4/24/2023 0 Comments Donkeykong 3“Modern” floppy drives didn’t come with switches so users wouldn’t have to worry about it. As an aside, one has to note that older floppy drives came with DIP switches on their logic boards so that their drive numbers could be set manually. Both the game and the disk drive were shipped to me within a few weeks. Shortly after purchasing the disk from Yahoo auctions, I managed to find a listing for a standalone 3” floppy drive made for the Sharp X1D computer and purchased it in the hopes that I could somehow fit it to my Turbo Z II. In conclusion, reading the disk contents might require some serious reverse-engineering if there was no existing code or documentation.ĭIP Switch settings (image from Neo Kobe Team) Not only are these disks non-standard, the file formatting is also proprietary to the X1. The reason 3” disks are such a pain to deal with is because of how quickly they became obsolete: the casings were very expensive to produce, pushing major companies to adopt the 3.5” diskettes, thus making them the de facto standard. They’re not nearly as well-documented, and the equipment necessary to read them is much harder to find. Note that these aren’t your typical 3.5” 1.44MB disks. Each of these disks is typically split into 0–39 cylinders for a total of 80 tracks, with 8 sectors per track and 512 bytes per sector. I was able to figure out that the 3” disks in question were Maxell CF-2D type disks with a 320KB capacity, similar to the X1’s 2D format 5.25” disks. ![]() Looking first at the basics, I started reading about floppy drives and how the disks were set up. Now that the game was secured, it was time to think about dumping it. As a result of the publicity, the auction ended for a whopping 44.5k yen, about 5 times more expensive than the previous listing. Screenshot of the auction: a hard-fought battleĪitsu124 had already started gathering money for the dump, and, after winning the auction, I was able to obtain a substantial sum from contributors to help pay for it. How could I have missed that? After some back and forth, we agreed that I would bid on the game. I thought it was just a plain old DK3 port. After learning of the game, I remembered the past times I’d seen photos of the cover without even looking twice. I heard about this game from a FamicomWorld forum post made by user aitsu124, who first issued the rallying cry on several sites to preserve the game and make it available to the public. It was first mentioned in the April ’84 issue of Micom Basic Magazine and a few other magazines, but the ad didn’t include any screenshots, and the logo strongly resembled the arcade game’s logo, causing readers to overlook the ad. A possible reason for the game’s rarity may be that it was poorly advertised. Prior to this endeavor, the game has been unavailable to the public on all platforms it was released for, and there has been no footage online of any levels for the Sharp X1 version past level 7. Similarly to the the other Hudson-Nintendo games, the X1 version of DKDG runs really smoothly and does so with a coherent palette, likely making it the definitive version. You still have to make sure the parachuting DK doesn’t make it to the ground, or else! ![]() The point is to clear the waves of incoming enemies, like any typical shoot ’em up. In other words, the story is totally subjective! The game’s mechanics are somewhat simpler than the original DK3 arcade game Stanley no longer has the ability to jump and is free from the responsibility of defending his plants. ![]() Apparently, according to the manual, Hudson was interested in hearing the players’ interpretations about the progression of the stages, and wanted them to send in their own stories. There are 20 unique stages, which loop around upon completion until game over. Not unlike other Nintendo spin-offs developed by Hudson in the mid 80s, DKDG was created as sort of a sequel to the Donkey Kong 3 arcade game. Donkey Kong 3: Dai Gyakushuu (ドンキーコング3 大逆襲 ) or DKDG, for short, was released in October ’84 for the NEC PC-8801, PC-6601, and Sharp X1 computers by Hudson Soft.
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