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Speaker 1: Here we are for level one Donkey Kong.

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Speaker 2: All right, everybody take out a quarter, insert it, press

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one player, and here we go.

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Speaker 1: All right.

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Speaker 2: So all these games that we're going to talk about

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came out in nineteen eighty one. Yes, where do you

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want to start?

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Speaker 1: How about November seventh, nineteen twenty seven. Wow? Okay, So

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that is when a gentleman named Hiroshi Yamuchi was born.

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His dad abandoned him. His mother realized she couldn't raise him,

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and so she gave him to her parents. His grandfather

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ran this little playing card company named Nintendo. Wow.

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Speaker 2: Nintendo was created in September of eighteen eighty nine as

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a card playing company.

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Speaker 1: Yes. So, Hiroshi grew up with his grandparents, ended up

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getting married, going to study law. But while he was

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studying law, his grandfather, president of Nintendo, has a stroke,

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so he leaves school comes over to run the company

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at the behest of his grandfather. He doesn't want to

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do it because I don't want to do it. His

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grandfather's like, you have to do it. I'm not gonna

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make it. You neither run the He's like, okay, but

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I won't do it unless we agree that no one

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else in the family can be a part of the

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company because he doesn't want the competition, right, So his

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grandfather's like, okay, your cousin fired, and he starts running

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this company. And so the cards back in Japan were

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just card cards. They weren't the plastic cards that we're

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familiar with. And so he decides, I'm going to make

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cards like they make in the West. I want to

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make these plastic cards. And he starts doing that and

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reaches a hit number one by having an agreement with Disney,

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Walt Disney to create the Walt Disney playing cards that

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end up blowing up because Walt Disney is huge and

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makes the company a bazillion dollars, right, Okay, okay, And

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so he's like, okay, time for us to diversify. I'm

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going to start a taxi company. I'm going to start

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a love hotel. You know, love hotel is I think

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I do? Yes, you could probably get it. It's rentable

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by the hour. And apparently he would frequent those kind

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of hotels that he started, okay, and an instant rice company,

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well sure, why not? And so as it turns out

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all of those failed, Yeah, and so they're at the

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brink of bankruptcy. He's fretting. He sees this guy that's

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an engineer of his in the factory named gun Pay Yochi,

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and he's playing with a claw and I mean you

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imagine the claw in the in the cartoons where it's

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like you squeeze it and the little arms go back

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and forth. You know, it stretches out to grab some

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That's the thing that this guy is invented. And he's

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like that, that's awesome. Figure out how the factory can

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make it. And that's what he does. And it's called

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the Ultra Hand ultrahnd and it makes him another bazillion dollars.

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It's hit number two. Okay. So he realizes at that point, hey,

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what am I doing with taxis and love hotels and

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instant rice. We're a game company. We made playing cards,

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We've got the Ultra Hand. And so they start toy making,

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which leads to game making. Yes, and he sees the

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potential video games and he says, I want to break

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into that world, okay, And so they invent a few games.

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And one of the games that they start is called

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Radar Scope. Okay, and Radar Scope becomes a hit in Japan.

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It's huge. It is second only to Pac Man okay

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that we just mentioned. So he's like, okay, ship three

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thousand of these over to the American coast. We are

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going to break into the North American video gaming world.

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And they sell one thousand out of three thousand, one

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thousand out of three thousand, and then nobody orders anymore.

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Speaker 2: And the other two thousand are sitting in this warehouse, Yes,

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this crappy, little dusty Nintendo.

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Speaker 1: Warehouse, Yes, the Nintendo America, the newly formed Nintendo America warehouse.

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Speaker 2: And they start to panic.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, holy crap, we've got all these games.

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The Nintendo America is going down already. I mean they've

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they've gotten excited about things and are completely devastated by

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the lack of sales. And so they say, what are

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we going to do? And so Hiroshi Yamuchi says, I'm

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going to find a guy to make us a game

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that's going to be a hit. And who does he find.

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Speaker 2: He finds this guy called Saguerro Miyamato.

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Speaker 1: So, Sagiro Miyamato, forgive us, we're stupid Americans. Yes, we

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have no Japanese education whatsoever. So we're probably mispronouncing these names.

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Speaker 2: The most Japanese we know how to say, we learned

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from a stick song in nineteen eighty three.

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Speaker 1: No more, I got them. Hey.

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Speaker 2: For my part, though, I did look at Radar Scope.

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I checked it out. Yeah, and when I when I

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got online and looked at it, yeah, I did not

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recognize the game as one that I had played. Right,

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But the gameplay is very similar to Space Invaders or Gallaga, yeah,

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except it's kind of tilted. It's it's a tilted shoot

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him up.

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Speaker 1: Game, right, It's almost like Space Invaders if you were

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about three feet tall on a regular game and you're

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like looking at an angle. It's not It's very odd. Yeah,

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I can see why it did not overwhelm the United States.

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And so he hits up Shagiro Miyamato and says, I

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want you to come up with a game. And Shagiru

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Miyomtu was not an engineer, Okay, he was an artist. Okay.

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He had wanted to be a magna artist. You know

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magna is yeah, Okay, so he had wanted to do that,

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but had gotten this job with Nintendo instead and had

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done he had done work on one of Nintendo's other games.

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Called Sheriff, and he had done work on radar scope,

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but it was all kind of artistic development as opposed

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to the engineering side of things. Okay, but he does

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something unprecedented. He develops a story before any of the

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programming is done.

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Speaker 2: First story. Yeah, involved in a video game?

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Speaker 1: Yes? And do you know who is supervising the development

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of this game?

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Speaker 2: Who's that?

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Speaker 1: Gun pay Yoki, the guy who had invented the ultra hand,

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All right, yeah, mister Altrahan. Mister Alterrahan, who, by the way,

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also went on later on to invent this thing you

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might have heard of called the game boy, the game boy, Yes, ultrahand,

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the game Boy, not a bad resume. And our guy

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Segeru Miamato. He invents another game down the road you

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may have heard of, called Zelda. Yes again, and he

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develops the story of a character. But talk about the

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two three really biggest icons of video games in the

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mid eighties. He started Mario, he started Donkey Kong, and

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he started Legend of Zelda.

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Speaker 2: This guy's a he's a legend.

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Speaker 1: He is. So when he starts developing this game, he

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wants to do a Popeye love triangle. He wants Popeye

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Olive Oil and Blue Dump.

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Speaker 2: You know I heard this in researching Donkey Kong. I

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read this and I would I almost fell out of

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my chair because I can now every time I play

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this game, I will see Blueto grabbing Olive Oil and

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Popeye rushing to save her.

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Speaker 1: Yep. If you look at the outside of the cabinet, Pauline,

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the woman looks like somebody out of King Kong, like

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her dress is torn. She's blonde, she's buxom, kind of gorgeous.

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If you look at her in the game, she looks

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like Olive Oil's got the the skirt down to her ankles,

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she's got the hair and a ponytail. She does not

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look like the one on the side of the game cabinet. Okay,

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so they say, hey, Popeye, people who make Popeye license

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it to us, and they say no, right, So Miamatto

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comes up with a different set of characters that are

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still in this love triangle. Blueto becomes this gorilla, Olive

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Oil becomes this pretty woman instead of this gangly woman.

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I guess her name is Pauline. We'll get there. Sorry, No,

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that's all right, No, that's good. Pauline is her name? Okay,

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and jump a man, jumpman? Who is a carpenter? Yes

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he is?

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Speaker 2: So is he a carpenter or a plumber? That's so

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if you'll notice.

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Speaker 1: In Donkey Kong the game takes place on a construction site, right,

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oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, So Mario Matt started off

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as carpenter. Okay. They only changed him into a plumber

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later on when they developed Mario Brothers, which was him

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and his brother Luigi working in pipes and doing plumbing stuff.

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They both had the same look. You got overalls, you

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got a hat. He could be a carpenter or a plumber.

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But in the original Donkey Kong there's no plumbing going on,

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but he is swinging a hammer around. So they create

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the game, they send it to the United States. The

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guys in the United States are like, I really don't

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know about this. This is kind of weird. Yes, and

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they're like, do you have a name for the game,

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And so that he had tried to come up with

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an American name for this game, since it was the

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objective was to be a hit in North America. Right,

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you know how it came about? I think, so go

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for it. Okay.

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Speaker 2: So in Japan, a common term for a gorilla is Kong, yes,

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which that works in America too, right, you have King

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Kong in Japan gorilla. And so I always heard the

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urban legend that it was a mistranslation, that Donkey Kong

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should have been monkey Kong, and that it was a misspelling.

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And by the time they figured it out, it had

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already been printed a million times and it was too much,

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and so they just became Donkey Kong. But based on

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what I have read, and according to Miamato, what he

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wanted to do was he wanted to translate stubborn gorilla.

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He used a posaurus to come up with the term

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for stubborn, and when he looked up the term stubborn,

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one of the things he found was the term donkey,

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and that's how he came up with the name donkey Kong.

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Speaker 1: Right, the idea is simply stupid or stubborn. Eight. So

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now onto the names of the other characters. We know

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how Donkey Kong got his name. He, by the way,

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was supposed to be a pet of jump Man who

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had escaped and taken Jumpman's woman with him.

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Speaker 2: Now, because people have pet gorillas in Japan.

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Speaker 1: Sure they do, right, or America right or whatever. Yeah, okay,

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so how did we get the name Pauline? You know

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this one?

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Speaker 2: No?

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Speaker 1: I don't, all right, So they ship it to America.

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It goes to the going to the warehouse where they

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have those two thousand radar scope games sitting right right.

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The manager of the warehouse is this guy named Don James.

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His wife is named Paulie, and so for her they

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say Paulie James. We're gonna call her Pauline as the

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character nice. The guy who owns the warehouse, their landlord

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who's angry at them because they're going broke and they're

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not paying their rent, is a guy called Mario Cigale,

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and so they name Jumpman after Mario. Those people all

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become very wealthy in a short amount of time. I

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bet they do. Don James is still the executive vice

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president of Operations for Nintendo America.

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Speaker 2: Fantastic.

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Speaker 1: He's been with them for what forty years? Almost? Yeah,

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forty years now. Yeah, that's the thing. All of these

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games are forty years old this year.

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Speaker 2: It's incredible.

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Speaker 1: It's crazy. So he went from being a warehouse manager

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to executive vice president of operations for Nintendo for a

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Nintendo of America yes wow, which he was also, by

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the way, involved in developing the Nintendo Entertainment System.

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Speaker 2: The n E S.

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Speaker 1: Harry Christ. So they get the first game in to

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North America. The guys who are the Nintendo distributors are

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guys named Ron Judy and Alstone. And they look at

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this and they're like, this sucks. There's no way that

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this is going to be a hit in the US.

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We need to start looking for other jobs. Wow. And

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so should say Ron Stone, No, Ron Judy and al Stone? Okay, yes, yes, I.

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Speaker 2: Was gonna say Ron Stone quit van Halen and bailed

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on Donkey Kong Jr. It was Mark Stone Okay, Sorry,

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Oh my gosh, that guy was done looking again in

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the Little World.

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Speaker 1: Okay. So the way that they did it, they realized

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that they could restructure the circuit boards on the Radar

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Scope games in order to make it into this new

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game Donkey Kong. Okay. But these guys looking at saying this,

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this is a waste of time. This is not gonna

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be a success. But they give it a try, you

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know why not. They're in Washington, go to a couple

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of bars in Washington and say, hey, can we put

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this game in here.

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Speaker 2: You know the names of those two bars, go for it.

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The names of those two bars Seattle Washington Goldies and

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Spot Tavern.

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Speaker 1: Right, and so At Goldies and Spot Tavern. People start

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playing the game, and they keep playing the game, and

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they keep playing the game, and the game is making

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thirty dollars a day in Quarters and we're talking about quarters. Yeah,

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thirty dollars worth of quarters is a lot for a

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bar that's not open twenty four hours a day, right, right,

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it's not an arcade, right, And so suddenly they realize,

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holy crap, people love this game, right, And so Ron Judy, Alstone,

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Don James, all of those guys go to work at

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the two thousand left over Radar Scope games that they

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have in there, and they start gutting them and converting

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them all into Donkey Kong games and sell them all immediately,

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and within a couple of months are selling four thousand

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Donkey Kong games a month. They end up selling sixty

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thousand within their first year, and Ron, Judy and else Stone,

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who had been thinking they should go look for other jobs,

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become millionaires. That is awesome. Let's talk about the music

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on this real quick. Okay. Music is composed by a

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guy named Yuki oh Ken. It's a variation of the

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Dragnet theme. What, Yeah, you're gonna hear the Dragnet theme.

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Speaker 2: Now you're blowing my mind.

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Speaker 1: There we go. Yep, you got it.

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Speaker 2: Hey, I want to talk about gameplay for just a second.

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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, okay.

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Speaker 2: So the interesting thing about Donkey Kong is it's a

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level up game, right, which was unusual. I think it's

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maybe the first of its kind where you start at

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the bottom to the top. Yes, along the way, you

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have Donkey Kong throwing barrels at you. Yes, you have

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fireballs that will change direction and sort of random. Yes,

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But the real thing that was really hard on gameplay

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was the crazy barrels. Yes, okay, so normal barrels would

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roll down the level and you'd see them coming. Occasionally

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they'd take a ladder down. But the crazy barrels, you

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had no idea where they're going. They're random, and you.

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Speaker 1: They were falling down without any rolls at all. Mean,

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all the way to the bottom.

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Speaker 2: I mean, you know how many words those crazy barrels.

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Speaker 1: Caused me in my life. Donkey Kong is an incredibly

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difficult game. It's very difficult it is arguably the most

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difficult video game of nineteen eighty one.

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Speaker 2: Well, you have all those random movements that it's hard

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to figure out what to do.

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Speaker 1: And we're just talking about level one. I mean, when

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you get to the elevator level, holy crap, that thing

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is impossible. But I shovel my quarters in Hey, yeah,

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you dude.

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Speaker 2: I like the beginning. It shows screen one twenty five

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meters and it always asks you how high can you get?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? That has been pretty high. Yeah, I bet you

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would read.

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Speaker 2: It's like taunting you.

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Speaker 1: It also had cut scenes in it where it would

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give you a little bit of a storyline in between

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each of your competitions, each of your levels, yep, which

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was nice. You get to figure out what's going on

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with the gorilla and the lady and you, which was

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something we would we would see also again in mis

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pac Man.

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Speaker 2: All right, I got something for you, Yes, all right,

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I had to dig deep on this. Here are a

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few celebrities that are good Donkey Kong players.

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Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, yeah, all right.

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Speaker 2: Three celebrities that I found are reasonably good to excellent

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Donkey Kong players.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: Number one Michael Jackson, Okay, the Moonwalker himself, all right,

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Like Donkey Kong played it a lot. I couldn't find

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any solid info on how good he actually was.

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Speaker 1: You don't know his high score.

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Speaker 2: I do not know his high score, okay, Okay. Number

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two Steven Spielberg had a Donkey Kong cabinet in his

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office and is said to be a very good Donkey

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Kong player.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: Number three Eminem, Okay, he actually tweeted out his high

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score and I saw it on Twitter today. It's something

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like four hundred and sixty five thousand. Wow, fantastic score, right,

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Like that's really good. It's like halfway to world record status.

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Speaker 1: Right, and world record status. I mean yeah, it's like

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one point one. Yeah. I mean when they made when

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they made King of Kong, and we looked at Billy

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Mitchell's score, he was top with eight hundred and something thousand,

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and next below him was five hundred and something thousand.

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So Eminem was within one hundred thousand points of second place. Yeah. Wow, yep,

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there you aggressive. Okay.

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Speaker 2: So, as I understand it, there was a lawsuit involving

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Universal Studios and Nintendo Donkey Kong.

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Speaker 1: Yes, So this started the year after it came out

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not even a full year after it came out. It

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started in April of eighty two, when Sid.

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Speaker 2: Sheinberg flashed back to our Jaws episode.

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Speaker 1: YEP, learned about the game success and thought it might

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be a trademark infringement on Universal's King Kong.

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Speaker 2: Is there a possibility that Sid Sheinberg saw this game

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in Steven Spielberg's office.

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Speaker 1: Could be so they filed a lawsuit against Donkey Kong, claiming,

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among other things, trademark infringement, copyright.

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Speaker 2: Infringement on their King Kong title.

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Speaker 1: On there, Yeah, from King Kong, Donkey Kong. They're saying, no,

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this is they have obviously stolen this. Howard Lincoln was

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Nintendo's lawyer. He was not a litigator. He was the

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guy they were calling about trademarking Donkey Kong. And when

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they asked him, he's like, I'm sorry, what did you say? Donkey?

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Can you spell that? He was expecting them to be

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calling them about bankruptcy. He didn't realize how much the

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success Donkey Kong had, and so Universal sues Nintendo America.

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Now this is going to be a huge deal because

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they're just they're literally just coming up. They're just becoming big,

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and Universal is already gigantic and can decimate them. Right,

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But Howard Lincoln knows another lawyer named John Kirby and

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gives him a call. He says, here's our problem, and

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John Kirby is just this humorless aggressive, meticulous, bad a

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cross examining lawyer. He's like, all right, let's go do

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some research. And so where they go to do research

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but Japan. So John Kirby goes out there and he

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finds Kong in use for car washes and sandwiches and

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about one hundred other different things, and it's always in

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reference to some sort of ape. It's not have anything

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to do with King Kong the movie, right, And so

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he's looking at this and he's like, these lawyers a

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Universal have got to be crazy to file this lawsuit.

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They're just looking to bullyus. And as he does more research,

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he realizes, wait a minute, Universal got sued before about

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King Kong being a copyright infringement of somebody else's story,

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and at that time they argued that it was public domain.

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So not only should they know better, they have to

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know that their argument is crap and that they're just

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trying to bully us, and so not only does he

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win the case for them, but they have to pay

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all the legal fees one point eight million dollars to

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Nintendo America. Nice. So after that, John Kirby, the bulldog lawyer,

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gets boats that are all called Donkey Kong. Yes, and

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there's a character that you might have heard of. As

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a matter of fact, I sent you a picture of it.

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He's round and pink and one of Nintendo's big characters.

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And his name is Kirby.

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Speaker 2: How about that. Yeah, that's fantastic. That blows my mind. Yes,

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I owe Kirby.

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Speaker 1: I was hoping to blow your mind. Yes, they created

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the character Kirby from the attorney that won the Donkey

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Kong loss. Wow. And when asked about that, he was like,

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I don't really think I gave them permission to use.

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Speaker 2: My That is fantastic, all right. That Mario character from

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Donkey Kong has appeared in over two hundred video games.

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Speaker 1: I've played a lot of the Super Mario Brothers is

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without question, my favorite game of all times. Played it

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in the arcade. I can remember with absolute clarity, sitting

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in front of the TV in nineteen eighty five and

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that first advertisement for the Nintendo Gaming System comes on

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and I see the robot, see the gun. I'm like,

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this is pretty cool. And for about three quarters of

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a second, I see Mario jump up and hit a coin,

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and I said, oh my gosh, this is the only

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thing that I want for Christmas. I don't care if

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you get me anything else. I have to have in

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a Nintendo game. Wow, that's awesome. And I got it

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and I spent hours. Yeah, my dad said he used

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to have dreams where the Super Mario Brothers music was

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playing in his grips because I was up so lately

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playing that game.

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Speaker 2: Okay, which I know, yea, all my kids for Yeah, okay,

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00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:35,200
it's twenty twenty. That came out in nineteen eighty five.

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Then Dune Dun du.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I could do that.

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Speaker 2: It's ingrained in our childhood.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's gonna wrap it up for Donkey Kong YEP.

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Come back next week as we dive into another title

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from nineteen eighty one.

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Speaker 1: It's been fun.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna play some names. Yes, Doom Doo doo

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do do do Doom now