Nintendo’s Donkey Kong first appeared in 1981 and quickly became the standard for platform games of the time. Donkey Kong got his name thanks to a Japanese to English dictionary!. Kong was decided on as a good name early on, for fairly obvious reasons, but the Donkey part came when looking up an alternative word for stubborn. Donkey was listed in the dictionary (presumably due to the phrase “stubborn as a mule”) and so Donkey Kong was named. Donkey Kong was created by Shigeru Miyamoto, best known as the creator of Mario, and indeed it was Donkey Kong that also brought us Mario.

The story behind the game was that Donkey Kong had kidnapped Mario’s girlfriend, and it was Mario’s job to rescue her. Donkey Kong may have only had four screens, but they were all very different. The first involved reaching the top of the screen whilst jumping over barrels that DK rolled down the platforms at you. A hammer was available which allowed you to smash the barrels for some bonus points. The second level was a custard pie factory, with conveyor belts that would keep switching direction to confuse the player. Third level was an exercise in jumping with lots of small platforms to be leapt between whilst avoiding the girders being bounced down the screen at you. The final level involved removing rivets from the platforms by jumping over them, and when all had been removed, Kong would plummet to the bottom of the screen. Then it was back to the beginning to start again with an increased difficulty level.

The sequel Donkey Kong Junior followed, but this time it was DK that had been captured by Mario. You played Donkey Kong Junior, who had to traverse the four levels of the game by climbing vines and jumping across platforms to reach his father at the top of the screen. This must be the only game where Mario has been cast as the bad guy (excepting Super Mario Sunshine of course, which doesn’t really count).

Donkey Kong then took a rest for a few years before reappearing in the 1994 SNES game Donkey Kong Country. The game was developed by Rare, and is well known as being one of the first games to feature graphics that were completely computer generated. All the landscapes and character sprites had been modelled and animated in a 3D package, then rendered out and put into the game, rather than each frame of animation being drawn by hand. DK was portrayed as being a bit dim, but very strong, and he was accompanied by Diddy Kong, his younger, smaller chum. Interestingly, DK was presumably meant to actually be Donkey Kong Jr, since there was an old grandad ape called Cranky Kong, who delighted in informing DK and Diddy that in his day you only got 3 lives, and were lucky to have more than a handful of colours.

Donkey Kong Country did well on the SNES and later the Gameboy series, but it was the N64 that saw DK thrust into a full 3D world with the unimaginately named Donkey Kong 64. Again developed by Rare, this game was similar in style to Super Mario 64 and Rare’s own Banjo Kazooie. There were now 5 playable characters, with puzzles in the game only being solvable by a particular character.

Most recently, apart from appearing as a playable character in games like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros., DK has starred in games using Nintendo’s unique bongo controller! There have been two iterations of Donkey Konga, a rhythm action title where you have to bang the bongos and clap as a sequence of icons scrolls across the screen, in time with a selection of well known songs and Nintendo game themes. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat also use the bongos, but this time for controlling the ape around a platform game. Banging the drums moves DK around, and clapping makes him jump. When you get close to an enemy, the game zooms in and frantic bashing of the drums allows you to pummel the enemy into submission.

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