The silver box promises a roaring gorilla. Switch the game on and there is not an ape in sight: Crazy Kong is Grandstand’s UK release of Epoch’s Monster Panic, a climb through a haunted house full of horror-film monsters.
The box calls it an “LCD Pocket Arcade Game” and lists six functions: game, watch, stop-watch, lap-timer, day/date and alarm.
Interesting facts
A Kong with no Kong. Nintendo’s Donkey Kong hit arcades in 1981, as did Falcon’s lookalike coin-op Crazy Kong. Grandstand’s pocket game took the name and put a gorilla on the box, yet it is Epoch’s Monster Panic: there is no ape or barrel on its screen.
Every monster is already there. An LCD game of 1981 could not draw freely. Each pose of the hero, every monster and bomb is a fixed shape built into the glass and simply switched on or off. Tilt the screen to the light and you can see them all waiting, like ghosts.
From Harrogate, with a K. Grandstand was the brand of Adam Imports, founded in Harrogate in 1973 and the UK’s largest calculator supplier a year later. It imported games from Epoch and Tomy under new names. This one later returned in a slimmer case, respelt Krazy Kong.