TITLE
Donkey Kong: A Record of Struggle
AUTHOR
Hirohisa Komanome
PUBLICATION
Bit
YEAR
1997
ARTICLE TYPE
Postmortem
FROM THE ARTICLE
Donkey Kong is an arcade game released by Nintendo in 1981. It was a huge success, shipping over 85,000 units. The Famicom port is also famous as the game which propelled that console to stratospheric heights. Donkey Kong was subsequently made into a franchise series, and it continues to this day as Super Donkey Kong (US: Donkey Kong Country) on the Super Famicom. Donkey Kong also bears the distinction of having given birth to Mario, Nintendo’s flagship mascot character who appears in the launch title of their newest console, the Nintendo 64.Although Donkey Kong was the game that led to Nintendo’s big breakthrough in the arcade and home video game markets, it was originally developed to liquidate Nintendo’s excess PCB stock. For the programming, Nintendo reached out to Ikegami Tsushinki; I was put in charge along with three other people who had joined Ikegami at the same time as me.
[…]
Although it was 15 years ago and my memory has faded, some of the development documents from that time still remain, and I will be referring to them as I look back on the project. The subtitle I’ve chosen for this chapter, “a record of struggle”, was actually taken from the title of a contribution to the company newsletter written by the four software engineers (myself included) who worked on the program at the time.
COMPANIES MENTIONED
Nintendo
GAMES MENTIONED
Donkey Kong
PRINT AVAILABILITY
April 1997
NOTES
English translation by Shmuplations.