Dude hacks DONKEY KONG, lets his daughter play Pauline!

Times have been tough for Pauline: the damsel-in-distress that Mario had to climb up those girders to rescue from Donkey Kong way back in 1981.  Mario and DK of course went on to bigger and better things.  Then there were all those women who came into Mario's life before he settled on Princess Peach.  But whatever happened to Pauline?

Mike Mika, who works at Other Ocean Interactive, was asked by his three-year old daughter if "she could play as the girl and save Mario".  Mika hacked into the ROM of the Nintendo Entertainment System's port of Donkey Kong and after fiddlin' around with the coded innards, he had produced what he calls the "Pauline Edition" of Donkey Kong!  Here's a clip of it in action and you  have to admit, it's a really sweet thing to do for a kid :-)


Jump here for more at Cinema Blend about this awesome hack!

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How did we ever get by?

A friend of mine named Jason French had this to say on Facebok...

"Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out."

I remember my Nintendo Entertainment system, and after a couple years' use something messed up inside that kept the cartridges' contacts from meeting those of the console when you pushed it down. I put in some cartridges and noticed that after inserting them fully they were coming back up very slightly. Just enough, I figured, to keep the console and cartridge from connecting with each other.

So I took some springy wire from a spiral notebook, and duct-taped the ends of it to the console cover and the cartridge-holding thingy. It provided the needed pressure to get the game's contacts touching those of the console. And I never had anything go wrong with it again.

It was a problem that I took some pride in figuring out on my own, by observation and deduction. Could kids today figure it out as well? I've no doubt that they can, but they'd probably run to Google first for a quick fix. Not quite as satisfying as conjuring it up with your own gray matter :-)

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