About Me
The eponymous Donkey Kong plays the game's de facto villain. He is the pet of a carpenter named Jumpman (along the same lines as Walkman and Pac-Man, later renamed Mario).The carpenter mistreats the ape, so Donkey Kong escapes and kidnaps Jumpman/Mario's girlfriend, originally known as the Lady, but later renamed Pauline. The player must take the role of Jumpman/Mario and rescue the girl. This was the first occurrence of the inherently heterosexual damsel-in-distress scenario that would provide the template for countless video games to come.
The game uses graphics and animation as vehicles of characterization. Donkey Kong smirks upon Jumpman/Mario's demise.
The Lady/Pauline is instantly recognized as female from her pink dress and long hair, and "HELP!" appears frequently beside her. Jumpman/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 white gloves and colored overalls. The artwork used for the cabinets and promotional materials make these cartoon-like character designs even more explicit.
Donkey Kong is the first example of a complete narrative told in video game form, and it employs cut scenes to advance its plot. The game opens with the gorilla climbing a pair of ladders to the top of a construction site. He sets the Lady/Pauline down and stamps his feet, causing the steel beams to change shape. He then moves to his final perch and sneers. This brief animation sets the scene and adds background to the gameplay, a first for video games. Upon reaching the end of the stage, another cut scene begins. A heart appears between Jumpman/Mario and the Lady/Pauline, but Donkey Kong grabs the woman and climbs higher, causing the heart to break. The narrative concludes when Jumpman/Mario reaches the end of the final stage. He and the Lady/Pauline are reunited, and a short intermission plays.
The original premise for the Donkey Kong game was a game built around the Popeye characters but before the game was finished the license fell through and left Nintendo with a game, but no characters.
The name was chosen by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto as a combination of the word "Kong", since the movie King Kong had caused it 'to colloquially mean monkey' in Japan. According to Snopes, Donkey was chosen because Miyamoto intended it "to convey a sense of stubbornness." Various urban legends have circulated, saying that the actual name was to be "Monkey Kong" but was changed by accident for the American release. Snopes debunked these myths in "Donkey Wrong."
Due to the game's success, Nintendo released two sequels, Donkey Kong Junior and Donkey Kong 3, as well as eight games for the Game & Watch platform.
Throughout the 1990's, the British company Rareware developed Donkey Kong related games, establishing an entirely new world for the franchise. These games included Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2, and Donkey Kong Country 3 for the Super Nintendo (SNES), and Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64 as well as the spin-off game Diddy Kong Racing.
