This was posted to YouTube by Mike Mika, and I just wanted to share. Basically a dad hacked a Nintendo ROM so his daughter could play Donkey Kong as Pauline instead of Mario.
My three year old daughter and I play a lot of old games together. Her favorite is Donkey Kong. Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario. She’s played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn’t in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I’m up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline. I’m using the 2010 NES Donkey Kong ROM. I’ve redrawn Mario’s frames and I swapped the palettes in the ROM. I replaced the M at the top with a P for Pauline. Thanks to Kevin Wilson for giving me the lead on the tools and advice.”
Not bad, Awesome Dad! The video now has over 1 million hits, so I guess it’s officially ‘big’ now. If you head over to the YouTube page, he has included a link to “Download the DK Pauline patch” so you too can be awesome. Of course, you have to be a dedicated father who has a daughter that loves retro video games and wants to play them as female heroines. In which case your probably doing something right and awesome already.
On a side note, it is interesting to think that 30 years ago it took a small crew of people switching out motherboards and power supplies in full console cabinets to convert some surplus Radar Scope games into some of the first Donkey Kong cabinets…and now you can download a patch for a ROM. Donkey Kong was the game that made Nintendo huge and brought it fame and fortune. Anyone even remember Radar Scope?
