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- Matt Barton
New, Graphically Pleasing Donkey Kong in Development for the Mattel Intellivision?
New Donkey Kong Intellivision (WIP)Anyone remember the mediocre Donkey Kong conversion from Coleco for the Mattel Intellivision? It was a bookend to the awful Atari 2600 version. While I firmly believe there's zero legitimacy to the theory that Coleco intentionally crippled these releases to make their ColecoVision pack-in look all the better, there's no denying that the programmer could have done a better job. Want proof? Thanks to this thread on AtariAge for the reminder, it looks like Beeslife, of stunning Moon Patrol port and update, Space Patrol, fame, just may be at it again with an equally impressive Donkey Kong conversion (NOTE: As of writing this, there's no word of Beeslife involvement, if any, or if this is simply just a proof of concept, since it's still built off of the original Coleco version, despite the addition of the missing screens). Check out the animated screenshot to the left and be sure to visit the Beeslife Website for more of them. Let's hope it gets finished up (whoever that task falls to) and makes it to a release on cartridge! It would be an excellent companion to the upcoming Opcode Games Donkey Kong conversion for the ColecoVision.
Comments
What an improvement! It is amazing what can be done on old hardware with time and love. Many people do not realize that many games were crap because the developers were under extreme pressure and time restrictions to rush out many titles.
The cost of the additional memory to store larger games was also cost prohibitive in many instances. We think nothing today of a ROM chip that costs pennies that allows a big game like this to be made but back in the late 70's and early 80's it added a lot to the price of a cartridge to have so much storage so programmers were told to keep the games within certain limits so cheaper chips could be used.
It seems that with today's hindsight programmers are able to squeeze so much more out of the old consoles. Like Rob said above there were huge time restrictions and pressure was extreme. But I think today's programmers have an added advantage as they can compare the hardware with other machines- perhaps not out there at the time - and can better cage what the machine is actually capable of. I think perhaps back in the day the thoughts on what the machine could actually do were more limited. And then there's the RAM/ROM, back in the day that was so expansive that people were forced to develop the games with the least amount of memory. It's like making an entry in today's 1Kb demo competitions! LOL
According to an update in the thread referenced in my original blog post, this version is actually written from scratch and is 49K in size, versus the original version's 8K. Also, it IS being actively worked on and is likely to see the light of day. Good news!
Donkey Kong for the TRS-80 from 1982!: http://www.trs-80.org/donkey-kong/comment-page-1/
There's just something charming about those old monochrome graphics. I love them.
Are you color blind? Monochrome means black&white or one color over a background of another color, like the old PC monitors that had green text on a black background. I see plenty of color in that animation.
Are you color blind? Monochrome means black&white or one color over a background of another color, like the old PC monitors that had green text on a black background. I see plenty of color in that animation.
A bit harsh there, Joe. And yes, to answer your other post, we've often discussed the pluses and minuses to corporate programming back in the day compared to hobby programming today and vice-versa, so we certainly agree.
Are you color blind? Monochrome means black&white or one color over a background of another color, like the old PC monitors that had green text on a black background. I see plenty of color in that animation.
Those were some pretty harsh words Mr Snow. Nice to meet you too. Of course Matt was referring to the TRS-80 version which is as monochrome as they come, completely adhering to your given definition of monochrome graphics.
In hindsight with more/cheaper memory available it is 'easier' in some ways to bring out a better game than the original release. We totally agree on that.