Dinky Kong

Published 2023-06-12

Welcome to the Pico-verse - a pixelated land of tiny horizons and even tinier characters. In the Little Apple, a bustling town on the seaside, something terrible has happened! An oversized simian sprite has escaped and taken a citizen in its cruel clutches! Making its way through town, it has climbed up the construction site of the town’s tallest building. But one brave soul stands forth, determined to rescue their fellow citizen from the dreaded… Dinky Kong!

Select your hero - choose from Minio or Smalline.
Press ⭕️ to start.
Move with ⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️
Jump with ⭕️.
If you reach the top, Dinky Kong takes the Captive higher up and structure changes shape.
When certain structures are cleared, you save the Captive.

Jump over barrels and enemies for points
Get the hammer to destroy barrels and fiery enemies
Collect the pick-ups for extra points
Bonus points awarded based on time remaining
Extra life at 7000 points

A group effort, the demake began as a simple reimagining of the original done as a series of Pico-8-sized pixel drawings and quickly grew into a full-fledged game. Read all about it here in the February edition of Pico View. The creators make no claim over the original game nor it’s characters - we simply sought to use our skills to humbly follow in the footsteps of true giants. No profit is made off of this game - it is quite simply a Pico-8 hobby project. We sincerely hope you enjoy playing it and, if you like it, we highly encourage you to purchase the original game or one of its many official ports - there’s nothing quite like the original Donkey Kong!

Well, he’s a courageous bundle of pixels with a knack for jumping. Seize a nearby hammer and he’ll pummel flaming enemies and barrels alike. It’s kinda difficult to get 64 colored squares to look like anything much less a whole person, but we’ve managed to squeeze as much character as possible into this tiny hero. It was delightful to see him first come to life inside Pico-8 and we hope you enjoy playing him (or rescuing him)!

In researching the game, we read on an Atari modders forum about a dad who had introduced his little daughter to one of his favorite games as a kid - Donkey Kong on the Atari 2600. She loved the game but after playing it she innocently asked her dad if she could pick the Pauline character instead. She could not, and seemed dejected at discovering this. Wishing only to keep the love of playing the game in her heart, her father carefully modded the game to make her wish come true. Inspired by this, other modders followed suit, creating versions of their own. We are proud to follow in their footsteps with our own tiny version - Smalline!

Well, if our heroes are miniscule, then our “huge” villain, Dinky Kong, is merely small. Playing on this idea, the sprite in the menu depicts Dinky Kong wearing a tiny fez. A cap similar to ones worn by small monkeys rattling tin cups with coins in them next to a man playing a hurdy gurdy as seen in old cartoons. Maybe our “big” threat is simply an under-sized street performer loose in a strange tiny world!

If you're a DK Pro gamer, a few of the original arcade tricks have been implemented (like wall jump escape and points gained by jump proximity), other tricks like barrel-steering are not (yet?) in this remake, some other mechanisms have been simplified and other dirty tricks and exploits (like jumping next to Kong on Rivets stage) have been purposely removed or fixed.

Programmed by @Heracleum
Graphics & sound effects by @Trog
Music & sound effects by Trog's son