The history of Sega's early monkey classic. What's the connection with donkey Kong? Find out inside. Please visit my Patreon at / pdbowl Follow me on Twitter at / pdqc1971 Follow me on Facebook at Patmanqc-His...
Congo Bongo had some of the best graphics of the time, and they still hold up well today, for sure a better looking game than Donkey Kong. Sadly, while the game had similar mechanics to DK(running and jumping), the isometric view was it's downfall. DK was easy to understand and play, but very hard to master, but even with the most basic of skills, you could see all 4 boards with some effort. CB was very hard to just clear the first stage, let alone see all 4 stages. I get why they went that route, as to not to closely mimic DK, but Zaxxon is one of the few isometric games that got it right, and had good success to boot. Thanks Again Patman another great video.
I remember being amazed by its graphics. However, showing off those graphics led to needlessly complicated and overly chaotic designs. There are more object *types* per stage than are justified by gameplay;; I'd guess the priority was instead to show off a variety of colorful graphics. The level designs themselves are extremely basic; the first level feels pointlessly wandering, but the other three are pretty much "go in a straight line from the bottom left to the top right (while ignoring the rest of the screen). The first stage has barrels coming down the screen at you, a *single* snake that you can safely walk past, and two types of monkeys. The second stage has scorpions you can pretty much walk past, snakes that are an actual obstacle, and a hippo that you use as a platform. The third stage has open pits (that you can safely duck into), closed pits, water pits, moles that open and close pits, and rhinos that ignore all terrain while freely charging at you in eight directions. The fourth stage is a simultaneously more convoluted and simplified Frogger knock-off with slow lily pads, faster hippos, fish, and rhinos. The whole gameplay side of the game just isn't particularly well designed.
Felt the same way until I played it a lot and appreciated how brilliant each stage is. They get more and more challenging but never impossible. It's worthy of being apart of the Golden age of gaming
I've never played this game. Growing up though, if someone owned a Colecovision, they were the coolest kid around. I had the 2600, one of my friends had the Intellivision, and you're right about the controllers, I couldn't stand them, so I never went over there too often lol. Then, one of my other had gotten the Colecovision when it first came out. I was gobsmacked and mesmerized! It was the best home system I'd ever seen! Needless to say, I spent A LOT of time over at his house over the summer. It's so funny looking at it now compared to modern systems. But, at the time, it was the best system I'd ever seen. I love the nostalgia. Being taken back to that time with no responsibilities, no bills and just worrying about what great new system, or game was coming out.
A family friend had the cartridge version on the C64 and it is the only C64 version I'd seen. So thanks for sharing the other C64 version in the video Patrick.
10:58 Oh man. I remember this commercial. Damn... I'm old now. I love how it says "Based on the Commodore 64 graphics". The actual graphics were a LOT more primitive. And there were only two levels to complete. The adventurer guy was pretty much a block shape with a hat on it. It was a fun game, but it didn't look like that animation. Well, I suppose that this is better than the way mobile games are advertised, where they show all this footage, and supposed game-play, and they aren't even remotely the games that they're advertising.
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries Especially Parker Bros. I recall looking at game magazines and they would have full-page ads showing screenshots from the various home consoles. And none of them looked like what you purchased. Like ordering a Big Mac and what you receive looks nothing like the pic on the menu board.
@@kbramlett6877 That's a great analogy with the big Mac and box art videogames. A lot of times companies would also put the best version on the box and then just put a sticker on the front for whichever version was inside. The graphics on the back would be for the Amiga or some other more powerful machine but inside would be the Commodore 64 or Amstrad version.
Yet again a great video and I was surprised it was converted to Vic-20! But at least it allowed people to play the arcade game at home.... if you close one eye and maybe stand 6 feet back :) - Thank you for sharing this! Looking forward to many more.
Wow! I had just commented recently on your “Yie Ar Kung Fu” video regarding how I had completely forgotten about that game and now I see this game which is another forgotten game. This channel is really bringing back tucked away memories for me. I’m glad that I’ve subscribed. Thanks for this.
Patman, I remember asking you about this game a long time ago. Now, I get to thank you for covering it. I used to have this for my Intellivision II and played it all the time I even recall a glitch on the first stage that allows you to climb up the wall from the lower level right to the top. Thanks again.
I had the Coleco Vision version of this back in the day, but I still put a lot of quarters into this in the arcade (never got to see the ending though).
Another classic rare arcade game, at least here in the UK. One of my favourite games. I only found it once, as usual in the seaside resort of Weymouth, where they had most of the newest arcade games, including a lot of lesser known ones like this and my all time fave, Food Fight.
That funny TV commercial at 10:58 used a cartoon look of the game instead of the actual home version graphics. Congo Bongo is very challenging, but I completed one round of all the levels of the arcade version. Thanks for showing the various versions PatmanQC!
I don't know if you're old enough to remember but this was common practice back in the day. Companies would usually create one box for all different versions and use the best one as an example and and put stickers on the front of the box indicating which one is inside. It was extremely rampant over in Europe on the home computer side with the Amstrad and 64
@PatmanQC, Thanks for the details! Yes, I grew up with the Colecovision in the early 80s and remember the box screenshots were sometimes of the Arcade version, for computer games too. Thanks! Keep up the awesome videos, Patman!
Love your videos, Patman! I would be very interested in watching something about devices for or innovations in gaming accessibility should you ever decide to delve into the topic.
Thank you very much. People of asked about that for quite some time and I've actually come up with a couple of things that I am hoping will get the produced.
Hey! When I was younger I landed a sweet gig as a housesitter for Iwasaki. Specifically his ocean front 3 storey mansion. Rent was $220 a week and I could do anything I wanted in that place.
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries Yeah it was a blast. Had a pool on the middle floor deck and we would dive out of our 3rd storey bedroom balconies into it to wake up, then dry off for breakfast. Then down the staircase with rockgarden and waterfall feature to the floating garage. It was a PARTY house, but we weren't allowed into one room or one cupboard in the garage.
The saddest thing is when you compare the SG-1000, MSX (first ver.), and the Colecovision for the most part they have the same inside (MSX just has more RAM). However whoever programed the Colecovision version knew what the hell they were doing which should have made the other programers at SEGA feel ashamed of themselves for the bad SG-1000 & MSX versions (even the TI99 for it used the same GPU too.)
Playing this on the Vic20 was my first experience with this game and I thought it was cool but hard. I didn't even know it was an arcade game at the time. I was blown away when I finally came across a congo bongo cabinet.
Seriously nice looking visuals for a 1983 arcade game. Possibly one of the best looking raster based video games ever released by that point. Still holds up today.
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I would say this has more natural looking colours, Zaxxon has some odd colour choices. Never understood why Rhino's are blue in this game however!
What a walk down memory lane! I was 12 when this game came out in the arcade and I owned both versions for my c64. I think I’ll fire them up tonight with my young son. Thanks for this video!
Your friend was lucky to have that Congo Bongo cart for the Intv. It's quite rare. They're even more lucky if they still have it. I remember when I first came across CB with surprising clarity; it was at the County Fair in the third tent arcade, the one on the midway. I thought it looked amazing. A platformer in "3D". Unfortunately it was also quite difficult hence it only got a couple of quarters out of me.
Great video! The history of the game was definitely interesting. A really fun game, a bit difficult but not impossible so it was not hard to keep dropping quarters.
Completely forgot about this game. Played it at a friend's on his TI/99. I was really bad at this game but I loved to watch people play it in the arcade.
Great video. I loved the game back in the day and played the cart version on the C64 a ton. I thought even that version was great. Was completely blown away when the C64 disk version came out and played that. I thought the graphics were amazing at the time.
thanks for including the TI version. its the system i had, and we loved it. its ports were usually not good (except for star trek), but its home brew titles like tunnels of doom, A-Maze-ing, and hunt the wumpus, and clones like munch-man, parsec, and ti invaders were fantastic. have you ever done a video on the system? i would love it!
I have not done an entire video on the Texas instruments. In between my Commodore Vic 20 and Commodore 64 my dad bought me a TI which I think was from a friend of his as I don't really recall where I got it or even how. I do know I had a few games for it and liked it for what it was
I seriously wonder what Einstein thought the Intellivision controller was a good idea. I used to take one of those suction-cup darts you fired out of toy guns and stick it to the disk to create a makeshift joystick.
they had no idea that people would be so stupid that they wouldn't know how to use it properly...it worked great for me and it was awesome with Burger Time
@@anthonysalvaro2979 I was so much better using the intellevision disc on Burgertime than I am on the arcade version. I even have the arcade1up version at home and it’s harder as well.
I have a request. Would you consider doing a "History of Buck Rogers"? I loved all of the games. Only recently have I played the arcade version using Mame, but I grew up playing the Coleco Adam version, the Colecovision version and the Atari 2600 version. I liked the Coleco Adam version the best because it had extra levels that the Colecovision version didn't have and the last level even had music which was haunting and a little cool, especially for 9 year old me. They had the Coleco Adam version at the daycare center I went to when I was a kid and we used to write down our scores and keep a manual Hall of Fame so we would know who had the highest score and how many times people had flipped the game and gotten it to restart.
I so rarely would ever see Congo Bongo at the arcade, but played the hell out of the home versions. I’m most familiar with the Commodore version. I always laughed at the sight of Congo suffering, dying sitting in front of the campfire; I wondered why sit so close to it if the heat is so unbearable! Now I see the arcade version, I know he was supposed to be asleep.
I definitely had the better version. I remember watching Starcade and yelling at the people playing Congo Bongo. It was the easiest game to play because u got points just for walking. Still the contestants would screw it up!
This arcade game has always interested me since I played many times as a child. I was already an obsessed Donkey Kong fan. Now we got something similar with Zaxxon graphics. I believe the best looking port was the 2nd version on the C64. I Had the TI994a version which looks very identical to the Colecovision port. This game was so impressive visually none of the ports came close to looking like the arcade. It hasn't aged as well as Donkey Kong and many others. Much due to the difficult controls. But I still enjoy playing it.
I was at Funspot the other day and I played Congo Bongo for the first time. I thought it was a decent game. I also played Crazy Kong, which is a Donkey Kong clone with a corrupted color pallet and strange sound effects.
Regarding Crazy Kong, there is quite a history regarding that game. Here is what I pulled from my MAME description. Crazy Kong is not a bootleg of "Donkey Kong"!! Falcon DID have a license from Nintendo, but it was NOT for the U.S. Crazy Kong was supposed to be for sale outside the U.S. (South America, Europe, etc.), but the lag in production of arcade DK's by Nintendo for a 3-month period during 1981-82 made a demand for any DK type game go through the roof. At this time, Nintendo of America was moving from NY-NJ to Redmond WA and there was a 4-month backlog on orders. This opened the door for the illegal Crazy Kongs to fill the demand. Approximately 20, 000 Crazy Kong were distributed illegally in the U.S. The main difference between Crazy Kong and "Donkey Kong" is the sound, and color capabilities. Crazy Kong ran on hardware that had the same processor as "Donkey Kong", but its video capabilities were lacking, and it had a totally different sound chip. Basically what all this means is that Crazy Kong had terrible sound and some definite strangeness in the color area. The background music is missing entirely, and most of the sound effects have been changed. For example, in Crazy Kong, Mario makes a 'Hiya!' sound when he jumps, instead of the 'Boing!' that he makes in "Donkey Kong". The graphics use slightly different colors, which change from level to level. The Kong animations are also different, and often do not match up with the in-game action. There are also mild changes in gameplay. Kong doesn't toss out nearly as many barrels, and there are other mild changes such as gaps in platforms that were not in the original, and the manner in which the elevators work has changed as well. There were lots of different Crazy Kong cabinets. The most common one was similar in design to the "Donkey Kong" cabinet, but the artwork was more realistic, and the monitor bezel had a circular clear area, as opposed to the rectangle that most games had. Crazy Kong could also be found in cocktail format. These were usually conversions and were only decorated with an instruction card. Bootlegs of this game are known as "Monkey Donkey" and "BiG KONG". Some other bootlegs under the same name were made by Jeutel (France), Alca, and Orca. A special bootleg was also made on the "Scramble" hardware.
I also had the 2600 version of this game in the early 80s, and had no idea it was an arcade conversion until 15+ years later. It was a decent game for the 2600 but was pretty easy and got boring pretty quickly, but still one of the better games I had for the system. After seeing the latter C64 version though I wish I had that version as it looks way better than the 2600 version. I always thought the 'rock slide' effect looked like a stack of dimes crashing to the ground on the 2600. I did actually own a Zaxxon arcade about 10 years ago and immediately recognized the arcade cabinet but I've still never seen a Congo Bongo arcade in the wild. I've been around a lot of arcades so it makes me wonder how many cabs were made, even more so since it was during the crash era.
downUnder on the SG-1000 this was the oft-bundled title which is why we chose the TI 99 4/A. Whilst not as playable as say Moon Patrol, Fathom or Kippy's Nightmare this game DID have its place at the time until later on when Slymoids came along. Alpiner really didnt get played much after that day.
I've always been disappointed that the ColecoVision version was missing one of the levels. I really like this game at the arcade. It was pretty hard until I figured out how do the isometric movements related to its place on the screen.
Considering most other versions only had two levels, the Coleco was top-notch back in the day. Similar to the conversions of donkey Kong with three of the four levels
We we got our Commodore 64 Christmas of 1983, it came with a Donkey Kong cartridge. I played hundreds of hours of that game lol. I still have that cartridge and played it the other day.
I only had 2 or 3 cartridge games for the C64, and this was one of them. I was a sucker for any game with an isometric point of view, even though that sometimes made gameplay difficult. But I was pretty disappointed with how the home version compared to the arcade version; the arcade graphics were so good for their time!
@@PatmanQC-Arcade-Documentaries I was 5 so most of the games I had were math and reading games. I barely remember it but for some reason Congo Bongo is one I do have memories of.
Thanks for this. In the vic 20 version, you look like a charred corpse. Although, if someone coded up a game today about a charred corpse pursuing a gorilla, I'd be curious.
I had the C64 cartridge version. As I recall, there was a weird bug... The game stayed at a more-or-less constant (relatively slow) speed throughout the game, until you died for the first time. Then, if you had played through the two stages multiple times, it could suddenly increase markedly, sometimes all but to the point of unplayability.
As far as ambition & graphics it was impressive but I found it a difficult play due to needing to have such precise depth perception due to the isometric view.. It does make a great unlock able tho on that Genesis collection we all have..
I completely missed this one- never knew it existed! I did read about the lawsuit against Nintendo for the Donkey Kong code, which was basically pirated by Nintendo. Then there was the lawsuit from Universal's King Kong against Nintendo's Donkey Kong (in which Nintendo won). Donkey Kong has a rather turbulent history, come to think of it.
Funny u should mention Nintendo. In the 90s Donkey Kong Country cgi cartoon, the island he lives on is Kongo Bongo Island. I hav no idea if this was intentional
I had a hand me down Atari 2600, and this was one of the games I inherited. I could never master the thing. Only a couple times did I even get to the second screen, and I never figured out how you're supposed to play that level.
