How Donkey Kong Toppled Atari

https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-donkey-kong-toppled-atari/

by giuliomagnifico • 14 days ago

77 35 14 days ago

dfarq.homeip.net

ButlerianJihad• 14 days ago

I thought that HN didn’t permit “How…” article titles?

manarth• 14 days ago

There's a link to the submission guidelines in the HN footer

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In general, the original title is preferred, and "How…" is acceptable.

rk063• 14 days ago

wow, it is kinda unexpected that both Mario and Donkey Kong started in the same game. and that in first Donkey Kong game, the main mario was the main character.

rusk• 14 days ago

It’s not a big secret. I’m pretty sure it was mentioned in Chris Pratt’s recent adaptation…

rk063• 14 days ago

it is not a secret but very unexpected. when I heard of donkey kong, it was in context of donkey kong franchise which obviously feature Donkey Kong as main character just like mario is main character of mario games.

so technically first Donkey Kong game in Donkey Kong series is actually a Mario game. i understand why and how it happened. but this is a trivia that you either know or you would not believe from untrusted sources

technothrasher• 14 days ago

Hard to be unexpected for the many of us who lived it. It wasn't that long ago. I remember first seeing a ColecoVison, which shipped with Donkey Kong, and being amazed that, unlike on the Atari 2600, the home version of Donkey Kong actually looked very close to the arcade version.

kevin_thibedeau• 13 days ago

There is a modern homebrew 2600 DK which is much better than the original.

rjsw• 14 days ago

You could run the original game in Mame.

amiga386• 14 days ago

You could stick it in an arcade cabinet and pretend it's the real thing, like Billy Mitchell

https://perfectpacman.com/2022/09/06/new-technical-analysis/

chocochunks• 14 days ago

It's also been re-released on Nintendo Switch as a part of Arcade Archives.

pipes2• 14 days ago

Was he called jump man at that point or am I misremembering this?

ido• 14 days ago

He did, as is stated in the article.

ndiddy2• 13 days ago

Nintendo was about to release a next-generation console, the Famicom, in Japan. They wanted to export it to other markets, but didn’t want to do it alone. Nintendo really wanted to license the Famicom to Atari and have Atari distribute it in North America. Atari CEO Ray Kassar was going to sign the deal at CES in June, but delayed due to the spat over the Coleco Adam version of Donkey Kong. Then the deal fell through the cracks after Atari forced out Kassar as Atari CEO on July 7, 1983. Atari’s next CEO, James Morgan, never revisited it.

There's a leaked memo about this deal available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20080327135150/http://www.atarim... . Atari had already paid General Computer to design the 7800 when Nintendo reached out to them about distributing the Famicom. Atari viewed the 7800 hardware as likely being superior to the Famicom, so their strategy was to string out the negotiations for as long as possible until the two systems could be directly compared. The Coleco Adam dispute was probably just a convenient excuse to continue delaying.

When Ray Kassar was forced out due to insider trading (he sold a bunch of Atari stock around half an hour before Atari reported much lower than expected earnings), the business press was generally dismissive of the idea of introducing a new console into an already oversaturated market. The 7800 ended up getting delayed into 1984, then Jack Tramiel bought the company and didn't want to pay General Computer royalties on the consoles or software so they sat in a warehouse until 1986 when Atari finally paid up.

If Atari did end up going with the Famicom instead of the 7800, I imagine it would have ended up delayed and hamstrung the same way the 7800 was. If anything, maybe this would have left space for the Sega Master System to take over in the US.

bluedino2• 13 days ago

The other big problem with the 7800 was it was mostly arcade ports. They didn't really do any original games.

People were tired of the 5th home version of Galaga, Pac Man, and Dig Dug (even though the 7800 had decent ports, especially compared to the 2600, which it was also backward-compatible with). Nintendo came out with originals like Super Mario Brothers and Zelda, and then all the third party games...

ndiddy2• 13 days ago

Yeah the 7800 library was basically a bunch of ports of early 80s arcade games that GCC had done for the initial 1984 release date, then ports of whatever computer or arcade games the Tramiels could get cheap licenses for, done by external contractors. Their strategy with the 7800 was competing with Nintendo on price rather than the quality of the game library. Tramiel led Atari wasn't willing to put a bunch of money and effort into pushing video games forward like Nintendo was, they were mainly focusing their internal efforts on the ST computers.

LogicFailsMe2• 13 days ago

Almost...

Rescue On Fractalus and Ballblazer*, the first two titles out of LucasArts, were supposed to be lead titles for the platform. And the 7800 was technologically superior to the Famicom. But when has that mattered relative to the game library? See also the Jaguar port of Doom, which was the most faithful adaptation of its generation, written by Carmack himself, on a bizarrely advanced (2 RISCs plus an overclocked 68K) platform born for the dustbin of history because the Tramiels had burned all their karma to the ground messing up the amazing Atari Lynx.

I'm sure there's a timeline where somehow the Nintendo titles ended up on the 7800, looking fantastic, and it all ended with Atari continuing to dominate the console world. But it sure isn't this one. And it probably requires someone other than the Tramiels running Atari (into the ground until it was sold off to a hard drive manufacturer).

*The OG Rocket League

nyeah• 13 days ago

Atari's whole attitude in the early 1980s was "you will buy games that suck."

hnlmorg2• 13 days ago

That seemed to be a common theme for games in America even into the 90s. Just looks at the games approved by Sega of America vs Sega of Japan

zzzeek2• 13 days ago

I was a total Atari kid and I still have my 2600 and my 800 on me. If Atari was the one distributing an NES like system IMO they would have just fucked it up. While I loved my atari devices, they were also extremely unreliable mechanically / electronically. The build quality of Nintendo devices (I own about 10 Nintendo devices going back to the SNES that's plugged into my TV with a modern HDMI adapter today) is worlds beyond what Atari was able to pull off in my experience. Granted the Nintendo devices have the advantage of more sophisticated technology but Atari I think really had a cheaper build mentality.

bena• 13 days ago

While the Famicom was decent, the NES had mechanical problems.

The Famicom was a top-loading console, like the SNES, but had hard-wired controllers that came out of the back of the console. There was a controller port on the front that was used for the light gun peripheral.

The NES had pluggable controllers, but the cartridge was front-loaded. The cartridge would plug into the bus in the back, then the whole thing was pushed down, which allowed the contacts on the bus to touch the contacts on the board.

Those contacts often became worn and lost their elasticity over many uses, basically becoming more curled over time. These would then not make full contact with the board, causing games to not load.

They eventually redesigned the system to be a top-loader like the original Famicom. They also introduced this design to Japan so they would gain swappable controllers.

Also, the Famicom cartridges were smaller, just large enough to contain the board. NES cartridges were much larger with a lot of empty space. Didn't cause any issues technially, but it was a choice.

staticman22• 13 days ago

Adding to what you wrote the NES was front loaded because it was designed to look like a VCR because they thought that aesthetic would sell better in the U.S.

eek2121• 13 days ago

Note that the actual cause of failure in the NES was NOT the cartridge connector, but rather, the poorly implemented security chip.

You can take a flaky NES, cut 1 pin on the security chip, and it will work near perfectly.

I am not saying what you stated isn’t true, however, it wasn’t the reason for the solid pink or flashing screens many of us saw.

zzzeek2• 13 days ago

in my Atari days, I went through half a dozen of those stupid joysticks, which broke easily as they were poorly designed and put way too much repetitive strain on the plastic insides that broke regularly.

contrast to my SNES controllers that still work today and feel more or less like they did literally 34 years ago. that blows my mind.

on the console side, the 2600 itself had some components go out which had to be replaced back in the day (remember when you'd take your console to the video game shop and they'd repair it?). The 800 itself didnt have any failures but the 810 disk drive was always a nightmare.

my comparisons are all to the SNES so admittedly these are all unfair comparisons, I never had an NES.

nsxwolf• 13 days ago

The article mentions Sheriff, which you don't hear about very often. It's a really neat take on Space Invaders, kind of a hybrid of that and Robotron.

RetroTechie• 13 days ago

There's also the dual-screen b/w LCD game (running off 2 LR44 batteries iirc). Back when I was a kid, that was a prized possession during school breaks.

We'd exchange those handhelds with other kids & play 'em to death. Plane & Tank Battle, Highway and Q-Bert spring to mind as some favourites.

tracker12• 13 days ago

I remember the January when the gaming market really crashed... the Atari games for 1600/7200 were dirt cheap at Toys R Us... In retrospect, I'd have been happier with Sega at the time... They had more games that I actually liked.

How Donkey Kong Toppled Atari

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