Just thought Id share this from the I Am A Classic Videogamer group. The subject came up of 2600 Donkey Kong along with the usual myth of Coleco purposely dumbing down the 2600 version of the game and then the usual Well look at how much better these homebrew versions are followed (not much different then the 2600 Pac-Man discussion here). The games developer, Gary Kitchen, weighed in and his response is just as relevant for any 2600 port of an arcade game at that time: Let me definitively put the rumors to rest as I personally programmed this game. The version you see above is not way below the capabilities of the Atari 2600 by any knowledgeable programmers definition. With all due respect, from someone who rarely pats themselves on the back, its a programming miracle that the game looks and plays as good as it does. There was absolutely no conspiracy on Colecos part to make this version look any less than the best it could be. The challenges that I had to overcome came down to schedule (90 days), ROM size, limited to 4K (4096 bytes, even though 8K ROMs were readily available), and total RAM (128 bytes). Given those realities, Im more than happy with how the game came out. Also, while I havent seen the code, keep in mind that running 2600 code in an emulator allows you to do things that cant be done in the actual hardware. While these homebrew versions certainly look impressive, and kudos to the programmers, they should not be used as an accurate gauge of what the machine can do in a mass production commercial environment without taking into account many other factors.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:03:15 +0000
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