"New" Game - ZONKEY KONG! by DnD
Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2021 7:58 pm
ZONKEY KONG!
Nearly 40 years ago, two community college arcade addicts in a basement in East Lansing Michigan (USA) decided they wanted to program their first game on the only computer they could afford - The Timex Sinclair 1000. The reasons for picking this game to replicate is lost to the haze of time as neither were that fond of it, but both agreed that this was going to be a great learning exercise to prepare them for future glory! Due to the limited hardware, learning Assembly was of course the only option. Frameworks were developed, base functions coded, and testing began. Needless to say, hand coding directly to the 1000, even with the later luxury of a Memopak Assembler, was challenging at best and introduced the duo to a fine array of curses and future drinking habits.
Then, life happened. Better computers, jobs - both in IT (thanks Clive!), moves, wives and children came along, and coding was just a fond memory of youth. Periodically, the code was dusted off and was the glue that kept the geographically separated pair in contact. Fast forward to 2020. The world takes a break. Now older, fatter and little wiser, the kids grown and life's big events behind, it was time to finish the job! Beyond all odds, a bit of code and documentation survived, coupled with fresh enthusiasm helped drive it to completion.
And here it is! Zonkey Kong. Yes, it’s been done before, better, and more efficiently, but we can assure you nobody has taken as much time between initial code and release! We don't think it's a beta, but you might! We coded it how we wanted to play it, so its not exactly like the original- download and play away. Feedback is appreciated, but no guarantees!
Now, with this "early" success, it's on to our newly imported Speccys, and this fall on the Spectrum Next! While our wives were not at all impressed, they did say they hope to live long enough to see the next one!
Couple new features in the latest update below:
- Timing never the same twice - game speeds up every round; Lets see your high score; it gets hard quickly.
- The princess will "robo-nag" you if you are too slow
- "Zonkey" has slightly different moves on each level
- Supports custom control key selection (all the basic ones should work now) and Zxpand Joystick
DnD
"Computergui" (Don) & "Spinnetti" (Dave)
Nearly 40 years ago, two community college arcade addicts in a basement in East Lansing Michigan (USA) decided they wanted to program their first game on the only computer they could afford - The Timex Sinclair 1000. The reasons for picking this game to replicate is lost to the haze of time as neither were that fond of it, but both agreed that this was going to be a great learning exercise to prepare them for future glory! Due to the limited hardware, learning Assembly was of course the only option. Frameworks were developed, base functions coded, and testing began. Needless to say, hand coding directly to the 1000, even with the later luxury of a Memopak Assembler, was challenging at best and introduced the duo to a fine array of curses and future drinking habits.
Then, life happened. Better computers, jobs - both in IT (thanks Clive!), moves, wives and children came along, and coding was just a fond memory of youth. Periodically, the code was dusted off and was the glue that kept the geographically separated pair in contact. Fast forward to 2020. The world takes a break. Now older, fatter and little wiser, the kids grown and life's big events behind, it was time to finish the job! Beyond all odds, a bit of code and documentation survived, coupled with fresh enthusiasm helped drive it to completion.
And here it is! Zonkey Kong. Yes, it’s been done before, better, and more efficiently, but we can assure you nobody has taken as much time between initial code and release! We don't think it's a beta, but you might! We coded it how we wanted to play it, so its not exactly like the original- download and play away. Feedback is appreciated, but no guarantees!
Now, with this "early" success, it's on to our newly imported Speccys, and this fall on the Spectrum Next! While our wives were not at all impressed, they did say they hope to live long enough to see the next one!
Couple new features in the latest update below:
- Timing never the same twice - game speeds up every round; Lets see your high score; it gets hard quickly.
- The princess will "robo-nag" you if you are too slow
- "Zonkey" has slightly different moves on each level
- Supports custom control key selection (all the basic ones should work now) and Zxpand Joystick
DnD
"Computergui" (Don) & "Spinnetti" (Dave)
