I read a book about this, and from what I remember, the reason Miyamoto was put in charge of the project was basically that Nintendo of America needed a new game by last week and Nintendo of Japan had no one else to spare. They were basically like "well, everyone who actually has experience is super busy, and we can't take them off of their projects. But we have an intern who has some good ideas, and hey, better than nothing, right?"
I was working the register at a store near where I live and a few times I thought I had just sold some stuff to Reggie, but I didn't think it could be true. One day I saw him come in and as he was walking up to the register I finally worked up enough courage to ask him: "are you... Reggie?" And he smiled and responded: "that's me." It was surreal.
The range that Seth Rogen managed to bring to this arcade with just a few beeps is just amazing. I can remember as a kid in the arcade being taunted by Donkey Kong's famous laugh "ehuhehehehheh" as he took the princess and jumped up 20 stories. I still hear it in my nightmares
@@Andrew_182 No Seth Rogen was the body double aside from the laughs. They wanted Seth to do everything but he just laughed and wouldn't do the other lines.
I'm pretty sure the cutscene where Donkey Kong smokes weed is directly responsible for the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screens that would later be everywhere in arcade games
DK is a marvel of programming. So many little details that make it look nice, for example how the barrels falls, how they bounce when they land falling from a girder. And then the extremely challenging, frustrating and yet satisfying gameplay.
Calling it a "marvel of programming" is funny because it's like the most basic ass beginner game every NES emulator developer tries to get running first before implementing any of the more complex hardware mechanics
fun fact: Shigeru Miyamoto was presented with the opportunity to put a patent on jumping in video games since Donkey Kong was the first game which featured the player being able to jump. Miyamoto thankfully decided against patenting it because he knew that would be horrible for other video game developers.
Dunkey is one of the few folks I could actually see doing this. Writing a movie called "Dunkey's History of Video Games" would be excellent. Make it a 60 minute documentary and sell it to Netflix.
For the respect towards Gunpei Yokoi (Father of Samus Aran & Wario) and love for the massively underrated Donkey Kong 94’ (the first instance of 3D Mario’s jump mechanics) this is sincerely my favorite video of yours ever.
The real story is that Miyamoto wanted to convey that the monkey is a stubborn jerk, and he saw that one English idiom for this is to say someone is "behaving like an ass." As in, a stubborn ass. But he didn't realize that the idiom doesn't really translate if you use a different, more alliterative word for an ass, a donkey. Hence, Donkey Kong -- it's supposed to mean something like "this monkey is a stubborn jerk," but it doesn't quite make sense, since it's a Japanese guy trying to do wordplay in a language he's not fluent in.
There's one more fun thing to this story. After the game became a success the other programmers wanted some of that sweet money. But Miyamoto grabbed it all, ran up to the roof, yelled "I am the Donkey CEO now!" and summoned fireballs that burned down the building.
Something tells me that this year's Donkey Kong December is going to consist of documentary-esque videos on the history of Donkey Kong and I am here for it.
Check out jeremy parish's nes works or famicom works series, he does very in depth retrospectives on each game released for the nes with a focus on their history/creation and impact. Also has series for game boy, snes, virtual boy and a couple other shorter ones
@@mkultra2456 34 years of honestly. Not that it concerns you young'n. Don't make me come over there and put you in the corner of disturbing mental flashes.
@@mkultra2456 sure but you and I are still talking aren't we? Is stuff like this really important to you? I've just been getting a little chuckle over here. Cheers kid
Very well done. Gets straight to the point, tells an important story without once throat clearing or needing to remind us of how "important" it really is. Lots of confidence in Dunkey's style here. lol
To me, the franchise’s true success wasn’t until the release of SUPER DONKEY KONG SHAKE, subsequently followed by the Dunkey video of the same title, dubbed the greatest RU-vid video of all time.
Hey Dunk, great stuff as always. In my humble opinion, you should make more vid like this, but longer, even if they call for a new channel to house them. You really know how to hold attention and tell a story man.. Great job!
Thank you Dunkey. That game was revolutionary and you didn’t even talk about it. Handstands, triple jumps, gigantic boss. Shivers up and down my spine.
One of my favorite stories about the success of Donkey Kong was that it got popular enough that Universal was like, "It too much like King Kong, we're gonna sue." and Nintendo said "bet." Then they took millions from Universal.
so glad he addressed the tie fighter thing. when it first flashed up in the video, i was like, is he really not gonna say anything about that?! but then he did, after a beat. thank goodness.
The great thing about Dunkey’s documentary-type videos (this is especially true in the KH video) is that he makes jokes about the stuff that people often don’t care about, but he’s always got the facts straight.
