26-Year-Old Easter Egg Found In Donkey Kong

When Donkey Kong was ported from the Arcades to the Atari 400 and 800, there was no doubt that if you played them they were the best ports around. Well, coder who wrote the Atari 400 port of Donkey Kong revealed it had an Easter Egg but it’s “totally not worth it.”

Don Hodges, who is notorious for digging around in the games code, and is known for fixing Pac Man’s kill-screen, found the so-called “not worth it” easter egg, and while it is totally underwhelming, it’s still neat to figure out how to do it.

• Play a game, setting a new high score that is either 37,000, 73,000 or 77,000. The digits for hundred thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones may be anything. • Kill off all of your remaining lives, but your last death must be by falling.

• Then set the game difficulty to 4 (press the option button 3 times.)

• Wait for the game to cycle through the demo screen where Kong jumps across the screen, then at the title screen, the programmer’s initials, LMD, will appear. (Pictured above)

On Hodges website, he tells how to pulled apart the code using an emulator which I guess you can try on your own at home.