Back in the 1980’s, Atarisoft were doing official conversions for the Commodore 64. Donkey Kong Jr was oddly one of them!
We learn of this conversion thanks to Mat Allen who has documented the conversion briefly in Digital Press. We hope to learn more about the conversion soon as a result.
We are not sure at present how far the game got, or why it was cancelled, but we are guessing it was due to Atarisoft breaking up at some point.
According to an internal Atari document that Bertrand from Atarimania has:
A “test report” was initiated on May 18th, 1984. It is not clear whether the game had reached “REV. 1” status or whether the test was performed at this specific date between “REV. 0” and “REV. 1”. Whether any more work was done on this title before Tramiel took over in early July is anybody’s guess.
It means that something was in the works, so did it get much futher and does anything still exist?
At present we have no credits or anything for the game, so its very early days along with another bunch of Atarisoft games we have added entries for.
Do you know more?
Contributions: Mat Allen, Bertrand / Atari Frog
Supporting content
Update history
03/09/23 – Details about game’s existence added.
According to an internal Atari document I have, a “test report” was initiated on May 18th, 1984. It is not clear whether the game had reached “REV. 1” status or whether the test was performed at this specific date between “REV. 0” and “REV. 1”. Whether any more work was done on this title before Tramiel took over in early July is anybody’s guess.
Thanks Betrand! I’ve updated the page with those details confirming the game was actually started!