PixlBit

One of the great things about the Atari 130XE was its arcade ports. With the exception of the abysmal Dig-Dug port, aberrations like the 2600 version of Pac-Man were rare on the Atari 8-bit line. The 8-bit Ataris generally had the most arcade-faithful ports available on any platform at the time. Given that arcade games were still the jewels of the gaming universe at the time, this helped cement the 130XE's place as an awesome gaming platform.

And few games exemplified this better than Nintendo's arcade game ports. Unlike the 2600 and Colecovision ports of DK, which were done by Coleco, Atari handled the 8-bit conversions of its arcade games - in some cases, doing a better job with their ports than Nintendo ended up doing with the NES versions of the same games.

Donkey Kong

This is the 8-bit Atari port of Nintendo's breakout hit, Donkey Kong. This game, more than any other, was a joy to play: even today, it's probably the most faithful port of Donkey Kong out there short of getting a MAME ROM. It's far superior to the NES ort (which allegedly continues to be sold instead of the arcade ROM due to legal issues between Nintendo and Ikegami Co, Ltd, which helped develop the original game).

First off, unlike the NES game, it's complete. It has all four levels, including the Cement Factory level that was almost always omitted from home ports of DK, including the NES version. And every level is in its proper place. One thing the Atari port did was to allow you to pick levels at the title screen by cycling through icons of DK objects - barrels represented level 1, jacks represented level 2, cement pans represented level 3, and so on.

Second, the sound is awesome, far better than the NES version, and really shows what the 130XE was capable of in those primitive days. It actually sounded pretty close to the arcade version. I always thought the NES music and sounds were "wimpy" compared to the arcade version's sound.

The gameplay was just as great, providing a true-to-the-arcade feel to the game missing from the 2600 port. The only minus the XE version could be said to have was a limited color palette of only four colors, though they did the best they could in that department with what they got.

Basically, this game was the next best thing to having my favorite arcade game in my own home, free to play without needing quarters that were as hard to scrounge up as gold nuggets in my childhood.

Popeye

Fun fact: Shigeru Miyamoto originally wanted Donkey Kong to be a Popeye game, with Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Bluto taking the place of Mario, Pauline, and DK. King Features turned him down the first time, and Mario and Donkey Kong were born. After DK's success and Nintendo's win against Universal Studios in court, King finally granted Nintendo the go-ahead to make a Popeye game.

This port isn't quite as much of a slam-dunk as Donkey Kong was, and I would say that in this case, the NES game was better. Nevertheless, other than that, it was one of the better ports of Popeye out there. Its graphics were a bit rough, but its sounds and game play were spot on.

Donkey Kong Jr.

The sequel to DK, which made Mario the villain for a change, also made its way to the Atari 8-bit line. Unlike with the NES port of DK, the NES port of DK Junior featured all the levels of the arcade, so the two versions are kind of even here. The Atari version changed the ending cinematic to show Donkey Kong booting Mario into the stratosphere, which was kind of funny.

Mario Bros.

There were actually two versions of Mario Bros. available on Atari computers: the first was a port of the 5200 version, developed by Utah-based Sculptured Software - the same company that developed the SNES ports of the Mortal Kombat games a decade later.

This game was slower than the arcade or NES versions, and had a limited color palette. However, it had more of the cute animations of the arcade, such as the Shellcreepers flipping themselves over by pulling themselves out of their shelves and kicking them over, which were omitted from the NES version. This is the version I played.

The second version was actually released by Atari in 1988 for the XE Games System, though its cartridge would work just as well in a 130XE. It was part of Atari's furtile efforts to re-enter the console market after Atari CEO Jack Tramiel declared it dead, only to be proven horribly wrong by Nintendo some years later. Apparently whatever legal agreement between Atari and Nintendo that allowed Nintendo games to appear on Atari systems was still in place in 1988, which is why this port of a Nintendo game is on a system that competed against the NES. I never heard ot this version until many years later, when I was an adult.

Anyway, there you have it, a time when Nintendo was a third-party licensee of another company, and some great arcade ports at a time when we got arcade ports bastardized by weak hardware, sloppy development, or both. See you next time!