Killer Gorilla for the BBC Micro
Not a Donkey Kong Clone, Honest
The BBC Micro was touted as an educational tool, if you believe Fred Harris (sorry kids). Most of us growing up in the 80’s will have used one at school, either doing some rudimentary programming, or playing with maths tools such as “Turtle”.
It also happened to have a great specification for replicating arcade games due to the colourful high resolution screen and multi-channel sound. Various publishers in the early days of the BBC chose to go down this route, with faithful renditions of Mr Do! (Mr Ee!), Frogger (Hopper), Space Panic (Space Monsters) and Donkey Kong which, you guessed it, was renamed Killer Gorilla.
Killer Gorilla Gameplay on the BBC Micro
For some reason, in the Program Power (later Micro Power) version, they felt the need to replace Mario with a stick man. Quite how they felt this would fool Nintendo I don’t know, as in every other way this game was a carbon copy of the arcade game. The levels were recreated perfectly, and even had the “How high can you try?” message between stages.
I won’t dwell too long on the gameplay as we all know Donkey Kong, but this game had it all, as your not-Mario jumped and hammered his way across various levels to rescue his girlfriend. The gameplay was true to the arcade original, including the need to time your jumps to perfection to avoid the many different obstacles put between you and the big monkey. The sound was also pretty spot on, as well as the inter-stage screens showing your progress up the skyscraper.
I spent a lot of time on this as a teenager when I was supposedly “doing homework” on my BBC Micro. It was streets ahead of its contemporaries in replicating arcade games, which wasn’t lost on people not able to afford the pricey BBC Micro. I was very jealous of my friend who had one if these when all I could manage was a Sinclair ZX81.
Gorilla kong is an absolute great donkeykong clone wich even put many official actual donkeykong ports to other systems into pure shame.
That’s because in this case All 4 levels, intermission screens and all enemies are presented here.
The only issues are that the hit & collisions is not perfect, it can be 1 tile off then it should be.
As a result, if you try to jump from a ledge, you will falltrough that platform instead.
Also the jumping mechanic is a bit weird because the main player moves two tiles forward rather then moving in 1 tile pattern.
As a result, if you try to jump close to the edge from one platform to the next then you might could overshoot your jump.
Also hitting enemies with a hammer can be a bit off because of the right time it is required within milliseconds.
Barrels can also roll off ladders slightly next them.
But when you take all these little issues in mind and know how to get used with, then this clone can be a great and funnexperience