20 Years Later, Nintendo Updates Donkey Kong on NES

The NES version of Donkey Kong was a very good Arcade port, but it made some sacrifices. This version omitted the cement factory stage, and didn't feature most of the cutscenes that were in the Arcade version. Even future releases of this game (such as Donkey Kong Classics) would not include the cement factory stage or the extra cutscenes. So why didn’t Nintendo include all 4 stages, when there’s plenty of NES titles that feature numerous levels? Let’s take a look, and we’ll also talk about an unbelievable update by Nintendo, 20+ years later.

Cartridges on the Famicom:

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
1:41 Famicom Version
4:29 NES Version
6:18 Donkey Kong: Original Edition
9:39 Conclusion
10:38 Outtro

84LENS, 霍天赐, A frame in motion, Ahmet Akpolat, Andrew Hanson, Anna Hinckel, Anvar Tushakov, Artem Podrez, Caleb Oquendo, Cottonbro, Cristian Dina, Curtis Adams, DAV Grup 1, David McBee, Distill, Drones Scot, Edward Jenner, EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA, Ekrulila, Evgenia Kirpichnikova, Free Videos, George Morina, Glen McBride, Jack Sparrow, Joseph Redfield, Kampus Production, Karolina Grabowska, Kelly, Kindel Media, Ksenia Chernaya, Mikhail Nilov, Miguel Á. Padriñán, Mike B, Monstera, Nazim Zafri, Nicole Michalou, Pavel Danilyuk, Pete Wales, pickarick, Pixabay, Polina Tankilevitch, Pressmaster, Ricky Esquivel, RODNAE Productions, Ron Lach, Sora Shimazaki, Steve B, Thirdman,Tiger Lily, Tima Miroshnichenko, Tom Fisk, Tony Schnagl, Vlada Karpovich, Yan Krukov, Yaroslav Shuraev

#donkeykong #nintendo #nes

[stupidpin]

I never even knew there WAS a fourth level in Donkey Kong. Amazing that Nintendo would go out of their way to do that, but then not bother to release it to most of the world.

[pigs]

The version inside Donkey Kong 64 contains all four levels.

I imagine the cement level was the one omitted because it's the one the least amount of players even reached in American arcades. The order went Barrel, Rivets, back to Barrel, then Springs & Lifts, then Rivets. Then only on the third and subsequent loops did you get the full run of barrels, cement, springs, and rivets. So cement was the seventh stage a player would encounter.

[iyziejane]

The NES handles 8 sprites per line, where Mario is two sprites wide. So indeed the cement pans would inevitably excede the sprite limit and cause flicker. Another aspect that affected these ports is that Nintendo contracted a 3rd party company to program Donkey Kong Arcade (under Miyamoto's direction). After the game became super popular they had to reverse engineer their own game for the ports and sequels, because they didn't own the code. The company they contracted even sued them for doing this, but I think they used the DK money to crush the lawsuit.

[Dhalin]

Not only are there cement pans in the cement factory level, but also the _conveyors_ which means more code because they had to code Mario's movement on those conveyors and that could take more filesize in the code along with the sprites of the cement pans. Also, small fun fact, the Gameboy Color Donkey Kong hand dozens and dozens of levels, one of which being the OG Cement Factory level.

[TjazzSyn]

This reminds me of when Nintendo released an update version of the original nes mario bros. With better physics/movement, I could be wrong but if I remember correctly it was also only released in Europe as well

[LuckyBacon]

Something i noticed when playing our NES version on an emulator with a memory viewer is that if you find the address for the level number, it starts at 1, and if you beat the level, the level value goes to 3. Level 2 gets skipped!
And if you do manage to load level 2, its just a glitchy mess that is playable but unbeatable.

[nickbensema]

The Atari 400/800/5200 version of Donkey Kong had the cement factory, but the stages were compressed to fit the aspect ratio like some of the other consoles. The ANTIC/GTIA chipset in those systems didn't have a lot of sprites, so it used a high-resolution screen with a somewhat sloppy software sprite system. Drawing clean sprites that occluded the playfield would have been too slow, so when barrels and fireballs and cement pies pass in front of a ladder, you can see a minor artifact... and when two barrels overlap each other, their bitmaps cancel each other out.

[rahkuaschount]

The ColecoVision version is almost arcade perfect for the time. Coleco made some artistic choices but the look and sound are beyond impressive. Try Coleco's Super Donkey Kong which features all the cutscenes that the years-later NES version lacked (plus of course the secret hidden level Nintendo made them "remove").

[FeralInferno]

Ahh the Club Nintendo days.. I still have a lot of goodies from that program.

[johnplus]

When I worked as a videogame developer, saving space for ROMs or CDs was always an issue for us.

The Donkey Kong cartridge was only 16K. They could have made a 32K cartridge, but in those days ROMs were expensive, so going with the 32K would have made the game less profitable. The only issue is whether the game will still sell with just 16K ROM, which it did.

However, there are tricks that can be done with compression. This was pretty easy on the SNES which had 192K RAM, but the mere 2K RAM on the NES might have prevented this. Still, I believe it would have been possible with some clever coding.

Videogame development is very expensive. Back then you had to have a game done by September or sooner so that you could make the Christmas market. Something like 80% of the cartridges were sold during the Christmas shopping season. So speed took priority over quality.

[robintst]

My first console was a ColecoVision and I don't really recall raising a stink over why the version of Donkey Kong I had at home didn't contain the cement factory. When you're a kid you don't really question these things too much, you're just happy to play the game at all. I'm glad you pointed out the first board on that version is messed up and not backwards, people have been misunderstanding that for years. The vertical resolution on that machine was too low to fit the full height of the stage so half up the screen one of the platforms is missing which flips Donkey to the right side of the screen, if it were backwards then Mario would start on the right side of the screen too. So yeah, it's a little messed up, heh. At any rate, great video!

[doctoroctos]

I worked in a cement factory for the last 8 years, this is the most accurate depiction of what I deal with everyday.

[NottJoeyOfficial]

God i miss Club Nintendo, it was so much better than My Nintendo could ever wish to be.

[TheDonTime]

Great video! Congratulations on 3k subs! You are one of my favorite YouTube channels and I wish you much success.

[fintux]

If my memory serves me correctly, the one of the (key?) requirements for the NES engineering team to create a console that will be able to run Donkey Kong that is very closely matching the arcade version. Which would also explain why it was the only port of the game that was so close to the original.

[besc]

Another great video. This channel covers ideas I have not seen anywhere else.

[VOAN]

Also know that Coleco had two versions of Donkey Kong, one for the original ColecoVision and one for the Coleco Adam computer. The Coleco Adam computer version had all four levels but there's a catch, there's three difficulty you had to go through to get to all four levels. There's easy setting which when you first start only had you go to 25mm and 100mm, finish those and the medium setting kicks in sending you back to 25mm then after that 75mm and eventually 100mm again. After you clear 100mm for the second time the game sent you back to 25mm and then eventually 50mm (which is the Cement Factory, level), then 75mm, and eventually 100mm. Note that each difficulty also gets harder as well. Also even though the newer NES version had the Cement Factory level in the game, it's still missing the buy in screen (the screen that says "How High Can You Go?" showing the number meter you're at), this screen was seen on most version of DK including the Game Boy version but was missing from the NES version.

[bltvd]

You are doing a great job with your channel!

[kevinlawson]

One of the best versions I've ever played is on the Atari 8-Bit Computer, not only does it have all four screens, but if you wait before starting the game you also get the intro, it's a very impressive and an amazing bit of programming.

[EvilMariobot]

Seeing as how we got the arcade perfect version in not only DK 64, but now in the Arcade Archives series on Switch; we technically didn't miss out on anything here aside from the sheer novelty of seeing the true 50m stage on NES.