Donkey Kong Romhacking

Let me introduce myself

Hi, I am Paul Goes from the Netherlands and my hobby is .... creating Donkey Kong romhacks.

In 1978, when I was 9 years old, my dad bought a brand new Tandy TRS-80 home computer. At first I played the games that came with it (I fondly remember 'Flying Saucers'). But after a few months I started creating small programs in BASIC. Quickly it became apparent that BASIC was sometimes slow and I started writing parts of the programs in Z80 assembly.

In 1983, when I was 13 years old, I created a TRS-80 program that recreated the Game and Watch Donkey Kong Jr handheld. It resulted in a working game, but the graphics were horrible, mostly because of the graphical limitations of the TRS-80.

Welcome screen of the TRS-80 Donkey Kong Jr game.

Screenshot of the TRS-80 Donkey Kong Jr game.
More information about this game can be found on github.com/PaulGoes/TRS80-Donkey-Kong-Jr.

In High School I got lessons in BASIC programming using the Commodore 64 home computer. And in my bachelor education I learned programming the popular languages Pascal, C and C++. However, in my professional career I left programming behind and focused on infrastructure and infrastructure management.

In 2017 I returned to game programming. I was wondering if I would be able to create an easy game for the Nintendo Wii. I decided to recreate the Game and Watch Donkey Kong Jr again. With the help of the development environment DevKitPro I created the 'Game and Watch Donkey Kong Jr Homebrew Wii'.

The Nintendo Wii homebrew game Donkey Kong Jr.
More information about this game can be found on wiibrew.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_Jr.

But it didn't stop with the Nintendo Wii. Because my kids were playing a lot with their Nintendo DS handheld consoles, I was wondering if I could recreate the Game and Watch Donkey Kong Jr once more, but now for the Nintendo DS. Creating this version was much fun because the handheld nature of the DS was perfectly suited for this game. With the help of the development environment DevKitPro I created the 'Game and Watch Donkey Kong Jr Homebrew DS'. After succesfully completing the game, I decided to also create the 'Game and Watch Mario's Cement Factory Homebrew DS'.

The Nintendo DS homebrew game Donkey Kong Jr next to the original.
More information about this game can be found on github.com/PaulGoes/DS-Donkey-Kong-Jr.

The Nintendo DS homebrew game Mario's Cement Factory next to the original.
More information about this game can be found on github.com/PaulGoes/DS-Marios-Cement-Factory.

In 2019 I discovered the Donkey Kong Hacking Kit which contains a disassembly of the Donkey Kong arcade game with comments on the inner workings of the game. I learned that the Donkey Kong game is based on the Z80 processor and uses the same assembly language that I used on the TRS-80 back in the eighties. The first thing was to read the disassembly and look how things worked.

But the game programmer in me woke up and almost immediately I started thinking of possibilities to alter and to add to the game. This lead to the creation of the first prototypes 'Freerun Edition' and 'Crazy Barrels Edition' and the romhack 'Reverse'.

In the spring of 2020 I was contacted by JP Buergers and he asked if I could collaborate with the Kong League to develop additional Donkey Kong romhacks and prerelease them exclusively to the members of the Kong League. Since then I developed the romhacks 'Championship Edition', 'Randomized Edition', 'Skip Start', 'On The Run', 'Into The Dark', 'Twisted Jungle', 'Barrelpalooza', 'Anniversary Edition', 'Duel', 'Wizardry', 'Springfinity', 'RNDMZR', 'Hearthunt', 'Barrelb∞ss', 'Accelerate', 'Pac-Man Crossover', 'Sprites and Hitboxes' and 'Bowser's Takeover'.

The limited edition romhack 'Kong League Championship' running on an original Donkey Kong cabinet.

My other hobbies

Another hobby of mine is making music. This is the current DAWless (without computer) studio setup.

The studio contains the following instruments: Boss RC-202 Loop Station, Roland RD-88 Digital Piano, Roland XP-30 Synthesizer, Novation KS-Rack Synthesizer, Roland JU-06A Synthesizer, Behringer Model 15 Synthesizer, Korg Micro-X Synthesizer, AKAI MPX8 Sample Player, MiniDeXeD Synthesizer (DIY), MidiSONAR Gesture Controller (DIY), MidiBOX SID Synthesizer (DIY).

In case you want to hear some of the noise that I've created, here are some links to YouTube:

Playlist album Pyramids In Alaska (original music), 1999

Playlist album Synth Diversity (cover music), 2013

Playlist Looper Experiments (original music), 2026

And yet another hobby of mine is collecting all kinds of differently shaped Rubik's cubes and finding the algorithms to solve them. This is an overview of the current collection.

And a last hobby of mine is reading fantasy books. I have read the books in the following universes/series:

JRR Tolkien - Middle Earth
Robert Jordan - Wheel of time
Brandon Sanderson - Cosmere
Robin Hobb - The Realm of the Elderlings
George R.R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire
Stephen King - The Dark Tower
Terry Goodkind - Sword of Thruth
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter
Christoper Paolini - The Inheritance Cycle
Weis and Hickman - Death Gate Cycle
Weis and Hickman - Darksword
Weis and Hickman - Sovereign Stone
W.J. Marison - Master Magician
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy

Complete list of read books on GoodReads (needs account to view)

I am currently reading the books in the Cosmere universe by Brandon Sanderson. After I finish that series, I intend to start with the Discworld universe by Terry Pratchet.