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Classic Games (Games) Emulation (Games) Nintendo Games

Dad Hacks "Donkey Kong" - Now Pauline Rescues Mario 262

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.'"
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Dad Hacks "Donkey Kong" - Now Pauline Rescues Mario

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @03:13AM (#43146683)

    I hope he also fixed the final level bug.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    There was a patch for DOOM that let you shoot Barney.
    Maybe you shouldn't be taking your morality from Donkey Kong.

    • by ethanms ( 319039 )

      oh man, you just reminded of that, one my favorites... he even sang the first few bars of his little song I think?

  • This ROM has the pie factory level, but it has the NES title screen. How's that work? TFA says the 2010 ROM, but what's that from?

  • by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @03:50AM (#43146817) Journal
    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.
    • 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

      Pfft, back on ur bike hippy.

    • stopping Big Oil from harming cute animals.

      I know you love you some Sonic the Hedgehog, but I'm not sure it'd be so easy to hack Donkey Kong (Pie Factory Edition) for NES to correspond to your recommended plot changes.

  • Let's try to switch it further: Mario as the bad guy, DK must be rescued. Maybe DK has a daughter?

    • by Nyder ( 754090 )

      Let's try to switch it further: Mario as the bad guy, DK must be rescued. Maybe DK has a daughter?

      You mean switch genders in Donkey Kong Jr.

    • Switching it further would be to leave all the sprites the same, but tell the daughter that Pauline decided to become a mustached plumber and Mario decided to finally discover his true body and become a pinkified princess. DK is actually Peach before she stopped taking testosterone.
  • 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...
    • 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.

      Hahaha well you gotta give her points for that idea! XD

  • Parenting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @04:47AM (#43147029) Journal

    Parenting - you're doing it right!

    • by Picass0 ( 147474 )

      Agreed. Ninja parenting skills. As a dad with little girls (and a Donkey Kong fan) I wish he'd put the ROM out there.

  • Who is this...Mario? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The three characters are Pauline, Donkey Kong (now Cranky Kong), and Jump Man.

  • by 1s44c ( 552956 )

    Now that is cool!

  • by moeinvt ( 851793 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @07:24AM (#43147629)

    Members of PETA hacked the game to make the human the villain and the monkey the hero.

    Oh, wait...

  • I'd love to see more of Daphne in that see-through dress swinging her sword to save Dirk.... Of course, that's a bit more involved since it was all hand-drawn animation.

  • This remindes me of the mod my brother did for a company, Palm City Music many years ago. They wanted to make their own brand of Pac-Man. So they got Mark to reverse engineer the Pac-Man ROMs and modify the characters to look like the the head of Popeye and the energy pills to look like cans on spinach. The Ghosts? They became pirates.

  • One time I hacked Donkey Kong on Atari 2600 for a guy who wanted to propose using a message embedded in the game [toledoblade.com]. The text in the screenshot looks funny because it's necessary to use a flickering trick to display text on the 2600 -- it looks better on the actual machine.

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