Play Meter Magazine

[FrizzleFried]

Whoa...I was just given 4 copies of Play Meter Magazine.   The oldest is dated September 1, 1982,  the next is December 1, 1982...then May 1, 1983 and June 1, 1983.   There is some cool reading to be had here.  One little "tidbit" I read about was Nintendo ceasing over 1,000 "bogus" Donkey Kongs titled Crazy Kong and Congorilla in the US... fun stuff for sure.

I wonder if the Arcade Flyer Archive has all these cool ads as well...I will have to check.

Does anyone currently have a subscription to Play Meter?   They want $60 for 12 issues...is it worth the $5.00 per issue now a days?

[Ken Layton]

Playmeter and Replay are both excellent magazines. I never got to see many Playmeter magazines though as our shop only subscribed to two industry publications: Replay and Vending Times.

[FrizzleFried]

I'd love to take a look at a recent or semi-recent copy.  I am going to call them tomorrow and see if they would be willing to shoot me out a single copy (for now).

[WareWolF]

Those bogus nintendo donkey kong machines were all over the place in the US.  The colors were way off, the music was really crappy, the gameplay however was pretty much the same but I think a little easier, and the screen order was different.  I think some of the bootlegs are emulated in MAME, Crazy Kong was the more popular one around here on the the east coast, there were a few really cheezy arcades around here that had about 80% clone games.  Then again there was an aracde around here where some lame operator put an atari 2600 with space invaders running on a TV in a cab, using the lame plastic atari joystick even!  Of course I am sure those games go for $3000 and up on ebay now !

[Level42]

Yeah, I even don't remember seeing a real Donkey Kong here. I played Crazy Kong like mad though....I went with a friend to the city, to a cafetaria especialy to play this one machine they had
This version had the bug where the barrels don't come down the ladders when you're on it.....really handy

Crazy Kong was no bootleg here in Europe though acc. to klov.com.

I do remember that when playing Donkey Kong on the Atari 600XL for the first time I thought that the levels were in the wrong order....

FrizzleFried....scans would be very much appreceated

[FrizzleFried]

When I have a little time I will scan a few pages to start...

...and I yeah,  we had a Crazy Kong in the local Ace Hardware when I was a kid,  but it disappeared one day...perhaps Nintendo came `a callin'?

...or it just broke!

Crazy Kong is MUCH easier than DK...i still play it on MAME.   It's levels go 1-2-3-4 where-as Donkey Kong goes 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-1-2-3-4....etc.

Crazy Kong also had a different color scheme with some versions having DK BLUE or GREEN!  And the levels are slightly different...the girders of level 1 are different and in level 2 there are some missing parts you have to jump over.  Also,  the elevator levels have much slower elevators at level 1.

The sounds were HORRIBLE...worse than midi quality...bad....and the KONG character looked quite cheezy compared to DK.

It (Crazy Kong) seemed like a BETA version of DK.