CONGO BONGO (1983)

by Mark Nobes, chief editor

First launched in to the arcades during 1983 by Sega, Congo Bongo was quickly ported to the Atari consoles and 8-bit computers, Commodore Vic-20 and C64, Tandy Computers, ColecoVision and IntelliVision consoles, despite not being commercially successful in the arcades.
The gameplay borrows from the classic Donkey Kong, in that there is an angry gorilla who wants to throw things at you! In this case, it's coconuts rather than barrels. The game is set in a pseudo 3D environment with isometric graphics - it was really 2D but viewed at an angle that made it look and feel like 3D.
The player takes the role of a safari hunter who is desperately trying to catch an ape called Bongo. He has set fire to the hunter's tent, which makes the monkey very angry indeed! The player has no weapons as, and must defend himself by dodging any objects moving towards him by either jumping over them or simply moving away from them.

In the arcade version there are four true levels which were Primate Peak, Snake Lake, Rhino Ridge and Lazy Lagoon. When you complete the fourth screen, the game simply loops back to the first screen, but with more difficult gameplay. 

The first level is definitely the most interesting one to play, and the last level plays like a 3D version of Frogger. However, in many home computer versions there were originally only two levels, although the IntelliVision version kept all four levels. Later releases in 1985 by U.S. Gold featured all four levels of the game. 

The game is far from being a classic and borrows ideas from other games around at the time. Graphically, though, it looked quite impressive at the time (although not on the Atari 2600 version), but the gameplay can only be best described as average.
Congo Bongo Commodore 64 Game cartridge by Sega
This image is of the Commodore 64 game cartridge by Sega. The C64 and the Atari XL/XE computers both had cartridge slots, but by around the mid-1980s, most games were being released on cassette and diskette for these machines.
Congo Bongo Screenshot from C64 version

Screen grab from C64 version

Congo Bongo Colecovision Screenshot

Colecovision Screenshot

Donkey Kong Atari 2600 screenshot

The screenshot above is taken from the Atari 2600 console version.