Donkey Kong (video game)

This article is about the 1981 arcade game, for other uses, see Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong is an arcade game that was released by Nintendo in 1981. The game is an early example of the platform genre, as the gameplay focuses on maneuvering the main character across a series of platforms while dodging obstacles. It is the very first appearance of Mario.
==Story==
Set in New York City, インタビュー マリオ映画公開記念！宮本茂さんインタビュー 制作の始まりから驚きの設定まで (April 25, 2023). Nintendo Dream Web. Retrieved April 25, 2023 the eponymous Donkey Kong is the main antagonist. He is the pet of a carpenter named Mario, nicknamed "Jumpman" at the time. The carpenter mistreats the ape, so Donkey Kong escapes and kidnaps Jumpman/Mario's girlfriend, Lady (later renamed Pauline). Mario has to go on a journey to rescue Lady. After defeating Donkey Kong in the final level, Mario and Pauline are reunited.
==Gameplay==
Donkey Kong is an early example of the platform genre (it is sometimes said to be the first platform game, although it was preceded by Space Panic and Apple Panic). Competitive video gamers and referees stress the game's high level of difficulty compared to other classic arcade games; the average game lasts less than a minute. Winning the game requires patience and the ability to accurately time Jumpman's ascent.
In addition to presenting the goal of saving the Lady, the game also gives the player a score. Points are awarded for finishing screens; leaping over obstacles; destroying objects with a hammer power-up; collecting items such as hats, parasols, and purses (presumably belonging to Pauline); and completing other tasks. The player receives three lives with a bonus awarded for the first 7,500 points.
The game uses graphics and animation as vehicles of characterization. Donkey Kong smirks upon Mario's demise. Pauline is instantly recognized as female from her pink dress and long hair, and "HELP!" appears frequently beside her. Mario, depicted in red overalls and cap, is an everyman character, a type common in Japan. Graphical limitations forced his design: Drawing a mouth was too difficult, so the character got a mustache; the programmers could not animate hair, so he got a cap; and to make his arm movements visible, he needed colored overalls. The artwork used for the cabinets and promotional materials make these cartoon-like character designs even more explicit. Pauline, for example, appears as a disheveled Fay Wray in a torn dress and stiletto heels.
Like the Pac-Man arcade game, Donkey Kong has cutscenes, but innovates by advancing a complete plot. The game opens with Donkey Kong climbing a pair of ladders to the top of a construction site. He sets Pauline down and stamps his feet, causing the girders to become bent. He then moves to his final perch and sneers. At the end of a stage, another cut scene is shown. A heart appears between Mario and Pauline, but Donkey Kong then grabs her and climbs harder, causing the heart to break. After Mario completes the final level, the game restarts at a higher level of difficulty.
==Characters==
*Jumpman
*Donkey Kong
*Lady
==Enemies and obstacles==
*Barrel
*Cement tub
*Fire
*Fireball
*Jack
==Levels==
Donkey Kong is divided into four different one-screen levels, each representing 25 meters of the structure Donkey Kong has climbed, and each stage is 25 meters higher than the previous one. These screens combine to form levels, which become progressively harder. For example, Donkey Kong begins to hurl barrels more rapidly and sometimes diagonally, and fireballs get quicker. The victory music alternates between levels 1 and 2. The 22nd level is unofficially known as the kill screen due to an error in the game's programming that kills Mario after a few seconds, effectively ending the game.
No.	Level name	Description
1 	25m 	Mario must scale a seven-story construction site made of crooked girders and ladders while jumping over or hammering barrels and oil barrels tossed by Donkey Kong. The hero must also avoid flaming balls, which generate when an oil barrel collides with an oil drum.
2 	50m 	Mario must climb a five-story structure of conveyor belts, each of which transports pans of cement. The fireballs also make another appearance. This stage was notably removed from the Nintendo Entertainment System port.
3 	75m 	Mario rides up and down elevators while avoiding fireballs and bouncing objects, presumably spring-weights. The bouncing weights (the hero's greatest danger in this screen) emerge on the top level and drop near the rightmost elevator. The screen's common name is "Elevators." 75m would become a playable stage in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
4 	100m 	Mario must remove eight rivets, which support Donkey Kong. The fireballs remain the primary obstacle. Removing the final rivet causes Donkey Kong to fall and the hero to be reunited with the Lady/Pauline. This is the final screen of each level. Players refer to this screen as "Rivets."
==Development==
As of the beginning of 1981, Nintendo's efforts to crack the North American video game market had all failed, culminating with the flop in 1980. In order to keep the company afloat, company president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to convert unsold Radar Scope games into something new. He approached a young industrial designer named Shigeru Miyamoto, who had been working for Nintendo since 1977, to see if Miyamoto thought that he could design an arcade game. Yamauchi appointed Nintendo's head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi, to supervise the project.5 things Nintendo's Hiroshi Yamauchi gave to gaming
===Inspiration===
At the time, Nintendo was pursuing a license to make a game based on the 1930s Popeye comic strip. When this fell through, Nintendo decided that it would take the opportunity to create new characters that could then be marketed and used in later games. Miyamoto came up with many characters and plot concepts, but he eventually settled on a gorilla/carpenter/girlfriend love triangle that mirrored the rivalry between Bluto and Popeye for Olive Oyl."Donkey Kong Was Originally A Popeye Game." Nintendo Official Magazine.
Yamauchi wanted to primarily target the North American market, so he mandated that the game be given an English title. Miyamoto decided to name the game for the ape, whom he felt to be the strongest character. The story of exactly how Miyamoto came up with the name Donkey Kong varies. A popular urban myth says that the name was originally meant to be Monkey Kong but was misspelled or misinterpreted due to a blurred fax or bad telephone connection. Another, more credible story claims Miyamoto looked in a Japanese-English dictionary for something that would mean "stubborn gorilla," or that "Donkey" was meant to convey "silly" or "stubborn"; "Kong" was common Japanese slang for "gorilla". A rival claim is that he worked with Nintendo's export manager to come up with the title, and that Donkey was meant to represent stupid and goofy. In 2001, Miyamoto stated that he thought the name would convey the thought of a "stupid ape".
Continuing to draw from 1930s American media such as Popeye, the 1933 film King Kong also served as an influence as it was one of Miyamoto's favorite films.Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life (Brady Games 2005) page 36 "The story of Donkey Kong was a combination of Beauty and the Beast and King Kong, two of his favorites. He made it a point to note that his ape, Donkey Kong,* wasn’t evil but simply misunderstood—“nothing too evil or repulsive.” [...] *Miyamoto wanted to title the game (and the ape) something that meant “stubborn monkey.”The old English-Japanese dictionary yielded “donkey,” as in a stubborn mule. “Kong” had been a generic Japanese word for “large, menacing ape” ever since the 1933 movie King Kong." Pauline/Lady, who replaced Olive Oyl, was depicted in a torn dress and held captive by Donkey Kong, similar to Fay Wray's character and the titular King Kong in the 1933 film. The setting of the game was New York City, just like the 1933 film. Early commercials by Coleco depicted Mario/Jumpman with a fedora and 1930s clothing while Pauline/Lady was given a hairstyle from the decade as well.
===Programming===
Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project. He lacked the technical background to program it himself, so he instead came up with concepts and ran them by the technicians to see if they were possible. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, move them in different manners, and make them react in various ways. Yokoi declared Miyamoto's original design too complex. Another idea that Yokoi himself suggested was to use see-saws that the hero could use to catapult himself across the screen; this too proved too difficult to program. Miyamoto then came up with the idea to use sloped platforms, barrels, and ladders. When he specified that the game would have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to make the game over and over. Nevertheless, they followed Miyamoto's design, creating about 20k of code. Meanwhile, Miyamoto composed the game's music on an electronic keyboard.Hearing Things: The Sounds and Music of Video Games, Part 1
Hiroshi Yamauchi knew that Nintendo had a hit on its hands and called up Minoru Arakawa, head of Nintendo's operations in the United States, to tell him. Nintendo's American distributors, Ron Judy and Al Stone, brought Arakawa to a lawyer named Howard Lincoln to secure a trademark.
===Testing===
The game was sent to Nintendo of America for testing. The sales manager disliked it for being too different from the maze and shooter games common at the time, and Judy and Lincoln expressed reservations over the strange title. Still, Arakawa swore that it would be big. American staffers pleaded with Yamauchi to at least change the name, but he refused. Resigned, Arakawa and the American staff set about translating the storyline for the cabinet art and naming the other characters. They chose Pauline for the girl, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's Redmond, Washington, warehouse manager, Don James. Mario was named for Mario Segale, the warehouse landlord. These character names were printed on the American cabinet art and used in promotional materials. Donkey Kong was ready for release.
==Reception==
Stone and Judy convinced the managers of two bars in Seattle, Washington, to set up Donkey Kong machines. The managers initially showed reluctance, but when they saw sales of $30 a day—or 120 plays—for a week straight, they requested more units. In their Redmond headquarters, a skeleton crew composed of Arakawa, his wife Yoko, James, Judy, Phillips, and Stone set about gutting 2,000 surplus Radar Scope machines and converting them with Donkey Kong motherboards and power supplies from Japan. The game officially went on sale in July 1981.
Donkey Kongs initial 2,000 units sold through, and more orders poured in. Arakawa began manufacturing the electronic components in Redmond because waiting for shipments from Japan was taking too long. By October, Donkey Kong was selling 4,000 units a month, and by late June 1982, Nintendo had sold 60,000 Donkey Kong games overall and earned some $180 million. Judy and Stone, who worked on straight commission, became millionaires. Arakawa used Nintendo's profits to buy 27 acres of land in Redmond in July 1982. The game made another $100 million in its second year of release. It remained Nintendo's top seller even into summer 1983. Donkey Kong sold steadily in Japan, as well.
==Licensing and ports==
By late June 1982, Donkey Kong's success had prompted more than 50 parties in the U.S. and Japan to license the game's characters. Mario and his simian nemesis appeared on various merchandise, some of which included cereal boxes, board games, pajamas, and manga. In 1983, the animation studio Ruby-Spears produced a Donkey Kong cartoon (as well as Donkey Kong Jr.) for the Saturday Supercade program on CBS. In the show, mystery crime-solving plots in the mode of Scooby-Doo are framed around the premise of Mario and Pauline chasing Donkey Kong, who has escaped from the circus. The show lasted two seasons.
Makers of video game consoles were interested, as well. Taito offered a considerable sum to buy all rights to Donkey Kong, but Nintendo turned them down. Rivals Coleco and Atari approached Nintendo in Japan and the United States respectively. In the end, Yamauchi granted Coleco exclusive console and tabletop rights to Donkey Kong because he felt that "It [was] the hungriest company". In addition, Arakawa felt that as a more established company in the U.S., Coleco could better handle marketing. In return, Nintendo would receive an undisclosed lump sum plus $1.40 per game cartridge sold and $1 per tabletop unit. On 24 December 1981, Howard Lincoln drafted the contract. He included language that Coleco would be held liable for anything on the game cartridge, an unusual clause for a licensing agreement. Arakawa signed the document the next day, and on 1 February 1982, Yamauchi persuaded the Coleco representative in Japan to sign without running the document by the company's lawyers.
Coleco did not offer the game stand-alone; instead, they bundled it with their ColecoVision. The units went on sale in July 1982. Coleco's version is very close to the arcade, more so than ports of earlier games that had been done. Six months later, Coleco offered Atari 2600 and Intellivision versions, too. Coleco's sales doubled to $500 million and their earnings quadrupled to $40 million.
Meanwhile, Atari got the rights to the floppy disk version of Donkey Kong and prepared the Atari 800 version of the game. When Coleco unveiled the Adam Computer, playing a port of Donkey Kong at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Illinois, Atari protested. Yamauchi demanded that Arnold Greenberg, Coleco's president, shelve his Adam port. This version of the game was cartridge-based, and thus not a violation of Nintendo's license with Atari; still, Greenberg complied. Ray Kassar of Atari was fired the next month, and the home PC version of Donkey Kong fell through.
The Atari console versions include all four levels of the original arcade game. Most console releases omit the conveyor belt level and make other changes. For example, the ColecoVision release lacks projectile springboards on the elevator level. The Atari 2600 and Intellivision releases omit the elevator level entirely.
Miyamoto created a greatly simplified version for the Game & Watch multiscreen, and in 1983, Donkey Kong was one of the three launch titles for the Famicom in Japan. This version remained in production until 1988. Other ports include the Apple II, Atari 7800, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, Famicom Disk System, PC, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Mini-Arcade.
The game was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System as one a launch title. However, the cement factory level is not included, mainly due to storage limitations. At the title screen, this port includes a new song composed by Yukio Kaneoka; an arrangement of the tune called "Simian Segue" appears in Donkey Kong Country for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Nintendo Entertainment System version was first ported to Animal Crossing in the form of an unlockable furniture item. In 2004, Nintendo released the NES version for the Game Boy Advance as a Classic NES Series title as well as an e-Reader card. It was later ported to the Virtual Console for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U. It was also released on Nintendo Switch Online. The original arcade version of the game appears in the Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64 and as an Arcade Archives title for the Nintendo Switch.
==Gallery==
==References==
==External links==
*Title at MobyGames
*Title at GameFAQs
de:Donkey Kong (Arcade)
es:Donkey Kong (juego)
fi:Donkey Kong (peli)
fr:Donkey Kong (jeu)
it:Donkey Kong (gioco)
nl:Donkey Kong (spel)
pl:Donkey Kong (gra)
ja:ドンキーコング (ビデオゲーム)
pt-br:Donkey Kong (arcade)
ru:Donkey Kong (игра)
*
Category:Arcade games
Category:Games in Donkey Kong series
Category:Virtual Console games
Category:Nintendo Entertainment System games
Category:1981 games