Donkey Kong & Me

Everyone knows who Donkey Kong is, although anyone who thought the arcade classic was restricted to Nintendo’s machines clearly don’t know Donkey Kong that well. And who could blame you really, since DK’s port to the Atari happened before the NES and fell foul of the decline of Atari.

Donkey Kong & Me is a brief chronicle of one man’s rise from hobby games coder to fully fledged Atari games programmer in the early 80′s. What’s truly remarkable about the story is the trail blazing, fly by the seat of your pants experience Landon Dyer must have had along the way.

Not knowing how to make the Atari port Dyer played the arcade version to death and then drew up a 25-30 page design document outlining the proposed development over five months and even produced (in his words) “pseudo code” for the game.

To find out the full story, Landon Dyer’s Donkey Kong & me can be found at his site Dadhacker

Source Slashdot