Ikegami, the company behind Donkey Kong and Zaxxon

[hally]

Zaxxon is a great classic, developed by unknown talents. However,
recently I found some Japanese web pages which mention Ikegami
Tsushinki as the company behind it, and behind even Congo Bongo.
Ikegami is known as a sophisticated manufacturer of professional
broadcast/communication/information devices. But for videogame people
it's more important as the developer of Donkey Kong. Read details
here:
http://www.video-fenky.com/archives/000036.html

Radarscope/Donkey Kong hardware is based on Namco's technology. As the
history tells, Namco was the most advanced Japanese videogame
manufacturer since Galaxian, so many newer arcade companies wanted
their technologies. Nintendo was one of them. They apparently have
acquired a license from Namco, then signed up with Ikegamim to make
their hardware.

So I can believe Ikegami had enough experience to program such
out-of-box games like Zaxxon and Congo Bongo (though those two were
never appleciated in Japan). In this light I found the following
similarities between RS/DK and Zaxxon/CG:

[Hardware]
* Z80 + unique sound hardware (RS/DK/Zaxxon)
* RAM area starts from 6000, while most of Namco technology based
games start it from 4000 or 8000... I guess. (DK/Zaxxon)
* 256 colors (all)
* 224x256 resolution, though it's not special among Namco technology
based games. (all)

[Fonts]
* Atari style character set, though it's not special among games based
on Namco technologies. (all)
* Quite similar fonts for Bonus counters. (DK, CG)
* [RUB][END] on name registration screens are also pretty similar.
(all)

[Contents]
* The same initial 1UP scores: 003700. (all)
* Similar name registration system and screen. (all)
* The same style loop/phase counter: L=01 (DK/CG), P=01 (RS).

Can anyone find more similarities?

hally

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