Donkey Kong/Trivia

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• Breakthrough Hit: It was this game that brought Nintendo into the video game industry, after the company spent many, many years producing other things.
• Follow the Leader: The game was endlessly ripped off by other Japanese games companies, both straight clones and also variations... one of which, the 3D-isometric Congo Bongo, was foreshadowing-ly made by Sega.
• No Export for You: In a bizarre twist, the original Donkey Kong arcade game was written by Ikegami Tsushinki, a manufacturing company which developed the game for Nintendo. Unfortunately, there was no contract between Ikegami and Nintendo for the source, so Nintendo does not own the original arcade game code. This is why Nintendo cannot sell the arcade version of Donkey Kong for its consoles, but are free to sell remakes and updated versions instead.
• Port Overdosed: Virtually every console and computer of the era had Donkey Kong released for it, and so have many since. Among 1980s arcade games, its omnipresence is surpassed only by Pac-Man.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Everything about Mario's character design was born from pragmatisim:
  • Mario had a hat for two reasons. For one, Shigeru Miyamoto claimed that he was terrible at drawing hairstyles, but the major reason was that when Mario fell, the engineers would not be able to show his hair sticking up.
  • Along with the hat (as well as his sideburns), his mustache, large nose, and overalls also came into being because they would be visible and recognizable at that resolution.
  • Mario's chubby because it makes for easier collision detection.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: Theories about what the name meant. One example, from a review in Acorn User magazine, was that the name was supposed to be Monkey Kong, but someone made a typo. In actuality, Shigeru Miyamoto thought that "donkey" means "stupid" or "goofy", so he intentionally named the character Donkey Kong.
• What Might Have Been: This game was originally going to be about Popeye. No, really. Tsushinki had originally wanted to make an arcade game involving America's favorite Sailor Man rescuing Olive Oyl from Bluto, but Nintedo couldn't secure the video game rights to the characters. So, he just replaced Popeye with a carpenter, Bluto with an ape, and Olive with Pauline, and history was made. Tsushinki did eventually manage to create a Popeye game two years later that wasn't exactly a flop.