Donkey Kong High Score Save Kit
Although I BETA tested this Kit, this is an accurate review in my Opinion.
There were a few things that I didn't like about Donkey Kong. One was that there was no Free Play mode, and the other was that it didn't save High Scores. Then along came Scott from Braze Technologies.
You may remember Braze Technologies from the Double Donkey Kong Kit. They now are making the Donkey Kong High Score Save Kit (Which also works with DK Jr. and Double DK).
The kit is very simple to install. You remove 4 EPROMS, the Z80, plug the board in, plug the Z80 into the board and you are done. I was able to install it in under 5 mins.
Now let me go over the features of the kit.
The first thing you will see when you first turn your DK/DKjr on for the first time after installing the kit is a Menu that allows you to enter setup. The Setup Menu replaces the need to Monkey with the Dip Switches . Pressing Player 1 Start will take you into the setup menu. From here you can set up things such as number of Jump Men, Points needed for an extra Jump Man and FREE PLAY. The menu also allows you to reset your High Score table if you want to.
FREE PLAY is probably the best feature (to me anyway) of this kit. What is REALLY cool about this feature is that the game stays in attract mode! Everyone knows that when you coin up Donkey Kong, it sits on one screen waiting for you to press Start. This causes Screen Burn-In in the Long run.
The other thing that Free Play does for you, is you no longer need to coin the game up! (DUH!). Its really nice to be able to just turn the machine on and GO.
Now we are off to the High Score Saving part. A big complaint about DK and a lot of the games back then is they didn't save the high scores when you turned your machine off. With this kit, all 5 scores are now saved. Also, if you have a Double Donkey Kong it will save the scores (and settings) seperatly for the two games.
The down side to saving the High scores is now I have to beat 70,000 just to make it in the TOP 5 on my game :-)
If you have a Donkey Kong or Donkey Kong Jr, or a Double Donkey Kong, then this a MUST buy. For only $45, you can not go wrong.
If you own this Kit and would like your comments added to this review, please drop me email.