“Donkie Buddy”, the fancy bootleg?

Posted January 23, 2011

I just returned from an awesome trip to Evansville to meet the “Dueling Computer Space” brothers, Ryan and Jason. While I was down there, Jason was showing me an interesting Donkey Kong pcb that I thought I’d share with the rest of you, see if we could get some insights.

Blue Donkey Kong Jr. Board

I poked around RGVAC, and there were quite a few mentions of this blue Donkey Kong Junior PCB, and they all call it a ‘bootleg’. However, would bootlegs really go to the length of silkscreening the little DK character? Seems unlikely. ‘MacMan’ theorizes that this is a ‘Junior King’ boardset;

Just a guess but there was a blue solder mask Donkey Kong Junior that was called Junior King (JK)… I had it a while back. I don’t remember the big K on donkey kongs chest… but it could be something. Try and burn a set of bootleg DK Jnr’s and see….

Maybe Jason can pop the pcb into a game and check the attract screen, see if it actually a ‘Junior King‘. There aren’t any pictures of the board on the CrazyKong website. Here are the photos of the pcb;

Photo full Donkey Kong Jr. PCB SetDonkey Kong Jr. Character Detail

Here are the topics on RGVAC referencing the PCB;

The pots may be evidence enough that this was a mass run bootleg PCB. If you can provide some other referenceable evidence that this definitely is or isn’t a bootleg DK Jr. PCB (Or have links to other old topics), drop a link / comment below. Thanks to Jason S. for letting me post about this boardset.

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Comments
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Fred
March 31, 2011

I’m not sure where you’re getting the “Donkie Buddy” from, but my guess, having 2 of these exact same boards myself, is it’s just running a bootleg version of one of the Japanese romsets of DK Jr. Both of the ones I have don’t have any Nintendo logos on the title screen, and have 11,800 as the default high score and allow 12 initials. I’ve also got 2 single board sets (that are longer and the same size as a Falcon Crazy Kong board), one is running what looks just like the US version of DK Jr (including the Nintendo of America copyright and 7,650 for the default high with 3 initials), the other is running “Donkey King Jr” and like the 2-board version, has no copyright, 11,800 and 12 initials)

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Jeff Rothe
April 6, 2011

Fred » Donkie Buddy was just a term I coined for the icon and an interesting title, nothing more. But thanks for adding your insight to this with your great collection of boards. No changes to sprites or gameplay, just the title screen is different then?

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Fred
April 14, 2011

The ones running the Japanese ROMsets play different than the US one. The boards are arranged as Vines, Springboard, Mario’s Hideout, Keys. As far as I know, the sprites are all the same. I don’t actually have a setup that’s playable yet, but I can power the boards up and see them running. The Donkey King Jr is missing all the moving sprites, unfortunately. One of the boards (like the one you have pictured) supposedly came out of a Crazy Junior. I’ve also seen one that plays as “Junior King” on the game that also came out of a Crazy Junior (that one I know for sure) and is very similar to your pic above, but I don’t think it has the Junior stencil on it

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Hector
February 15, 2021

I have this board but haven’t been able to make it work. honestly I’m a noob at this… does this work with a regular DK harness? anyone has pinout configuration for the Blue board?
regards…

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