Donkey Kong

Overview

The First Level

The arcade classic Donkey Kong rose out of Nintendo's desire to crack into the United States arcade market. The company's president back in 1981, Hiroshi Yamauchi, made the decision to take a Nintendo arcade release called Radar Scope and see if it could be easily retrofitted to play a different, and hopefully better, game. To accomplish this task, Yamauchi chose a young employee named Shigeru Miyamoto. The rest, as they say, is history.

Upon going to work, Miyamoto's first attempt was to make a game based on the then-popular Popeye character. That licensing deal fell through, though Nintendo would later secure the license and develop a popular Popeye arcade game. Miyamoto had to retrofit his concept and develop three characters with similar relations to Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Bluto. He came up with a little man with a mustache that was quickly named Jumpman, who had to save his girlfriend, Pauline, from the evil gorilla named Donkey Kong.

The Second Level

The basic story of the game is that Donkey Kong is Jumpman's pet. Jumpman mistreats Donkey Kong, who snaps and kidnaps Pauline and, in a decidedly King Kong-like twist, takes her up a building under construction. Jumpman must navigate four different levels, climbing to the top to either force Donkey Kong to move on or, in the stunning final confrontation, bring the building's girders down to make the big monkey fall.

Donkey Kong was followed-up by Donkey Kong Jr. , which puts the player in the role of Donkey Kong's son, Donkey Kong Jr., who must attempt to rescue his father from the clutches of the evil Jumpman, who by then had already been renamed Mario.

Legacy

The Final Level

Donkey Kong helped to create the platformer genre, and also was one of the first to include a story. Donkey Kong changed the way people played games; no longer was it just about high scores, gamers began to play the game to find out what would happen next. Donkey Kong became one of the most iconic video games of all-time and a huge part of American pop culture, gaining mentions on countless television shows, songs, and movies. Donkey Kong also essentially launched Nintendo's biggest character of all-time, Mario.

As a testament to the legacy of Donkey Kong, the documetary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters was released in 2007, 26 years after the game's debut. The film was about gamer Steve Wiebe and his journey to defeat Billy Mitchell's high score, which had stood for 25 years. Public awareness about the competition for this score was raised by this film, and in the years since Wiebe, Mitchell, and others have traded positions on the top spot. Read more about the documentary at the official site.

In July 2009, Donkey Kong made news yet again when a 26-year-old easter egg, which did nothing more than display the initials of Landon M. Dyer, who worked to code the title, was uncovered after Dyer mentioned that he had forgotten how to display the initials and offered $75 to whomever can find the Easter egg first. The $75 was awarded to Don Hodges after he dug through the game's code and found the way to display the initials.

Trivia

The name comes from a mistranslation of the Japanese, which roughly translates to “Stubborn Monkey” . When translating for stubborn the translator(s) came up with “ass” or “donkey,” and monkey translated to “King Kong,” thus Donkey Kong.

The first console port was licensed by Nintendo but not made by them. A near perfect arcade port, and pack-in, was created for the ColecoVision system. This propelled its sales over the Atari 5200 and sold 500,000 units at launch. Over a year later Coleco made a version for its rival's Atari 2600.