Today in the 80's

1983

Congo Bongo

Congo Bongo was an arcade game released by Sega in 1983. The game has come to be seen as Sega's answer to the highly successful Donkey Kong game that was released two years prior. The player takes the role of a red-nosed safari hunter who tries to catch an ape named "Bongo". The hunter seeks Bongo to enact revenge for an apparent practical joke in which Bongo set fire to the hunter's tent, giving him a literal "hotfoot". The game was a commercial failure when it was released but was popular enough to be ported to nearly ever major platform of the day including Atari's consoles, MSX, Intellivision, ColecoVision, Commodore 64 and IBM PC.