4 ms·

How Donkey Kong Toppled Atari

ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
I thought that HN didn’t permit “How…” article titles?
- manarth 3mo ago
  There's a link to the submission guidelines in the HN footer https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In general, the original title is preferred, and "How…" is acceptable.
rk06 3mo 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 3mo ago
  It’s not a big secret. I’m pretty sure it was mentioned in Chris Pratt’s recent adaptation…
  - rk06 3mo 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
    - hnlmorg 3mo ago
      It’s more the other way around: the first Mario game was a Donkey Kong game. The user avatar is only “Mario” in appearance. He was called “Jump Man” in that game and even his outfit colours differed from the Mario games that followed.
      - rk06 3mo ago
        you have it backwards . the game was "a Mario game", but it was called "Donkey Kong", so it comes under Donkey Kong franchise.
        staticman2 3mo ago
        I don't know why we are making this arbitrary distinction between Mario games and Donkey Kong games. But if we are the main Mario franchise games are the "Super Mario" games. Donkey Kong is not part of the "Super Mario" series and his "Mario" is not "Super" .
        tracker1 3mo ago
        Worth remembering Mario Bros (Not Super)... it's basically the combat mode in SM3+ but as a stand alone game.
    - dec0dedab0de 3mo ago
      Donkey Kong is the main character. Mario was just who the player controlled, he was so unimportant he didn't have a name and they just called him Jump Man.
- technothrasher 3mo 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 3mo ago
    There is a modern homebrew 2600 DK which is much better than the original.
- rjsw 3mo ago
  You could run the original game in Mame.
  - chocochunks 3mo ago
    It's also been re-released on Nintendo Switch as a part of Arcade Archives.
  - amiga386 3mo 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/ https://perfectpacman.com/2022/09/06/new-technical-analysis/
    - werdnapk 3mo ago
      I fired up DK in mame after the King of Kong documentary came out and ended up playing quite a lot as I recalled as a kid having a very difficult time getting anywhere in the game. It was fairly satisfying getting through all the main stages for the first time.
- pipes 3mo ago
  Was he called jump man at that point or am I misremembering this?
  - ido 3mo ago
    He did, as is stated in the article.
    - pipes 3mo ago
      Thanks. Site was dead when I tried to read it, presumed it was a hackee news ddos.
ndiddy 3mo 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.atarimuseum.com/articles/atari-nintendo-deal.htm 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.
- bluedino 3mo 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...
  - ndiddy 3mo ago
nyeah 3mo ago
Atari's whole attitude in the early 1980s was "you will buy games that suck."
- hnlmorg 3mo 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
zzzeek 3mo 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 3mo 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.
  - staticman2 3mo 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 3mo 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.
nsxwolf 3mo 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 3mo 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.
tracker1 3mo 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.

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

manarth 3mo ago
There's a link to the submission guidelines in the HN footer https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In general, the original title is preferred, and "How…" is acceptable.

rk06 3mo 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 3mo ago
It’s not a big secret. I’m pretty sure it was mentioned in Chris Pratt’s recent adaptation…
- rk06 3mo 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
  - hnlmorg 3mo ago
    It’s more the other way around: the first Mario game was a Donkey Kong game. The user avatar is only “Mario” in appearance. He was called “Jump Man” in that game and even his outfit colours differed from the Mario games that followed.
    - rk06 3mo ago
      you have it backwards . the game was "a Mario game", but it was called "Donkey Kong", so it comes under Donkey Kong franchise.
      - staticman2 3mo ago
        I don't know why we are making this arbitrary distinction between Mario games and Donkey Kong games. But if we are the main Mario franchise games are the "Super Mario" games. Donkey Kong is not part of the "Super Mario" series and his "Mario" is not "Super" .
        tracker1 3mo ago
        Worth remembering Mario Bros (Not Super)... it's basically the combat mode in SM3+ but as a stand alone game.
  - dec0dedab0de 3mo ago
    Donkey Kong is the main character. Mario was just who the player controlled, he was so unimportant he didn't have a name and they just called him Jump Man.
technothrasher 3mo 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 3mo ago
  There is a modern homebrew 2600 DK which is much better than the original.
rjsw 3mo ago
You could run the original game in Mame.
- chocochunks 3mo ago
  It's also been re-released on Nintendo Switch as a part of Arcade Archives.
- amiga386 3mo 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/ https://perfectpacman.com/2022/09/06/new-technical-analysis/
  - werdnapk 3mo ago
    I fired up DK in mame after the King of Kong documentary came out and ended up playing quite a lot as I recalled as a kid having a very difficult time getting anywhere in the game. It was fairly satisfying getting through all the main stages for the first time.
pipes 3mo ago
Was he called jump man at that point or am I misremembering this?
- ido 3mo ago
  He did, as is stated in the article.
  - pipes 3mo ago
    Thanks. Site was dead when I tried to read it, presumed it was a hackee news ddos.

ndiddy 3mo 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.atarimuseum.com/articles/atari-nintendo-deal.htm 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.

bluedino 3mo 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...
- ndiddy 3mo ago

nyeah 3mo ago

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

hnlmorg 3mo 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

zzzeek 3mo 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 3mo 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.
- staticman2 3mo 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 3mo 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.

nsxwolf 3mo 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 3mo 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.

tracker1 3mo 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.