Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong, electronic game, originally released in 1981 by the Japanese Nintendo Company Ltd., that spawned a popular franchise and helped start the video game revolution of the 1980s. The arcade machine marked the first appearance of Donkey Kong, a rampaging ape who rolled barrels down a series of platforms, and Jumpman, better known as Mario of Mario Brothers fame after the introduction of the Nintendo console for home play. Donkey Kong spawned multiple sequels, including the critically acclaimed Donkey Kong Country series, and it inspired a cartoon television show and a documentary.

The original Donkey Kong featured a very simple premise. Users played as Jumpman and in each level had to save Pauline, a pink-clad female character, from the giant ape Donkey Kong. Utilizing timely jumps and ladder-climbing skills, players navigated an extensive series of levels, using hammer power-ups to destroy objects and collecting bonus items along the way for additional points. Donkey Kong has been consistently praised for being one of the most challenging games of its era, and it marked the debut of the platform game genre. Because of a programming glitch, the game has no official ending. The timer on the 22nd level is too short for the level to be completed, so, when time runs out, the display and the game end, adding to Donkey Kong’s quirky mystique.

In the Donkey Kong Country series on the Super Nintendo system, users play as a much friendlier Kong and his sidekick, Diddy Kong, in an adventure to retrieve stolen bananas from a reptilian enemy, King K. Rool. Nintendo’s popular Mario Kart series also features Donkey Kong as a playable character. The documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007), directed by Seth Gordon, examines the quest of two men to obtain and hold on to Donkey Kong’s highest score.