ZONKEY KONG
by Don Crawford & Dave Spinnett


Nearly 40 years ago, two community college arcade addicts in a basement in East Lansing Michigan (USA) decided they wanted to program their first game on the only computer they could afford - The Timex Sinclair 1000. The reasons for picking this game to replicate is lost to the haze of time as neither were that fond of it, but both agreed that this was going to be a great learning exercise to prepare them for future glory! Due to the limited hardware, learning Assembly was of course the only option. Frameworks were developed, base functions coded, and testing began. Needless to say, coding directly to the 1000, even with the luxury of a Memopak Assembler, was challenging at best and introduced the duo to a fine array of curses and future drinking habits.

Then, life happened. Better computers, jobs - both in IT (thanks Clive!), moves, wives and children came along, and coding was just a fond memory of youth. Periodically, the code was dusted off and was the glue that kept the geographically separated pair in contact. Fast forward to 2020. The world takes a break. Now older, fatter and little wiser, the kids grown and life's big events behind, it was time to finish the job! Beyond all odds, a bit of code, documentation survived coupled with fresh enthusiasm helped drive it to completion.

And here it is! Zonkey Kong. Yes, it’s been done before, better, and more efficiently, but we can assure you nobody has taken as much time between initial code and release! We don't think it's a beta, but you might! We coded it how we wanted to play it, so its not exactly like the original- download and play away. Feedback is appreciated, but may be ignored :)

Now, with this "early" success, it's on to our newly imported Speccys, and this fall on the Spectrum Next! While our wives were not at all impressed, they did say they hope to live long enough to see the next one!

DnD



(Replicated from the Sinclair ZX World forum: https://sinclairzxworld.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4179&p=42518#p42518)