Dad Hacks "Donkey Kong" - Now Pauline Rescues Mario

H_Fisher writes "What do you do when your daughter wants the girl to be the hero of your old video game? If you're Mike Mika, you hack the game ROM to reverse the roles. He even changed the 'M' at the top of the screen to a 'P.'"

Sounds like a great father

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope he also fixed the final level bug.

Should Have Gone All The Way

[guttentag]

He should have switched the big monkey at the top with the poor little oil drum at the bottom while he was at it, to reflect the full scope of societal changes that have occurred since the release of Donkey Kong.

In this new version, the girl fights to stop Big Oil at the top from throwing barrels at the cute little monkey at the bottom, while the guy just stands there watching the game. When she gets to the top, she's not rescuing Mario, she's stopping Big Oil from harming cute animals. Mario just happens to come out of his comatose state when she enters the room and feels compelled to feign excitement for her quest.

In college I had a roommate who felt very strongly that depressed people should not give in to pressure to take Prozac. So I "hacked" (I think I used ResEdit or something... nothing fancy) a Pong clone to replace the ball with a green/yellow Prozac capsule. That way he could "fight the good fight" by trying to deflect the Prozac in response to my repeated attempts to stuff it down his side of the screen. This made him a much more animated opponent in Pong, and I told him this only proved that Prozac does improve people's behavior. Which upped the ante as the game continued, in much the same way that Tetris starts throwing bricks at you with more attitude the further you get into the game.

Not easy to make your daughter happy

[m.alessandrini]

My daughter was once playing with ktuberling, where you drag little characters on the screen and create a scene. One day I caught her rotating the mouse horizontally, because she wanted the little penguin to lay down instead of standing, and she was complaining it was not working. I'm an electronic engineer, but I have not all that spare time! :-) On the other hand, I think that Apple and others could gain millions by hiring a bunch of kids as designers...

Re:Why is this necessary?

[somersault]

I guessed as soon as I saw her name mentioned as the writer for Overlord. It was a lot of the reason I even tried the game. Safe to say, I think Terry's sense of humour has rubbed off on her :)

Re:And?

[blind biker]

In Israel right now there is a law banning thin models. To protect the feelings of the whales.

I was in Israel for a couple of weeks, and didn't notice any land whales. I'd say Israelis are rather healthy-looking, both Jews as well as Arabs.

But I did see land whales each of the three times I visited the US. It was the first (and so far, only) time in my life that I could behold examples of morbid obesity.

But, carry on.