How Did Nintendo Create Classic Donkey Kong?

is this Donkey Kong a different character from this Donkey Kong the answer is yes is Cranky Kong from Donkey Kong Country the same Kong that kidnaps Pauline and goes up against Mario the answer is also yes is Donkey Kong Jr the father this Donkey Kong or is this Donkey Kong the grown-up version of Donkey Kong Jr here's the short answer Nintendo cannot make up their minds while Donkey Kong has been called the grandson of Cranky Kong a few times over the years as of 2023 before the release of the Mario movie Nintendo has identified Donkey Kong as the sun and successor of Cranky Kong I'll break this down further in the video but for those of you that have no clue what I'm talking about don't worry I'll start from the beginning and discuss how this lovable gorilla potentially saved Nintendo from a complete Financial downfall welcome to origin Oracle everyone the series where I take your favorite video game characters and break down their Origins both in-game and IRL this is the first video for the Donkey Kong franchise and of course we'll start with Donkey Kong the classic one so go grab some snacks Kickback and let's head back in time okay now you die so most of us know this story but let's go over it once again so we cover all our bases Donkey Kong first appeared in Nintendo's Smash Hit arcade game Donkey Kong released in July of 1981 and side note if your local arcade or Barcade is missing this game it's not a real arcade you all should see my disappointment when I can't find the Donkey Kong machine in these false establishments anyway the game begins with Donkey Kong kidnapping the girlfriend of the game's Carpenter protagonist Jumpman and no this is not Mario's father but I'll also debunk this Theory later so while Nintendo would later change jumpman's name to Mario initially he was unnamed and the girlfriend was simply referred to as lady her name would also get a change becoming Pauline named after Paulie James wife of Nintendo's warehouse manager at the time Don James and it's good to see Nintendo acknowledging her a bit more these days so we see Donkey Kong Ascend the construction site with Pauline and Tow accompanied by A variation of the Musical theme from The Hit Radio slash TV show dragonet laughs he drops Pauline on a platform before stomping on top of the construction site altering the landscape of the level before he settles at the top left side of the screen with a smug laugh so this may not seem like a big deal now but this quick series of events masterfully sets the stage giving the player everything they need to know about the objective before they start playing cut scenes like this weren't prominent in arcade games at the time and while Pac-Man also had brief intermissions depicting silly events Donkey Kong is one of the first to use them to move this simple plot forward so intending to save Pauline the player now takes control of Jumpman to ascend the construction site as DK does everything to stop him from reaching them if Jumpman successfully reaches the top he and Pauline share a brief moment of relief before Donkey Kong grabs her again and continues to climb there are four unique stages within the game and the further you progress the more it demands your quarters with Donkey Kong increasing the speed in which he throws barrels and the faster these annoying Fireballs spawn it's actually crazy to me how long sentient Fireballs have been been a staple within both the Mario and DK franchises we just don't give these little guys enough credit anyway let's take a second to look at how Donkey Kong came to be both an established Nintendo character and the successful arcade title if you've been watching my Mario videos up to this point this is going to be like an Avengers style Crossover with familiar names we have to turn the clock back to the Year 1889. this man is fusajiro Yamauchi the founder of Yamauchi Nintendo a Japanese card company based in Kyoto who the hell cash okay I'll admit we didn't have to go back this far so let's fast forward to the late 1970s fusajiro's great grandson Hiroshi Yamauchi is now the president of Nintendo and as they begin to shift away from the playing cards in the Toy Market they begin to turn their attention to arcade games Nintendo would do this in response to two major events the first being an oil crisis back in 1973 that heavily affected the cost of manufacturing toys just for perspective though if you made it through that awkward 2008 phase you got through the worst oil prices in history so here's a cookie the other Main major event that pushed Nintendo into the arcade Market was the success of taito's Space Invaders In 1978 which in four years had grossed 3.8 billion dollars this made the game not only the highest grossing video game of all time the highest grossing entertainment product at that time so it's no shock Nintendo decided to throw their hat in the ring starting with a few electromechanical arcade gun games like wild gunman so in the summer of 1977 Nintendo would also try their hand in the Home console Market collaborating with Mitsubishi to release their very first video game console the color TV games even with Atari being the more popular company at the time this series of consoles was a hit selling 3 million units mainly due to its intentionally lower price point in comparison to other consoles on the market but let's turn our attention back to the arcade side I promise you'll see DK again soon after a couple of failures in the arcade Market with games like sheriff and space fever Nintendo was focused on developing a game called radar scope a pretty simple arcade Shoot Em Up and this would also be one of Shigeru miyamoto's very first projects for Nintendo assisting with their art production the game was released in October of 1980 and Nintendo decided to go all in testing it with arcade audiences in Seattle and after it was received positively by some American audiences they sank their budget into developing cabinets I mean a lot of them meanwhile yamauchi's son-in-law minora arakawa would established Nintendo of America in New York City to take on the Western Market but those 3 000 radar scope cabinets took four months to get all the way to New York and by then Pinterest was already gone with Nintendo only managing to move 1 000 of their 3000 arcade cabinets arakawa moved Nintendo of America headquarters over to Seattle to cut down on the shipping time from Japan but Nintendo as a whole was facing a dire financial crisis but arakawa had a great idea that he suggested to his father-in-law gather the best resources at Nintendo's disposal and create a killer game to retrofit onto the thousands of radar scope cabinets sitting in their warehouse this was the birth of Donkey Kong [Music] I'm absolutely zero I'm nobody's here so we head back to Japan where this new arcade title was being produced by gunpei yokoi the man who played a large role in the creation of The Game and Watch Game Boy Game Boy Pocket Virtual Boy Metroid Fire Emblem the list goes on but joining yokoi was Shigeru Miyamoto stepping up to direct his very first game alongside contracted developers from ikigami sushinki who mostly focused on programming originally Nintendo was attempting to pursue a license to make a video game based on Popeye but their attempts failed due to technical limitations despite that they use the characters of Popeye as a jump off point inspiring Miyamoto to create new characters based on Popeye Bluto and Olive Oil and looking at this art from Donkey Kong I'm sure you can see the resemblances Pluto's British build would transfer over to Donkey Kong who served as the game's villain and was intended to be a pet of the main character though it's not included in later descriptions of this story Miyamoto has stated in interviews That Donkey Kong was Mario's pet gorilla at one point Inspirations for the Donkey Kong character would also be from Beauty and the Beast and of course King Kong himself which would earn Nintendo a nice lawsuit from Universal but we'll get into that in a second the gameplay itself originally had Mario navigating a maze without an iconic jumping mechanic in fact at that time there was only one other game that could be described as a platformer and that was space Panic developed by Universal not that one the platformer genre as a whole wasn't even a thing yet especially jumping but the Donkey Kong team asked themselves if you get a barrel rolling towards you what would you do luckily the radar scope cabinets had an extra button on them aside from the joysticks so boom Mario can now jump and the rest is history but where did they get the name Donkey Kong for some reason this is heavily debated but I'll start with miyamoto's answer to this question in a February 2000 interview with Nintendo online magazine I'd always been under the impression that Kong meant gorilla so I wanted to name him something something Kong and so because I wanted to make a dumb character I went and looked that word up in a dictionary when I did that I found the word donkey had the meaning in addition to that of the animal strangely enough when Universal took Nintendo to court over the name Donkey Kong and the concept being too similar to King Kong in 1983 more details regarding the creation of the name came up in their depositions the depositions reveal that Nintendo's export manager shinichi todori was originally contacted by gunpei yokoi and asked him to come up with the potential names for the character since he was normally consulted for game titles in the past before they exported them to the West the Dory would come up with a few names for the game submitting 10 of them to yokoi Donkey Kong being one of them to take this a step further todori would State the following in his deposition I didn't think of a good word in English therefore I tried to search for an English word for the Japanese terminology which roughly translates to dope or oath so by attempting to find a good English word for tonma he stumbled upon donkey shout out to gaming historian for going all the way to the National Archives to dig up this information by the way you can check out his video on how Nintendo came up with some of their character names if you want more details but based on the depositions of todori yokoi and Miyamoto it's pretty clear that Miyamoto had no hand in the final name Donkey Kong so do you guys think he's intentionally taking credit for this I can't seem to find where this Mr tidori has gone or even if he's alive but regardless he hasn't spoken on the matter since the lawsuit it seems gunpeo koi died in a tragic side accident so we won't be getting any objections from him either I'm not saying Miyamoto plan this but [Music] all jokes aside Donkey Kong was released to huge success in the western markets becoming the next bestseller and gave a foothold for Nintendo in the United States also I gotta give props to arakawa his wife Yoko and the tiny Nintendo of America team at the time who gutted all the radar scope machines themselves to apply the Donkey Kong kits to these cabinets manually that was something I learned researching this and I can't imagine the amount of work it took to do that to 2 000 of these machines oh and by the way Nintendo did eventually get to make that Popeye game worse than ever oh I just thought it was neat that they still committed to it as for the lawsuit from Universal that came after the game's release funny enough here's a Nintendo themed amusement park at Universal Studios Hollywood so let that be a lesson on forgiveness to everyone Nintendo of America's attorney Howard Lincoln hired a highly experienced attorney at the time John Kirby to take the case long story short though Kirby argued that Not only was Donkey Kong different enough from King Kong for Nintendo to hold the rights but also argued that King Kong was in the public domain referencing a lawsuit that Universal Studios themselves handled in 1975 proving that King Kong was in fact public domain so after their Victory Universal paid back all of Nintendo's legal fees and Nintendo awarded their star attorney with a sailboat aptly named Donkey Kong and if that wasn't enough they would go on to name Kirby after him as well with the success of Donkey Kong Nintendo would of course make a follow-up I got Donkey Kong and now I'll get you too Junior I'm Donkey Kong Jr and that's my papa I'm trying to save him and boy do I need your help all the ideas that they couldn't Implement into Donkey Kong were now thrown into Donkey Kong Jr again directed by Miyamoto and it's here we're introduced to Donkey Kong's son Junior plot is a bit of a Twist this time with Mario as the aggressor attempting to get his revenge placing Donkey Kong in a cage so Junior has to climb vines Brave obstacles and collect keys to ultimately free his father in the final showdown with Mario in the city the wind Jr has to put all six Keys into keyholes to free Donkey Kong from his cage and make the surrounding platforms disappear brutally murdering Mario in the process that's only the NES version but in the arcade version DK kicks the out of Mario originally Miyamoto wanted Donkey Kong himself to be playable but his size presented some complications with maneuverability so why not just make a smaller Donkey Kong the star while this game wasn't as popular as the original Donkey Kong it got enough attention that Nintendo would develop a third game in the Donkey Kong series and that brings us to Donkey Kong 3 released in October of 1983 Donkey Kong's 3 brought a new protagonist to the Forefront sinley who pretty sure Mario's still being treated for brain damage at this part of the timeline Donkey Kong continues to harass people by breaking into Stanley's greenhouse and upsetting the bugs which puts Stanley's flowers at risk so Stanley has to head out with his sprayer to kill bees and Chase Donkey Kong away wow Stanley killing bees is not good for your plants but I do see the issue with a giant gorilla hanging out in the rafters of your Greenhouse this technically wasn't Stanley's first appearance though as he had his own Game and Watch game called Greenhouse family is Going Buggy Mario Brothers [Music] he's stopping bugs from ruining his plans Donkey Kong 3 ended up selling significantly less than its predecessors and would be the last Donkey Kong arcade game on the market though it did get a Japanese exclusive semi-sequel known as Donkey Kong 3 dag yakushu for some of the 8-Bit home computers produced by NEC in the 80s developed by Hudson soft who would go on to make Bomberman and develop some of the Mario Party games this follow-up to Donkey Kong 3 once again Stars Stanley and is more of a straight up shooter in this case I don't know about you guys but it looks like Stanley left the greenhouse and is Out For Blood this time around Manuel states that this game takes place sometime after Donkey Kong 3 but it just kind of leaves it at that the writers even encourage players to send in their stories for the game to Hudson so basically anything you come up with the story for this game is Canon to the Donkey Kong Series so I asked chatgpt to write one for me Donkey Kong has returned to wreak havoc on the jungle once again but this time he's brought along some new friends the jungle's inhabitants are in a panic as Donkey Kong and his allies begin to destroy everything in sight in the midst of the chaos a young man named Stanley decides to take action armed only with his trusty bug spray he sets out to put a stop to Donkey Kong's Rampage laughs so there you go that's officially part of the Mario slash DK timeline so even though Donkey Kong 3 was the last arcade game for DK there was a line of Game and Watch titles that would unite him with Mario many of these are rehashes of the arcade titles like Donkey Kong Donkey Kong Jr and Donkey Kong 3 but there's a couple of interesting ones to note like 1984's Donkey Kong circus which features Mario as the animal trainer I'm assuming while DK has to balance on a barrel and juggle pineapples the other game was Donkey Kong hockey also released in 1984 which is a two-player game where Mario faces off with Donkey Kong in a game of hockey it's pretty self-explanatory but can we call this the very first Mario sports game in existence what do you guys think but as you all can see Donkey Kong exploded in popularity resulting in him getting his own cereal yeah this was sweet and corn cereal shaped like barrels and some of these boxes had promotions within them called Donkey Kong instant winner game which gave lucky serial consumers the chance to win prizes like a don Donkey Kong game and watch Donkey Kong shoe laces and a whole ass Donkey Kong arcade cabinet almost went on a Googling spree to find out who won but this video is long enough as it is so leave a comment if you were the winner of that cabinet no verification required if you want you won so in addition to his own cereal Donkey Kong would also become the main feature in the 1984 animated show Saturday supercade this show would be a collection of animated segments celebrating popular video game series at the time like Donkey Kong Frogger Qbert and Pitfall the Donkey Kong segment starred Mario as a circus owner who alongside Pauline the animal trainer would chase after Donkey Kong once he escapes from the circus that's the setup but each episode puts the main Trio in different scenarios involving other minor supporting characters and villains they even include our boy Stanley in one of the episodes Mario is voiced by Peter Cullen known famously for his role as Optimus Prime but from the episodes that I can find it looks like Mario never managed to catch a Donkey Kong Saturday super cat also featured a Donkey Kong Jr segment with Junior leaving the jungle to search for his father at Mario's Circus by the time he arrives DK has already escaped but a young man named bones for friends Junior and takes him on an adventure to find his father the Donkey Kong Junior segments depict their adventures together and sadly I don't think Junior ever reunites with his father in this show by the way DK Jr here is voiced by Frank Welker who has way too many popular rules to count but you may know him as Scooby-Doo and Fred Jones Megatron but just to put a nice pretty bow on all of this the Goombas and Yoshi from the 1993 Super Mario Brothers film so a couple years after this the Mario Brothers became the newest craze Donkey Kong was in a little bit of a Hiatus but despite all that if you're looking for the definitive classic Donkey Kong game look no further than the 1994 game boy version also known as Donkey Kong this was developed by paxofnika a Dev team that worked exclusively with Nintendo at the time but Miyamoto was heavily involved as well while this may start off looking like the original arcade game with a little facelift this game is its own Beast the game begins with Donkey Kong once again kidnapping Pauline and just like the arcade titles he starts throwing barrels at the top of this construction site you play the first four levels defeat Donkey Kong and Pauline is saved right well no this game opens up into a 97 level expansion with Mario chasing down DK through the city the forest a ship a jungle the desert an airplane Donkey Kong is not having it this time around even Donkey Kong Jr hops in to try and deter Mario from defeating his papa and throughout there's a new gameplay style introduced with Mario having to track down keys in each level to open doors to proceed and remember Pauline's items in the original arcade game that she drops that helps increase your score they're here in this game too but picking these up unlocks a bonus Mini-Game of Wheel of Fortune that earns Mario some additional lives I also need to mention that the super Game Boy attachment for the SNES gave this game colored graphics and audio enhancements as well and Mario doesn't just jump in this game this would be the first title that introduced his Backflip mechanic that we have now is a staple in all Mario titles and as for DK we would see his iconic redneck tie for the very first time which would influence his design in the later Donkey Kong Country Series this was the last major DK title produced by Miyamoto before Nintendo started to hand the franchise off to other Studios to work on but man what a way to go out okay so what happened to Donkey Kong and Junior in the fall of 1994 the legendary rarewear would take over the development of major games for the franchise releasing the wildly successful Donkey Kong Country now I'm Gonna Leave This version of DK and the rest of the series for a part 2 to this video but I wanted to introduce Donkey Kong Country to address one of the questions I presented at the beginning of the video Donkey Kong Country introduces a new version of DK a younger hip gorilla that's moving on from the old days of kidnapping damsels and taking on the mantle of Donkey Kong in this game we see an older gorilla named Cranky Kong that is stuck reminiscing about his old days as an arcade era icon we find out that cranky here is the original Donkey Kong and the new Donkey Kong that serves as our protagonist is referred to as his grandson it's referenced in the instructions manual so this should be DK Junior's son then right where does the confusion come in well later on with the release of Donkey Kong 64 the instructions manual refers to Donkey Kong as cranky Kong's son hang on let me muddy the Waters even further here so back in 1999 rare published questions from fans on their website answered by Leia loveday the writer in charge of the manuals and scripts for Donkey Kong Country one fan submitted a question saying I'm a bit confused on some of the issues surrounding dynastic succession in the Donkey Kong games if Cranky Kong was the original Donkey Kong and the current Donkey Kong is his son is the current DK the same infant gorilla who starred in Donkey Kong Jr I have also seen references to DK being Cranky's grandson in that case what became of the heroic Donkey Kong Jr did he vanish mysteriously in order to provide a plot cliche for one of his son's future Adventures Roderick arbuthnot specialist in Simeon drama ape research Society of England arse this guy was way ahead of his time but I find rare's answer to be even more interesting as far as I know rdk is the son of cranky which does indeed make him the original DK Jr all grown up so if you see crane he referred to as DK's Grandad anywhere just cover your eyes and hum loudly until it goes away and Nintendo of Europe would also back this claim on their website for The Game Boy Advance Port of Donkey Kong Country okay so he's Cranky's son now fine what a tweet from Greg males one of the designer from Donkey Kong Country in 2017. I'm pretty sure when I made this stuff up nearly 25 years ago that he was his grandson by dk64 he was so senile he couldn't remember huh okay so cranky is too old and see now to remember if DK is his son or grandson that's pretty sad I guess this is true his profile also says in Smash Brothers Brawl and ultimate that he's his grandson the Donkey Kong who fought that epic battle with Mario was this guy's grandfather that was a long time ago see Donkey Kong Country Returns also says that cranky is the grandfather okay so I think we've come to a conclusion here Cranky Kong is DK's grandfather for sure granted I don't think this movie is going to be directly connected to what's established in game and will probably serve as its own Universe unless the next Mario game coincides with the movie lore I guess we'll see there's also the fan theory that Jumpman from the classic Donkey Kong games is Mario's father but there's no basis for that and Nintendo has never hinted at this idea because he's clearly addressed as Mario in both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr so I'm not going to agree to that theory unless we get a Jumpman lore dump in the Mario movie or some future game but why is cranky old now and Mario isn't so people have gone as far as using the lifespan of gorillas to debunk the Jumpman Theory and even attribute Mario's frequent job changes at that time to the actions of a young man that hasn't figured out his career path yet and to add even more salt on this identity crisis Yoshi's Island DS introduces the baby versions of several Mario characters as Bowser attempts to kidnap the Seven Star children DK is one of these kids now whether or not this is Cranky Kong or Donkey Kong is heavily debated if this is Donkey Kong that means he and Mario are the same age and if Donkey Kong Jr is still a baby when Mario puts cranky in a cage that means hmm wait a minute what if Donkey Kong Jr has an older brother or sister I don't know if any other videos addressed this but let me cook I'm not even gonna look it up so there's no official age for Mario but Nintendo has hinted that he is in his mid-20s so let's go with a solid 20 cents now I know he looks crusty and hairy in his early art but the earliest age one can become a carpenter is 17. assuming this is New York gorillas are considered elderly at 40 but the oldest male girl on earth Ozzy survived to age 61. so let's play with this number and say present day Cranky Kong is 48 years old so if we go with that it could make cranky roughly 22 years older than Mario so if Mario is a 17 year old in the original Donkey Kong that puts Cranky Kong at age 39. he's getting up there but he's still a massive gorilla following me so far no so if we assume that Junior is born around that time we'd only have a nine year time span to account for junior not only reaching of fertilage but also our DK growing up to being a full-size Gorilla by the time Mario is 26 years old so consider this male gorillas are able to reproduce at 11 to 13 years of age so if DK and Mario are born around the same time Cranky Kong could have potentially had another child that conceived DK 17 years prior that puts cranky at 22 years old when Mario and DK are born and the parent of DK would have to be at least depending on the sex between 8 to 13 years of age which is more than possible at Cranky's current age so DK Jr is the uncle of Donkey Kong which means that this DK in Yoshi's Island could totally be the current DK I just saved the freaking world I know this is going to rile up the comment section so take all of that with a grain of salt because Nintendo just doesn't give a

Channel: TheMentok

Views: 79,276

Keywords: donkey kong, super mario, donkey kong country, donkey kong game boy, origins of donkey kong, history of donkey kong jr, is cranky kong donkey kongs father, is cranky kong the original donkey kong, who is cranky kong, who is donkey kong jr, donkey kong arcade game, donkey kong 3 arcade, donkey kong 3 dai gyakushū, origin of donkey kong, origin of donkey kong name, where did donkey kong originate, where did donkey kong come from, who is donkey kong, who is donkey kongs dad

Id: BYN3AsFFri8

Length: 25min 27sec (1527 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023