History of The Nerd: Donkey Kong
When people think about Donkey Kong today they mostly think of the fantastic documentary, King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters. They think of Steve Wiebe’s fight against the evil empire, Twin Galaxies, and their personal Darth Vader, Billy Mitchell, to have a high score recognized. They think of this movie and mostly of nothing else, because with the few exceptions of fanatical and, let’s face it, creepy nerds, nobody gives a shit. They don’t care to look passed the high scores and competitive players in American flag ties to see the genius that is the game. Today we look at the game that saved Nintendo of America, and left a legacy that will last a lifetime.
In the year of our Lord (Nintendo) 1980 the world had submitted to a pandemic of biblical proportions. The world had a fever –a Pacman fever. Video game arcades were taking in mass graves of dead presidents by robbing the young and the young at heart of their pocket change. For a quarter you could be yellow guy with an eating disorder or shoot down aliens or stop a city from nuclear annihilation. Money was to be made and this would be a time for new ideas and creativity or blatant thievery of ideas and the death of original thought. In November 1980, Nintendo would decide to do the latter. They released Radar Scope, a shooter that manages to steal the game play of both Space Invaders and Galaxian while still somehow remaining different enough so that nobody could sue.
Radar Scope was a brief success in Japan and Minoru Arakawa, president of the newly found Nintendo of America, hoped that same success would be repeated in the land of the free and the home of the brave (America, back then). Of course his hopes would be crushed like a random Japanese soldier in a Godzilla movie. Americans hated it. It took months for the games to arrive to New York after Minoru ordered them and by this time any hype that was surrounding it had slowly quelled. Also the game’s sound consisted of loud, high-pitched chirping and as everyone knows the only loud, high-pitched chirping Americans will put up with is the kind coming from the drunk girl they’re trying to nail. The game was a flop and Nintendo of America was stuck with thousands of unsold units tucked away in a warehouse like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Financial ruin breathed down the neck of Minoru Arakawa. What was a rich guy who got is job through nepotism do? He would beg, really break out the knee pads and lick the boots of the man who gave him the job in the first place, his father-in-law and Nintendo CEO, Hiroshi Yamauchi.
Minoru wanted a new game to put inside the old Radar Scope casings. Hiroshi realized that his son-in-law had disgraced himself and dishonored the family, decided to get somebody to fix the games instead. He got a young industrial designer named Shigeru Miyamoto a guy that never designed a game before. Instead of tweaking the game for an American audience he decided to “fuck it” and do something fun instead. He would draw from his joys of things like Popeye and King Kong and design an entirely new game. Miyamoto working with Nintendo’s chief engineer, Gunpie Yokoi made video game history by creating the first game that contained a story, multiple and different levels, cut scenes and graphics that actually looked like characters instead of boxes.
Yes there is a story that exists in Donkey Kong, albeit a simple one. Donkey Kong was actually the pet of a chubby mustached carpenter named Jumpman. Jumpman didn’t give a shit about PETA and abused the ape. Donkey Kong became enraged and escaped but also wanted a little payback and maybe some hot ape-on-girl action and kidnapped Jumpman’s girlfriend. Her name was originally, generically, Lady. Jumpman set out on a quest to save his girlfriend. I bet you didn’t know that Mario was an abusive pet owner back then. You never know, maybe he laid down the goon hand on Princess Peach also.
Hiroshi Yamauchi believed that the game would be a major hit and contacted Minoru Arakawa with Nintendo of America and sent them a unit for testing. Their verdict was pretty much, “worst game ever”. They hated it because it was so different from everything on the market and they were uneasy about the strange title. They asked Yamauchi to change the name to which hey replied, “fuck you” so the name stayed. (I’m not sure of the actual words exchanged, but I’m sure the sentiment was the same.) Arakawa stood by the game because if your father-in-law, who owns your ass, decides that it’s a hit, then you back the man up. Nintendo of America did add a few things to appeal to the American player, namely NAMES. The Lady was changed to Pauline after Polly James, the wife of the warehouse manager, Don James in Redmond, Washington and Jumpman got his new name, Mario after Mario Segale the warehouse landlord.
Donkey Kong would become an instant hit when it was released in July of 1981. Out of the 3,000 Radar Scope units. 2,000 of them were converted to Donkey Kong. After the initial 2,000 units sold more orders were made and soon they were selling 4,000 units per month by October. Overall 6,000 units were sold and $180 million was made. The next year they made another $100 million. Mario and his abused ape appeared on cereal boxes, board games, pajamas, comic books, toys and they were even made into cartoons for Saturday Supercade on CBS. Mario would move on to be one of the most recognized video game characters of all time, a character still used to sell game systems today. Not bad for a game that was created to fix a mistake.
