Hey John I know you must be busy but even a few extra short little videos would go a long way to making us feel like your not almost retired from Youtubing. It kind of feels like the end of days for John's Arcade :(
Hey John, great find. I am very surprised that someone actually owned one previously as it was a European game. And wasn't made for the US. I happen to also own a 'Crazy Kong' machine at home myself. I am currently 14 years old and since then, I have dedicated my life on Crazy Kong and all arcade games. I love it. I also started a little arcade machine collection of my own. Ever since my dad introduced me to Crazy Kong when I was 3, I was hooked. I would use all my spare change. After a week or so, the machine would be full. Ever since playing Crazy Kong, I have learned a lot of things. In Crazy Kong, Mario can wait underneath a ladder and a barrel won't hit him. Unlike Donkey Kong. On the forth level (Second level on Donkey Kong), Mario can walk through Donkey Kong. Those are just a few tricks/tips I know. I know many more, but that's for you guys to figure out. John, I hope you enjoy. It is a great game. Please look after it and keep it. You won't find that many. Quick question, do you happen to know a game called Pengo?? That's one of the games I own in my collection. I believe it was licensed by Sega. I you find one, can you add it to your collection?? Also, do you know anyone who has a Mole Hunter machine?? It is a extremely rare Data East game released in 1980. Very few machines were made. My dad played a Mole hunter machine in the local shop when he was young?? If you know anyone who has it, can you tell them to dump the rom so I can play it on Mame. Thank you, and once again, enjoy.
Omg John This was the version in my childhood arcade and in all the local arcades I new of in and around my home town in New Zealand. I found it weird when I seen donkey Kong on NES and believed it was inferior to crazy kong it's so good to see it again . Thank you for the video.
I absolutely love Crazy Kong. The Pizza place in the small mall on Long Island had one in one of those generic woodgrain bootleg cabinets that had a stencil type marquee. The arcade in that same mall had the real-deal but I always gravitated to CC instead. The awful sounds, the f'd up levels, and glitchy graphics were way too fun! I gotta say...I am jealous of that cab and would have traded a Pac Caberet in a second for one too! Nice find. I also remember a version where the levels were green instead of orange.
You have inspired me to not only go out and start collecting the games I love but to also start posting my projects on youtube. Hope you are doing well. Always exciting to see what you are working on and your collection.
Nice find! My first arcade Donkey Kong experience was this version when I lived in Germany. A German restaurant near my school had an actual Nintendo version, but I was already used to playing this one.
Our local convenience store had Crazy Kong when I was a kid. It was the first "Donkey Kong" I ever played and we played the hell out of it. Great fun. Way more interesting than Pac Man. The one I remember showed Kong in a cage, I think it was Crazy Kong 2. That might be what your falcon board has. It had better sounds and colors than the version you have here. There was no top edge glitch and the extra lives were in color at the very top. On the Pie Factory level, if you shake left and right with the hammer just right, he will drop it and you can pick it up later. A bunch of us watched an older teen get to the kill screen once. We didn't know it was called a "kill screen" back then. I remember thinking it was kind of a lame rip off thing to do. To crash the game on a good player. It would be years before I seen a real Donkey Kong machine and I thought DK looked boring compared to CK. I didn't realize the Pie Factory came later on in the real DK. I was like "this sucks, it doesn't even have the pie level!"
I remember playing this a few times at a grocery store back in the day. The one I played was a Falcon...”Crazy Kong Part II”. I liked it because I could get farther than I could on Donkey Kong. Oh, and I love the sound of the springs and the sound of his jump... :)
Although commonly believed to be a bootleg version, the game was officially licensed for operation in Japan when Nintendo couldn't keep up with demand at home (even though Donkey Kong was still released in Japan), and is based on different hardware. The game retains all of the game play elements of Donkey Kong, but has all of the graphics redrawn and re-colorized. Crazy Kong is also known as Congorilla, Crazy Kong Part II, Donkey King, and Monkey Donkey. There are two versions of the original: Crazy Kong and Crazy Kong Part II. The differences between them are in minor cinematic artifacts and bugs, color palette choices and minor game play differences. Crazy Kong Part I shows no copyright or company name on the title screen. Crazy Kong (parts I and II) runs on modified Crazy Climber hardware. In addition there are other versions of the game that run on Scramble, Jeutel, Orca, and Alca hardware. The official versions of game came in two different stand up cabinets that featured a large and angry, rather than comic, ape embedded in the artwork. The cabinets were created by Zaccaria. Nintendo allowed these versions to be created because they could NO LONGER KEEP UP DEMAND with their hardware etc. Crazy Kong (クレイジーコング) is a clone of Nintendo's Donkey Kong published by Falcon in 1981. Despite the fact it's a clone and its notorious presentation, it is actually an official licensed clone intended for Japan only. However, it has been distributed elsewhere in other parts of the world without a license from Nintendo.
In the meantime you could just rewatch the 2017 year end review. It’s over four and a half hours long in 2 parts! And he definitely had more machines in the basement then than he has now ...
Don't expect much from this channel anymore, John is to busy doing other things these days. There might be a video here and there, but don't hold your breath !
It's weird. Sounds like jumpman (or this "evil version" of jumpman) is doing karate on the barrels when he jumps and is wearing suction cup sandals on the metal beams.
A second-hand store about half an hour from my house had a Congorilla dedicated cabinet a few years ago. I was looking for a cabinet to gut and make a MAME cabinet out of, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it because the thing looked pristine, and they only wanted $200 for it.
Tiny correction Falcon (Idk about Orca's or Zaccaria's licensed versions) actually started selling the Crazy Kong cabinets in the US, therefore they violated their licensing collaboration with Nintendo and it was quote on quote "turned" into a bootleg, I actually have a Crazy Kong at my grandparents (no cabinet art, but the marquee is black with red letters and white insides, Mario's jumping noise is also coincidentally from Crazy Climber! Elevators from the 75m area also go very slow and at times there aren't any elevators compared to the official game
Ah this one was here in Indonesia! They were everywhere! I remember mimicking its die song whenever I was pretending to fell down from the chair! I was eight FYI.
Hey John great find. Early in the video you mention that Nintendo provided the assets to the manufacturers but not the code. I don't believe this is correct. I've done a side-by-side disassembly of DK and CK and match the binaries match precisely in most places. The differences generally can be chalked up first to some of the little anomalies we see in CK, but more to the hardware differences that required code changes to interface and control. The Crazy Climber architecture upon which CK is built is wildly incompatible with DK. It's a testament to Falcon (or whoever developed the conversion) that they were able to match the look as well as they did. You'll see, for instance, in CK Pauline doesn't shuffle her feet when crying for help. This is basically due to a limitation with the number of hardware sprites the game designers weren't clever enough to overcome--she's actually drawn in as a background character. IIRC the way the color ram is laid out explains why she "floats" above the platform. Sorry if I bored anyone, but I've been fascinated by this game since I first saw it at a donut shop in Long Beach, California some 35 years ago.
Don’t change the marquee brackets! As crappy as those wood grain brackets are they are correct and original! I’ve had other copies of their cabs and many used the flimsy wood grain marquee brackets
FindingTheSunRecords not if you're trying to conserve space and don't want to have a gigantic arcade machine in your room and you don't want to support businesses that will sell custom mame cabs for 400+ dollars not including shipping (100 dollars there). Same principle for the tools needed to make a custom arcade machine (400-600) people just see the one up and see it comes with a pcb and are like "nope nope nuhu I refuse to believe that a retro pi or pc can be put into there to have the ultimate emulator nope closing my ears not listening" did I mention these machines at walmart are 200 right now
@@tjyoyo3 I'd personally never buy one for a simple reason. My local Walmart had 3 of them and each of the boxes were so damaged, they looked like a product that was on the shelf for years in clearance than a new product, you could see the el cheapo product falling apart. If you watch online you can often find real cabs, mostly empty, for free, in fact, I've gotten 9 of them myself. I'm also not a purest i'll be more than happy to mame and lcd them. Space argument is fair if you want your house to be filled with these eyesore knockoffs. I think too often people get obsessed with a shiny toy but don't think about what are the advantages and disadvantages of a certain product. At the end of the day, it all comes down to personal preference if you are happy with spending 300 bucks on something that will break down in a year and can't be repaired great. But seriously Arcade1Up should be ashamed with their crap product.
My sf2 arcade1up came in great shape and plays well. The #1 issue w the machine is fhe dumb ass decision to go w only a right speaker instead of spending the extra $5 for stereo sound. While it may not have the best joystick and buttons all mine function and game plays fine. The design of the controller and ball top should be better. It screws on without using a screwdriver to keep it tight so the ball works itself loose. I ended up going with a bat top and teflon tape that is keeping the sticks tight.
cwgraham dude don't blame the company for shipping what even is that they just came out. Also really you're going to ignore that I said you can put mame in that in order to use the argument yeah you'll have a ton of eyesore knockoffs. You use the analogy shiny toy yet people go and rent uhauls ("well I have a truck." Well I don't so there's another argument for you) for a whole day to pickup arcade machines for "a dirty toy" is that what you consider real arcade machines vs those shiny 1uparcade. What am I even arguing for at this point you literally are trying to make the point "I wouldn't buy one because I have 9 real ones already" dude you can make your own control panels if you want to play other games you don't need 23 of these machines just get one. Again space. You have the space. Not everyone does.
It's people like you who are going to put false info into people's heads and end up sinking the company that is a small startup just saying. So much for capitalism just hobbyists with vendettas. They sell really nice cabinets, I can give two shits about the controls I have sanwas already that I would put in them as soon as I get them. Like that's why boogie2988 said "it's not the end of the world that these are broken because you can upgrade the joysticks anyway to real fighter sticks or original Atari potentiometers." You are getting a nice size, all in one arcade machine that can fit in any conventional car for 200 dollars
I've noticed the change in cars once again; compared to the first-gen Explorer you first had, the new Explorer is kind of a pain to load tall items (like arcade cabinets, for example) in the back of because the rear hatch area swoops way down, so you grabbed a last-gen Grand Cherokee. Good choice, they use their interior space well.
I grew up with this game for years. Every summer, this was one of 2-4 games at the beach club my best friend owned. I wish I was old enough to buy it when they sold it. ARGH
Donkey Kong's Sound is all analog produced by Transitors and Resistors. Nintendo's composer Hirokazu Hip Tanaka setup the sound on the game. He said it was a lot of cut and dry soldiering. Crazy Kong's are produced by a Digital Sound Chip. I'm guessing an AY or a Zilog. Don't know who worked on the Sound Chip.
I finnised the video you read about the trick. Thank you for all the information. Amazing video. hope youer well. I saw the video where you mentioned passing out. God Bless.
I live in New Zealand. Growing up in the 80's I never saw Donkey Kong, only Crazy Kong! I think NZ had a lot of bootleg games. Thanks for the great review!
This channel is awesome. I can't stop watching it. I think I'm at the point where I would like to get a cabinet. Are there any good video on getting started in buying (what to look for) and restoring a cabinet? What's the cheapest most common cabinet out there?
I'm digging this video because I picked up a Congorilla cabinet with a Crazy Kong board recently. Love your videos pal, they've helped me a ton! Edit: Also Crazy Kong was THE Donkey Kong for Europe. Nintendo hired Falcon to make Crazy Kong since they couldn't meet the demand for Donkey Kong in the EU. The EU arcades had Crazy Kongs and they thought Donkey Kong was the knockoff!
The funny thing, John is, as you call this game "a weird version of Donkey Kong", that when I saw the first time Donkey Kong after having played Crazy Kong living in Europe, I thought that YOURS was "a weird version of Crazy Kong"! haha! BTW I think that the original board was a Falcon board. I still do remember the Name "Falcon" popping up on the screen back in time (1981) when playing the original Crazy Kong as a child.
Hey John, great to meet you. Glad my Crazy Kong went to a good home! I'm 99% sure those ugly woodgrain marquee brackets are actually original! By the way, I did not drill the holes in the control panel, I would never do that. The guy I got it from had a joystick in it with different holes he drilled. The one I put in uses the original holes. Great to see the video! Best of luck with it and enjoy. -Carl
I'm super psyched for you, I know you've mentioned wanting a Crazy Kong a few times, It sure is a funky take on the classic game. Another great video *and* I got an email read in a video for the second time so thanks for that too! Keep up the awesome stuff!
9:19 I understand that "grey" importing of boards would have been pretty common in Europe, so there'd have been all kinds of clones of anything popular. But Crazy Kong is one of those names you'd see turn up on a lot of "unofficial" kong ports for home computers. 47:27 Would be interesting to compare the code. The CPU is the same between both boards, so should be natively compatible with the original code, but likely needed hacks to account for differences in other hardware which is probably the source of most of the glitches. The DK sound hardware was pretty weird. IIRC MAME used recorded samples for years because it didn't fully emulate the unique and original sound hardware, so the subsitution for sounds that the crazy climber board could already generate makes sense.
This is the one you can jump off the right side of the first level, disappear out of the bottom of the screen and move to the next level. This version of DK was MUCH more popular in Australia, probably because it was cheaper to produce and distribute.
