This is maybe a bit of a strange topic, but...
Years ago, people would occasionally ask me if it would be possible to get Crazy Kong to run on Donkey Kong hardware. At the time I would answer, no, not really. Maybe.. sort of, but at best it would be something more like regular Donkey Kong, but with the game rules from Crazy Kong applied to it - same numbers of barrels, fireballs, elevators, etc... but using Donkey Kong graphics and sounds.
Things have changed now. Recently, I created the multi-Crazy Kong kit with Crazy Kong Remix.. This *is* for Crazy Kong boards, but in order to create this kit, I went all out and reverse engineered/disassembled/decompiled Crazy Kong game code so now I have working Crazy Kong source code which would make it possible to recompile/assemble the game on different hardware.
Now, Donkey Kong hardware and Crazy Kong hardware are two different things, with different memory maps and different hardware features, but having source code opens the door to modify the code to run on alternate hardware. So, much how CK was DK but heavily modified to run on Crazy Climber hardware instead of Donkey Kong hardware. I could, in theory anyway, modify CK to port it back to DK hardware.
I'm not saying I'm actually doing this, but the ideas is now kinda percolating in my head.
There are problems, and a lot of questions that would need to be answered, though.
CK is full of bugs and weird graphical issues and other oddities. *IF* I were to tackle a project like this... how important is it to keep all the weird glitches? Do we really want to retain the ugly "Kong" graphics like the way he appears on the Pies stage? Exactly, exactly the same, right down to the missing pixels in his head?? The weird way the hat, purse, umbrella and hammers don't actually appear in the locations that they are actually in? (you know what I mean.. hat appears "here" on the screen, but you have to go "there" to actually pick it up.) Or how Jumpman floats a pixel above and to the side of his actual location?
We could duplicate most of that weirdness.. but the question is, would we really want to? It's all jank.
We can't actually duplicate it all exactly, by the way. In general DK hardware is more capable than CK hardware, but in a few circumstances, CK hardware does some things that DK hardware can't. Like color. DK's background graphics have more limitations with how color is applied so I couldn't actually reproduce the weird glitches like the colors of the background glitching/changing when you pick up a prize.
Also sound is totally different. There's no way DK hardware could reproduce CK's sound, unless I added a sound chip to the kit. That's possible, but it's going to be a custom kit with a lot of time and effort going into developing it. So, would it be worth all that effort? Or just leave it be as an interesting idea but not worth pursuing.
Anyway, that's all I guess! I'm just interested in hearing some opinions about these things.
Thanks!
