Kong

Producer: Ocean, 48K
£5.90
Author: Paul Owens

Ocean's Kong is a pleasing version too, with chunky graphics starting with Kong stomping up the screen and thumping the girders into position. The animation is good with fast and positive movement. Here, the objects tend to come tumbling down the ladders, whereas in the Blaby version the platforms are more broken up and barrels etc drop off the ends of the platforms. So it's a little unfair to make lining up the man on the ladders such a critical business. Features a hammer which can knock out a few barrels. Keyboard positions are okay. Joystick: Kempston, Generally good value but did we detect a tendency for the barrels to anticipate death? Five screens.

Producer: Ocean, 48K
£5.90
Author: Paul Owens

Ocean's Kong is a pleasing version too, with chunky graphics starting with Kong stomping up the screen and thumping the girders into position. The animation is good with fast and positive movement. Here, the objects tend to come tumbling down the ladders, whereas in the Blaby version the platforms are more broken up and barrels etc drop off the ends of the platforms. So it's a little unfair to make lining up the man on the ladders such a critical business. Features a hammer which can knock out a few barrels. Keyboard positions are okay. Joystick: Kempston. Generally good value but did we detect a tendency for the barrels to anticipate death? Five screens.

Producer: Ocean, 48K
£5.90
Author: Paul Owens

Ocean's Kong is a pleasing version too, with chunky graphics starting with Kong stomping up the screen and thumping the girders into position. The animation is good with fast and positive movement. Here, the objects tend to come tumbling down the ladders, whereas in the Blaby version the platforms are more broken up and barrels etc drop off the ends of the platforms. So it's a little unfair to make lining up the man on the ladders such a critical business. Features a hammer which can knock out a few barrels. Keyboard positions are okay. Joystick: Kempston, Generally good value but did we detect a tendency for the barrels to anticipate death? Five screens.

Ocean's Kong is a close copy to the original. It starts off well with Kong making his entry, climbing to the top, then stomping and causing the girders to slope. Now the ape starts the barrels rolling. They go sideways down the ladder, Killer Kong's seemed to favour falling through holes). There are a total of four screens, featuring fireballs and elevators as well. The graphics in this game are the best of all, and are large (terrifyingly large barrels), well animated and fast. The man jumps well, in fact he goes so high his head passes through the next floor up. The keys are well laid out, it's Kempston compatible and there's a training mode.
CP

It takes a long time to load, but it's worth the wait. A screen appears with five options, keyboard, Kempston joystick, Quickshot and Protek interfaces, demo mode and training mode. All four screens are identical to the arcade original - even the detail of the ape smashing down the girders into different angles at the start. Graphics are big, bright and smooth with just the right amount of ladders. Even the hammer on the second platform is there, to enable you to smash the barrels for bonus points. None of the other games has this feature. Tunes are played at the start and end of a screen, and at the start it says, 'How high can you get?' - just like the original. I think this Kong is the best one.
MU

"H-H-E-E-L-L-P!" screams the unfortunate damsel in distress. But even in the clutches of the tallest, darkest stranger in the world of video-gaming she needn't worry - as our hero, Mario the carpenter, braves the barrels, scales the girders and pursues the great ape to the final conflict. In case you haven't guessed yet, this is the basic plot of the classic arcade platform game, Donkey Kong.

Ocean's Kong for the 48K Spectrum is generally considered the best version of the theme around for the computer. This may well be true, but it only goes to show the lack of a really good Spectrum implementation on the software shelves.

The game does boast almost all the features of the original and faithfully follows the four screens, but this is where any similarity ends. Kong is both uninventive and bug-ridden. It's a pity really, as nowadays Ocean is producing some of the best games for the Spectrum on the market.

Anyway, back to the main format. The inlay gives an excellent account of the game and its controls. Kong loads reliably with a starting screen of Ocean's motif (how did they get those three different shades of blue?). When the program has loaded, a nice menu of control options is presented Kong accepts a Kempston or Protek joystick, or uses the efficient layout of keys characteristic to Ocean - A, S, X, N and M. While these are simple enough to master, playing the game is not. The action is very tongue-in-cheek and any challenge is not due to fiendish design but to bad graphics and playability.

Your animated Mario charges ungainly across the screen and performs the most unrealistic jump possible - making the hurdling of barrels and other nasties difficult to get used to. Moreover, the enemies are so eager to hospitalise the hopeless hero that a man is lost even when some fireball or other was obvious 'millions of miles away'; and all too frequently the program kills you off most inaccurately on the elevator screen.

Discovering the many bugs is often more fun than actually playing the game! While the action becomes repetitive and downright boring, the bugs never cease to amaze. For a start, the bonus feature has gone really right off the rails; not only do you score less than half what the counter reads, but if you allow your bonus to depreciate to zero, you are awarded over 60,000 points for finishing the screen!

Experts and even novices at the arcade version will quickly lose interest with Kong because if you perform the same motions each time, all four screens are almost identical each time - even the paths of the fireballs.

Still it's not bad (well, almost not all!) and if you like platform games, the demo mode, hall of fame, the training mode, and the hidden conveyor belts, and you can tolerate Mario climbing were there isn't a ladder, crashing through holes that aren't there and being crushed by barrels that didn't touch him - then Kong is the game for you!

Kong is not worth the considerable price being charged (unless you're looking for an alternative to sleeping pills) and Ocean should slay with their better class games like Transversion and Mr Wimpy and give us games players less of this monkey business.