Coleco toward Intellivision )

 

Look at TV's today.  Hundreds of manufactures..."BRANDS" is a better word.  But only a handful of companies make display panels.

Do you think the quality in the Khind TV is the same as the LG.  MADE by the same manufacturer.  Aren't they worried about the reputation from low quality brands?  NOPE.

 

Heck some of the companies care so little, they will make an absolute piece of shit with the "quality" brand name and have it be a walmart exclusive!  Or BJ's or Costco whatever.

 

But how else can I afford an "X"...  If I can fool myself into thinking I am driving a Jaguar when I am sitting in a Dodge Dart.  We both win!

 

 

 

 

[MrTrust]

It's the same thing it always is: money & time.  You read stories all the time from programmers and designers from back then.  I had this great game/conversion all built, and then I submitted the parts list and Company X hit the roof, so I had to rewrite the whole thing and they'd already committed to shipping it in 2 weeks.

 

This went on well into the 90s.  There's a good Vlog out there somewhere with the programmer for the NES version of Out of This World.  There was apparently a really great version of the game extant , but every time it cam down to finalize it, Interplay would come back and say "Wow!  That's really something.  Great job, but, ummmm, could you not use the SFX chip?  Could you use a smaller ROM?  Could you use an even smaller ROM?" Apparently, this back and forth went on several times, and the finished version was nowhere near what it could have been.

 

We got Yar's Revenge, for example, because doing a port of Star Castle on the 2600 was "impossible".  Of course, in absolute terms it wasn't.  Someone did it.  Under the constraints that HSW was working under at the time, however, it probably was.

 

CV Donkey Kong was pretty good for its time.  Overrated for my money, but I guess it deserves its reputation.  I'd prefer the A8, 7800, or NES versions any day of the week.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

There’s a difference between not devoting all available resources to making the best game possible and intentionally making a bad game. I’d say Coleco is guilty of the former more than the latter. Garry Kitchen made a real effort to make the best Donkey Kong he could given the limits of the platform and the restraints put on him by Coleco. (It could have been a lot worse. It could have looked more like Tigervision’s King Kong.) I mean, no one accuses Atari of intentionally making a bad Pac-Man port, and it’s bad at least in part because Atari didn’t want to spend the extra money to make the game 8K either.

 

I think part of the reason Coleco has such a bad reputation is that their highest profile ports (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Zaxxon) are their weakest efforts. While their other ports aren’t great, for the most part they aren’t significantly worse than a lot of other 2600 ports coming out at the time.

[Ed in Rancho]

I thought the Atari Donkey Kong played okay. The sound effects could have been better, but the 2 of 4 levels included were good. 

 

If you want a really good version, find the Donkey Kong VCS homebrew version.  Incredible effort.

[JJohnson]

On 3/25/2021 at 10:51 AM, KaeruYojimbo said:

https://medium.com/swlh/how-i-spent-my-summer-of-1982-59638293f358

 

Donkey Kong and Pac-Man have both been discussed a lot (I mean a lot) on this forum. Dig through the old threads if you're really interested. Don't believe that "Coleco made the 2600 port bad on purpose to make the Colecovision look better" garbage that still gets spread around sometimes. The Colecovision has more powerful hardware, allowing for much nicer looking graphics. Also, Coleco only gave Garry Kitchen 4K for the 2600 port, limiting him to just the 2 screens. But it's one of the first 2600 games with an asymmetric playfield, has pretty hi-res graphics for the VCS and no flicker. Technically, it's a pretty impressive game for the time and the platform.

Good info.  I was looking in the 'let's compare' video on DK and was wondering, if there's no space limitation, make an 8k, 16k, 24k, 32k, 64k, whatever game, could the Atari 2600 theoretically make a DK with more arcade-like graphics, as in, DK doesn't look like a gingerbread man, Mario has 3 colors on him in a relatively more accurate manner, and Pauline is a little more detailed?  And can it be done without flicker tricks?

Edited April 1, 2021 by JJohnson

[JJohnson]

On 3/28/2021 at 12:41 AM, Video said:

Coleco was simply a way more powerful machine than 2600.

 

I never bought the idea that coleco made the 2600 version had on purpose. It could have been better, but it was playable and followed the largely "good enough" mantra for the time.

 

Imo, the coleco version even looks better than the Nintendo version.

 

What is weird is the intellivision version. It should have been better, but seems much like the 2600 version. Maybe a cheap conversion of something?

More powerful, I don't doubt.  It came out afterwards, didn't it?  And the 2600 was 1977 technology trying to do something other than Pong.  I guess that's why the 5200 was released.  It should certainly have more homebrew games as should the 7800.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

13 hours ago, JJohnson said:

Good info.  I was looking in the 'let's compare' video on DK and was wondering, if there's no space limitation, make an 8k, 16k, 24k, 32k, 64k, whatever game, could the Atari 2600 theoretically make a DK with more arcade-like graphics, as in, DK doesn't look like a gingerbread man, Mario has 3 colors on him in a relatively more accurate manner, and Pauline is a little more detailed?  And can it be done without flicker tricks?

There are the two Donkey Kong homebrews, DK VCS and DK Arcade 2600. Both are 32K, have all 4 screens and (most importantly ?) Donkey Kong doesn't look like a gingerbread man. But they also have a lot of flicker. There are graphic limitations you aren't going to be able to avoid, no matter the ROM size. The 2600 can only display 2 sprites in the same horizontal space at the same time. Those sprites are only 8 pixels wide (the width of the pixels can be stretched to make wider objects, but it's still just 8 fat pixels, not 16 or 32 definable pixels) and they can only have one color per scanline. Making something as big as Donkey Kong with any detail and multiple colors per line requires multiple objects. I know there are tricks for making big single-color sprites like the cars in Dragster, but I don't know enough about how those work to know if they'd be feasible in Donkey Kong, and even if they are, you're still limited you to one color per scanline.

[johannesmutlu]

The homebrew version of donkeykong for the atari 2600 just throws the official atari 2600 version out of the water because not only does it have better graphics and sounds but it also containes all 4 stages among all those cut scenes and the intro,just imagine if that version showed up in 1982 on the atari 2600,people including atari members would,ve been mind blown away,heck even nintendo would,ve be impressed with it as well,it’s just frustrates me sometimes that consoles were in most cases never fully pushed to their limits all because of costs reasons,lack of knowledge,primitive dev-kits and time constrains,homebrewers do have all the time,knowledge and money to push old systems to new boundary’s and donkeykong 8K & pacman 8K are prime examples of this,these are absolute must haves to make your atari 2600 system better fit to last gen 8bit systems?

[Living Room Arcade]

On 3/24/2021 at 11:11 PM, JJohnson said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErdZEOTpKL8

 

I was playing my Coleco DK on the Atari 2600, and looking at this video, it looks like the Colecovision got a much, much better version of the game for their system.  My question is why theirs is that much better, is it the system specs, or programmers couldn't/wouldn't do better on the Atari 2600? 

Guys, Did you see this?  GenX Jon just did a MUST SEE interview with Garry Kitchen on this very topic!  

 

 

SUMMARY

Spoiler

There was no sabotage.  It was a 4k cart and it had to be out by Christmas.  Even if Coleco were willing to spend the extra 50 or 75 cents per cart to upgrade the cart to 8k, it doesn't matter, you can't move the Christmas holiday, he still only could have finished 2 levels in the time allotted.  But he feels sure that if he would have had more time and 8k, certainly, he could have done all 4 levels.  In fact, he even contemplated doing so later in his life just to prove it, but A) he didn't have time and B) Nintendo is an important customer to him even to this day, and he would never want to do anything to make them unhappy.  So he never did it.  

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Living Room Arcade

[amidarman]

According to this site, the game was released in August 1982 - https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-history-1982.html#donkey_kong

It was even released earlier but had to be recalled because carts didn't work on the 6 switch models.  So they had plenty of time to have the cartridge on the market and could have gone with 8K and a few more months of development.

[+sramirez2008]

4 hours ago, Living Room Arcade said:

Guys, Did you see this?  GenX Jon just did a MUST SEE interview with Garry Kitchen on this very topic!  

 

 

SUMMARY

  Reveal hidden contents

There was no sabotage.  It was a 4k cart and it had to be out by Christmas.  Even if Coleco were willing to spend the extra 50 or 75 cents per cart to upgrade the cart to 8k, it doesn't matter, you can't move the Christmas holiday, he still only could have finished 2 levels in the time allotted.  But he feels sure that if he would have had more time and 8k, certainly, he could have done all 4 levels.  In fact, he even contemplated doing so later in his life just to prove it, but A) he didn't have time and B) Nintendo is an important customer to him even to this day, and he would never want to do anything to make them unhappy.  So he never did it.  

 

Gary’s talked about this issue before. Here’s an interview from 2019 (jump to ~11:57 mark) where he discusses the topic.

 

[+jeremiahjt]

2 hours ago, amidarman said:

According to this site, the game was released in August 1982 - https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-history-1982.html#donkey_kong

It was even released earlier but had to be recalled because carts didn't work on the 6 switch models.  So they had plenty of time to have the cartridge on the market and could have gone with 8K and a few more months of development.

I think he said Coleco wanted it out by September for the Christmas holiday. I do not necessarily understand why it has to be that early for Christmas, but I guess 3 months prior was considered the standard.

 

So an August release date may have meant that they were able to get some production elements done quicker than expected.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, jeremiahjt said:

I think he said Coleco wanted it out by September for the Christmas holiday. I do not necessarily understand why it has to be that early for Christmas, but I guess 3 months prior was considered the standard.

I guess the same reason why when you need a winter coat in February all you can find is a few on clearance but plenty of swimsuits..   retail stocks months ahead of demand.   Plus in those days you had all those printed Christmas catalogs which I'm sure take a while to put together and you want your game to be included.