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980s arcade gaming meets 1930s
cinema. Double retro overload!
It does feel like that when you first
set eyes on Shigeru Miyamoto’s
legendary design. This was one of the earliest
‘climbing’ games, laying the foundations for
the platform genre. And it’s packed with film
tropes, from the damsel in distress to the
giant ape – too packed, according to Universal
City Studios, who filed a lawsuit against
Nintendo alleging trademark infringement
of King Kong. Universal lost; Nintendo won;
gamers and everyman carpenters everywhere
erupted in celebration. Probably.Carpenters? Duh, Mario’s a plumber!
Not at first. He wasn’t even called Mario – he
was an unnamed everyman, trying to rescue
the generically named Lady, avoiding deadly
barrels and removing rivets from towers in a
flagrant breach of health and safety regs. He
was at various points dubbed Jumpman and
Mr Video, before Nintendo’s US staff renamed
him Mario after their warehouse landlord,
Mario Segale. That worked out pretty well
for the character... but his quest in the game
itself was tougher, not least due to a bug that
gave him just four seconds to complete the
117th screen.Yikes! Bet that made Mr Segale furious.
Indeed – and in sequel Donkey Kong Jr, Mario
acted in uncharacteristic fashion, squeezing
the giant ape into a tiny cage and unleashing
psychotic critters on DK’s son when he
attempted a rescue. There were helicopters
too – this was big-budget revenge.
Eventually the apes won, booting Mario
across the screen and leaving him to forever
take out his aggression on tortoise-like
creatures instead. As for DK, he took refuge
inside a greenhouse in Donkey Kong 3,
annoying a pest control officer but – this
time – no major film studios.
[^ WordsC
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ig^Grannell^ ]RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES 1981Donkey kong
1
Dumb ass
It’s often been assumed
that the game’s name
arose from a mishearing of
Monkey Kong. In fact, ‘donkey’
was a synonym for ‘stupid’
in Shigeru Miyamoto’s
Japanese-English
dictionary.