3rd Generation - Congo Bongo

Congo Bongo is seen as Sega’s version of the highly successful arcade game Donkey Kong. But unlike Donkey Kong, the graphics are more detailed and there are more enemies and traps. It had raster graphics, a resolution of 256x224, and a 256-color palette. The game contained simple 2D sprites and a basic sound that played whenever the character jumps.

Figure 1 - Congo Bongo gameplay 

The game shows a safari hunter trying to catch “Bongo”, the ape that set fire to his tent, in order to have his revenge. The game was made up of four levels: Primate Peak, which is the closest to Donkey Kong in style, Snake Lake, Rhino Ridge, and Lazy Lagoon.

Initially, when Cong Bongo was released it was a commercial failure, but despite this, it has been ported to nearly every major gaming platform, including SG-1000, MSX, Intellivision, Commodore 64, Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. Recently, a remake was released for the PlayStation 2.

Some of the weaker computers and consoles at the time were unable to render isometric graphics. For instance, the Atari and Commodore version use an oblique perspective, whereas the SG-1000 has a top-down view. Many version also left out some levels of the game due to space restrictions.

Bibliography:

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Congo Bongo. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Bongo [Accessed 7 March 2015]

Segaretro.org, (2015). Congo Bongo. [online] Available at: http://segaretro.org/Congo_Bongo [Accessed 7 March 2015]