Donkey Kong (1981) : le jeu qui a fait naître Mario

Donkey Kong (1981): The Game That Gave Birth to Mario

1531 words | Reading time : 7 minute(s)

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A desperate gamble to shift unsold arcade cabinets. Released on 9 July 1981 in Japan, Donkey Kong is Shigeru Miyamoto's very first game. This entry tells the story of the commercial flop that made it necessary, its inspirations — Popeye, King Kong, Beauty and the Beast — the birth of Jumpman the carpenter, and the origin of the gorilla's name.

In 1981, a single arcade cabinet changed the course of video game history. Donkey Kong (same name in the original version) was, at the outset, nothing more than a desperate gamble to shift unsold machines. Yet this title became the cradle of Mario, then known as “Jumpman”, and the very first hit of a young unknown named Shigeru Miyamoto.

A look back at the founding game that saved Nintendo from bankruptcy and laid the foundations of its reign over the 1980s.

Contents

A cabinet born from a commercial failure

At the turn of the 1980s, Nintendo was trying to break into the fiercely contested American arcade market. The company bet big on Radar Scope, a shooter released in 1980, and shipped thousands of cabinets to the United States hoping to repeat its Japanese success.

Across the Atlantic the bet turned into a fiasco: the game won over almost nobody, and nearly 2,000 Radar Scope cabinets stayed unsold, piled up in a Nintendo of America warehouse. Rather than swallow a dead loss, president Hiroshi Yamauchi ordered the hardware to be salvaged by converting it with a new game.

It was this purely industrial constraint — recycling existing cabinets — that gave birth to Donkey Kong. The future classic was therefore, at the start, a financial rescue operation as much as an artistic creation.

1981 Japanese advertisement showing the Sky Skipper and Donkey Kong cabinets side by side
Sky Skipper and Donkey Kong in the same ad: the first game's unsold cabinets housed the second.

Shigeru Miyamoto's very first game

To design this last-chance game, Yamauchi handed the project to a young, still unknown employee: Shigeru Miyamoto. Trained in industrial design, he had never led the creation of a video game — Donkey Kong is his very first one.

Miyamoto was not left to fend for himself: the seasoned engineer Gunpei Yokoi, a historic figure at the company, supervised the project and brought the technical expertise needed to turn the newcomer's ideas into code that could run on an arcade cabinet.

The result established a brand-new idea: a platform game in which the hero has to clear obstacles by jumping. Donkey Kong ranks among the very first of the genre, and above all it is the first to make jumping a core mechanic — a small revolution for the time.

Framed and displayed preparatory sketches for Donkey Kong
The original sketches: Miyamoto drew the game before he knew how to program it.

Popeye, King Kong and Beauty and the Beast

Originally, Miyamoto wanted to adapt Popeye: the sailor would have rescued Olive Oyl from the clutches of the brute Bluto. But Nintendo failed to secure the licence in time, which forced the designer to invent his own characters from scratch.

The Popeye / Bluto / Olive Oyl trio then morphed into Jumpman, a gorilla and a damsel. For the great ape, Miyamoto drew on King Kong, the archetype of the colossus carrying a beauty to the top of a structure.

The plot, for its part, borrows from Beauty and the Beast: a frightening creature holds a young woman captive and a hero must set her free. From this cheerful recycling of popular myths came one of the most famous storylines in video game history.

Japanese design document titled “Popeye 1” detailing the platforms of the future Donkey Kong
The working document is still called “Popeye”: with the licence refused, the characters had to be invented.

Jumpman, a carpenter who became Mario

At first, Donkey Kong's hero has no name: he is simply called “Jumpman” (“the man who jumps”). He is not yet the moustachioed plumber the whole world knows, but a carpenter climbing a construction site to rescue his sweetheart.

Nintendo of America soon renamed him Mario, in tribute to Mario Segale, the owner of the company's American premises. The damsel, first known simply as “Lady”, became Pauline — a character we would run into again many decades later in Super Mario Odyssey.

Careful not to mix things up: Mario would not become a plumber until Mario Bros. (arcade, 1983), a game quite distinct from Super Mario Bros. (1985), which is the one that truly launched the saga on the NES console.

Research sheets showing the sprites and poses of the Jumpman character
The cap and the moustache are not a style choice: they are the constraints of sixteen pixels of height.

Where does the name “Donkey Kong” come from?

The gorilla's name is the fruit of a delicious misunderstanding. Miyamoto wanted to convey the idea of a stubborn, mule-headed animal, and wrongly believed that the English word “donkey” meant “stubborn”.

For the second half, he settled on “Kong”, a transparent nod to King Kong that instantly conjures up the giant gorilla. As the legend goes, Nintendo of America staff found the name clumsy at first, before it was finally approved in the spring of 1981.

That improbable title has since become one of the most profitable brands in video games, proof that a simple translation slip can sometimes write history.

Illustrated marquee of the Donkey Kong arcade cabinet
The name is emblazoned across the cabinet's marquee, long before anyone debates where it came from.

The triumph that saved Nintendo

Success was immediate and colossal. Around 132,000 cabinets sold in Japan and North America — a genuine tidal wave for a game born out of unsold stock.

That revenue bailed Nintendo out, then in financial trouble, and launched the career of Miyamoto, the future father of Zelda and of the Mario series. The game also gave birth to an entire Donkey Kong franchise, still thriving today.

A tasty detail for fans: in the Donkey Kong Country series, “Donkey Kong” is presented as a hereditary title. The gorilla from the 1981 cabinet is retroactively identified there as Cranky Kong, the grumpy ancestor of the modern Donkey Kong.

Artwork for the Famicom version of Donkey Kong, Mario climbing toward Pauline
After the arcades, the Famicom port moved Donkey Kong into Japanese living rooms.

Donkey Kong (1981) at a glance

French name Donkey Kong (video game, 1981)
English name Donkey Kong
Japanese name ドンキーコング (Donkī Kongu)
Release 9 July 1981 (Japan), August 1981 (North America)
Genre Platform game (arcade)
Creators Shigeru Miyamoto (designer) and Gunpei Yokoi (engineer)
Hero “Jumpman”, the future Mario (a carpenter)
Cabinets sold ≈132,000 in total (Japan + North America)

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FAQ

  • Is Donkey Kong (1981) Shigeru Miyamoto's first game?
    Yes. Donkey Kong is the very first video game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, supported on the engineering side by Nintendo veteran Gunpei Yokoi.
  • Does Mario really appear in Donkey Kong (1981)?
    Yes, but under the name “Jumpman”. It is Mario's very first appearance. Here he is a carpenter, not yet a plumber, a job he would only take on with Mario Bros. in 1983.
  • Why is the game called Donkey Kong?
    Miyamoto wrongly thought the English word “donkey” meant “stubborn”, and he added “Kong” to conjure up a giant gorilla, in the manner of King Kong.
  • Why did Nintendo create Donkey Kong?
    To recycle around 2,000 unsold Radar Scope cabinets, a commercial failure in the United States, and thereby spare Nintendo a heavy financial loss.
  • Who is the damsel to rescue in Donkey Kong?
    She is Pauline (originally named “Lady”), kidnapped by the gorilla. She turns up again much later, grown up and mayor of New Donk City, in Super Mario Odyssey.
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