Crazy Kong Part II

Crazy Kong – Part II is not a bootleg of “Donkey Kong”!! Falcon DID have a license from Nintendo, but it was NOT for the US. Crazy Kong – Part II was supposed to be for sale outside the US (South America, Europe, etc.), but the lag in production of arcade DK’s by Nintendo for a 3 month period during 1981-82 made 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.