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Arcade Donkey Kong Emulated on the TRS-80 Color Computer 3 (CoCo 3)?!
Classic computer, meet arcade Donkey KongWhile it's amazing to consider, it looks like through a combination of emulation, compensation and flat-out clever programming tricks, Nintendo's arcade version of Donkey Kong has been replicated on Tandy/Radio Shack's TRS-80 Color Computer 3 (CoCo 3). All that's required is 512K and a disk drive. It's really an amazing story and well worth checking out for all fans of programming and classic technology. As we've seen time and again, where there's a desire to make something happen, there's almost always a way to do the "impossible". Thanks to L. Curtis Boyle for the heads-up on this fascinating bit of news!
Check out "Sock Master's Donkey Kong Emulator for CoCo 3" for the full story and "Press Play Then Any Key - Revisiones - Donkey Kong" for comparative screenshots of many of the Donkey Kong translations for home systems.
- Bill Loguidice's blog
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Comments
Nice!
An amazing job. I think I've said it before, but CoCo programmers and enthusiasts have a long track record of replicating both graphics and gameplay from arcade titles in an impressive fashion... even on the CoCo 1/2 in 4 colors. The most frequent problem is the bottlenecks caused by the fact that computers weren't really designed to be solely game machines... often both sound and graphics had less-than-optimal access and options.
The TI version of Donkey Kong, put out by Atarisoft in 1983, is not half-bad. It had to be fit into an 8k bank of ROM, like most 3rd party TI cartridges. (Although in some cases you could bank that.) The principle flaws were that Kong himself is not animated, it lacks the in-between stage cinematics as well as the ending on the second stage where Kong falls on his head, and there's no springboards on stage 3. Plus, there was one point on stage 3 where I could consistently get a garbled screen by doing a jump at just the right moment.
Colors on your screenshot
It looks like you had the Composite/RGB setting (set at the beginning of the game) set wrong, but otherwise, it seems to be running for you.
Keep in mind, Mark, that the
Keep in mind, Mark, that the CoCo 1/2 are fairly poor, but except for the sound, the CoCo 3, which is almost fully backwards compatible with the earlier models, is actually fairly competitive with systems like the Atari ST and Apple IIgs. Even with all the wonderful hacks and hardcore users - and inherent power in the CoCo 3 - there is still not a large supply of quality games for it either from when the system was new or today. Still, I'd say there are around a dozen or so games well worth checking out on the CoCo 3, and that's not half bad all things considered.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
(A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
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Wow / that´s why I just hate April 1st
I have a tendency to dismiss all news on april 1st but there do seem to be some real gem news items out there. The Color Coco is one amazine piece of 8 bit machinery. Not popular over here in the Netherlands but very impressive. I need to check out the Coco game library and see if the PAL machine is any good.
On the c64 DK games, there´s two versions of DK for the C64 out there, a very old and slow one with great graphics by Nintendo itself. Perhaps it runs faster on NTSC machines but on PAL machines it´s just a tad to slow to be really enjoyable. It does make the game too easy in fact.
And a version done by Ocean with a lot blockier graphics but faster gameplay. I do tend to like the Nintendo release better.
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Mark Vergeer - Editor / Pixelator
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Xboxlive gametag
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Proof
Okay, I actually downloaded this thing and booted it into MESS. It's definitely LEGIT. In fact, it's quite impressive! The sound was pretty crapped out under Vista, but it's close enough to the arcade otherwise for anyone but a true DK fan. Again, I'm amazed at the Sock Master's work.
April Fool's
I must admit; if this is an April Fool's joke, it's not a very good one. It seems to me that this game is entirely plausible on the system, and that a clever enough hacker could definitely pull it off. I might add that if anyone could pull it off, it'd be the Sock Master, who has done the 'impossible' several times already on the CoCo.
Has anyone managed to test this yet?
Donkey Kong
Just wondering if you have had a chance to try it out (in David Keil's emulator, or MESS even though the joystick control is a bit buggered up at the moment), to prove that it is real?
Or were you posting your response as an April fool's joke, itself?
:-)
I agree, Stu, it's
I agree, Stu, it's inexcusable what a crappy version of DK we got here for our C-64's here in the US. Perhaps the few extras years of experience on the hardware allowed that version to be the best. Still, Atarisoft was rather hit and miss with any title that they would do for a particular system. Homebrew developments have certainly shown how amazingly close one can get to the original arcade classics on systems like the ColecoVision, for instance.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
(A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
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If only the 256 color mode
If only the 256 color mode could be unlocked (assuming the capability is still really there and fairly universally resident (or a cheap upgrade could be performed)) and the thing had better sound, it would be the perfect "Super 8-bit". It would be nice if someone could homebrew an inexpensive backwards compatible sound and speech cartridge so we could all add one to our systems and new software developments could target it.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
(A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
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I hope more programmers will try and emulate Sock's game
Hopefully Socks game will make other programmers try their hands at doing what Socks' did. On the coco 3 that is.
I've played it and I cant fault the game in any way. Maybe except 1. There is no Pause feature.
Overall I think the Coco 3 is the Best 8 bitter to do the impossible on.