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230-568: Donkey Kong is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for Nintendo . It follows the adventures of Donkey Kong , a large, powerful gorilla, and other members of the Kong family of apes. Donkey Kong games include the original arcade game trilogy by Nintendo R&D1 ; the Donkey Kong Country series by Rare and Retro Studios ; and

460-527: A Donkey Kong game for the Switch for six months. Codenamed Freedom , the project was an open-world 3D platformer that emphasized traversal, with grinding on vines as a core mechanic. It was canceled in 2016 after Activision Blizzard , Vicarious Visions' parent company, redirected its developers' focus to the Call of Duty franchise. Nintendo Life reported in 2021 that Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development

690-465: A Donkey Kong Country revival. Producer Kensuke Tanabe suggested that Retro Studios , which had developed the Metroid Prime series, would be suitable. With Donkey Kong Country Returns , Retro sought to refine classic Country elements and introduce mechanics such as surface-clinging and simultaneous multiplayer . Returns , the first original Country game since Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! ,

920-435: A boss fight with a large enemy. The Country series is known for its high difficulty level and emphasis on momentum, requiring players to react to oncoming obstacles quickly to maintain flow. Players control one of the various playable Kongs, depending on the game: Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, Kiddy Kong, Cranky Kong, and Funky Kong. The Rare games each feature two protagonists, with one protagonist carrying over to

1150-447: A comedy rap song which introduces the Kong characters. It was written by Donkey Kong 64 's director, George Andreas, scored and recorded by Kirkhope, and performed by Andreas and Chris Sutherland, with other Rare staff joining on the chorus. Wise was unavailable during the development of Donkey Kong Country Returns , so Kenji Yamamoto took over. At the request of Miyamoto and Iwata,

1380-805: A display device , most commonly shown in a video format on a television set , computer monitor , flat-panel display or touchscreen on handheld devices , or a virtual reality headset . These games are addictive and can lead to the release of dopamine in the addict's synapses. Most modern video games are audiovisual , with audio complement delivered through speakers or headphones , and sometimes also with other types of sensory feedback (e.g., haptic technology that provides tactile sensations). Some video games also allow microphone and webcam inputs for in-game chatting and livestreaming . Video games are typically categorized according to their hardware platform , which traditionally includes arcade video games , console games , and computer (PC) games ;

1610-494: A surfer ; Candy Kong , Donkey Kong's girlfriend; Dixie Kong, Diddy's girlfriend; Kiddy Kong, a large toddler; Chunky Kong , Kiddy's brother; Tiny Kong , Dixie's sister; and Lanky Kong , a buffoonish orangutan . Country introduced King K. Rool , an anthropomorphic crocodile who serves as the series' main antagonist. K. Rool leads the Kremlings, an army of crocodiles who seek to steal Donkey Kong's hoard of bananas. Their name

1840-457: A teletype printer , audio speaker , or similar device. This also distinguished from many handheld electronic games like Merlin which commonly used LED lights for indicators but did not use these in combination for imaging purposes. "Computer game" may also be used as a descriptor, as all these types of games essentially require the use of a computer processor, and in some cases, it is used interchangeably with "video game". Particularly in

2070-689: A "1940s big band jazz " sound that he had been unable to produce on the SNES. Beyond the Country series, Wise composed the Diddy Kong Racing soundtrack. Other composers who have contributed to Donkey Kong games include Mahito Yokota , who composed for Jungle Beat , and Lawrence Schwedler, who composed for Mario vs. Donkey Kong . Donkey Kong is represented in every game in Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games . Donkey Kong debuted in

2300-575: A "pretty melody", which he compared to those in Disney films. He faced resistance from the designers, who wanted comical music to reflect the games' tone. Hirokazu Tanaka , a sound engineer who later garnered recognition for his work on Nintendo's Metroid and Pokémon franchises, also contributed, while Miyamoto wrote Donkey Kong 's opening and closing music. The Donkey Kong Country series features atmospheric music that mixes natural environmental sounds with melodic and percussive accompaniments. It

2530-510: A CD-i Donkey Kong game; it was developed between 1992 and 1993, but canceled. Nintendo staff began discussing a Donkey Kong revival as the original game's tenth anniversary approached in 1991. While they were initially limited to including Donkey Kong Jr. as a playable character in Super Mario Kart (1992), the discussions led to the production of the Game Boy game Donkey Kong (1994),

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2760-544: A DEC PDP-1 computer in 1962. Each game has different means of display: NIMROD has a panel of lights to play the game of Nim , OXO has a graphical display to play tic-tac-toe, Tennis for Two has an oscilloscope to display a side view of a tennis court, and Spacewar! has the DEC PDP-1's vector display to have two spaceships battle each other. These inventions laid the foundation for modern video games. In 1966, while working at Sanders Associates , Ralph H. Baer devised

2990-558: A Nintendo of America executive following the Universal lawsuit, learned of Rare's SGI experiments during a trip to Europe. After impressing Nintendo with a demonstration, Tim Stamper suggested developing a platform game that used pre-rendered 3D graphics . Nintendo granted the Stampers permission to use the Donkey Kong intellectual property ; some sources indicate that the Stampers obtained

3220-463: A cage. The game introduces Donkey Kong's son, the diaper-wearing Donkey Kong Jr. Mario, Pauline, Donkey Kong, and Jr. return in the 1994 Game Boy Donkey Kong , in which Mario again must rescue Pauline from the Kongs. The Game Boy game was the first Donkey Kong game to depict Donkey Kong wearing a red necktie bearing his initials, "DK". Beginning with Donkey Kong Country , Donkey Kong's role shifted from

3450-460: A challenge. In certain levels, the player can free an animal that provides the Kongs with special abilities, similar to the Super Mario series' Yoshi . Recurring animal friends include Rambi, a rhino that can charge into enemies and find hidden entrances; Enguarde, a swordfish that can defeat enemies underwater; and Squawks, a parrot who carries the Kongs or assists in finding collectibles. Outside

3680-475: A city to Donkey Kong Island, an idyllic isle. Because Donkey Kong did not have much of an established universe, Rare was free to expand it with new characters. Donkey Kong Country introduced Diddy Kong, Donkey Kong's sidekick and nephew. Diddy's design was based on a spider monkey ; he was created as a redesign of Donkey Kong Jr. but retooled into a separate character at Nintendo's request. Other supporting Kong characters that Rare introduced include Funky Kong ,

3910-437: A combination of the limitations of the game platform and display device and the program efficiency of the game itself. The game's output can range from fixed displays using LED or LCD elements, text-based games , two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphics, and augmented reality displays. The game's graphics are often accompanied by sound produced by internal speakers on the game platform or external speakers attached to

4140-445: A developer's programming language of choice, or they may opt to also use game development kits that minimize the amount of direct programming they have to do but can also limit the amount of customization they can add into a game. Like all software, video games usually undergo quality testing before release to assure there are no bugs or glitches in the product, though frequently developers will release patches and updates . With

4370-566: A different color soon crowd the shelves. That is, until the public stops buying or something better comes along. Companies who believe that microcomputer games are the hula hoop of the 1980s only want to play Quick Profit". The degree of cloning was so great that in 1981, Atari warned in full-page advertisements "Piracy: This Game is Over", stating that the company "will protect its rights by vigorously enforcing [its] copyrights and by taking appropriate action against unauthorized entities who reproduce or adapt substantial copies of ATARI games", like

4600-414: A distance. Donkey Kong 3 departs from this gameplay: it is a shooter game in which the player controls Stanley, an exterminator who must prevent Donkey Kong from stirring up insects in his greenhouse. The player fires bug spray at Donkey Kong and enemy insects that attempt to steal Stanley's flowers. They complete levels by spraying Donkey Kong enough to force him to the top of the screen or by killing all

4830-414: A fictional piece of technology from Star Trek , arguing for the video game as a medium in which the player is allowed to become another person, and to act out in another world. This image of video games received early widespread popular support, and forms the basis of films such as Tron , eXistenZ and The Last Starfighter . Ludologists break sharply and radically from this idea. They argue that

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5060-512: A financial crisis. Its founder, Minoru Arakawa , asked his father in-law, the Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi , to provide a new game that could repurpose the unsold Radar Scope cabinets. Most of Nintendo's top developers were preoccupied, so the task went to Shigeru Miyamoto , a first-time game designer. Supervised by Gunpei Yokoi , Miyamoto settled on a love triangle with the characters Bluto , Popeye , and Olive Oyl from

5290-441: A flooded dedicated-game console market, and creating the industry's first market crash in 1977. Eventually, home consoles switched from built-in games to programmable microprocessor -based systems that operated from software stored in game cartridges within the second generation , making it more difficult to clone at the hardware level. However, off-brand manufacturers attempted to make bootleg copies of these consoles that has

5520-432: A game following its initial release. Several games offer players the ability to create user-generated content to share with others to play. Other games, mostly those on personal computers, can be extended with user-created modifications or mods that alter or add onto the game; these often are unofficial and were developed by players from reverse engineering of the game, but other games provide official support for modding

5750-579: A game in digital marketplaces is common. It is hard to prevent and easy to compete with existing games. Developers can copyright the graphics, title, story, and characters, but have more difficulty protecting software design and game mechanics. A patent for the mechanics is possible but expensive and time-consuming. Popular game concepts often lead to that concept becoming incorporated or expanded upon by other developers. In other cases, games may be developed with clear influence from one or more earlier games. Such derivations are not always considered clones though

5980-405: A home-computer clone. In Atari, Inc. v. Amusement World, Inc. (547 F. Supp. 222, 1982), Atari sued Amusement World claiming that its video game Meteors violated their copyright on Asteroids . The court did find twenty-two similarities between the two games, but ruled against Atari's claims, citing these elements as scènes à faire for games about shooting at asteroids. This was based on

6210-578: A kidnapped Donkey Kong and introduces Diddy's girlfriend Dixie Kong . Diddy's Kong Quest was designed to be less linear and more challenging, with a theme reflecting Mayles' fascination with pirates. Like its predecessor, Diddy's Kong Quest was a major critical and commercial success, and is the sixth-bestselling SNES game. Following Diddy's Kong Quest , the Donkey Kong Country team split in two, with one half working on Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! (1996). Featuring Dixie and

6440-417: A lawsuit in 1976 by declaring that King Kong was actually in the public domain . Miyamoto and his team used game mechanics and levels that could not be included in Donkey Kong as the basis for a sequel. Miyamoto wanted to make Donkey Kong the protagonist, but the sprite graphic was too big to easily maneuver, so he created a new character, Donkey Kong Jr. The team still wanted Donkey Kong on top of

6670-415: A letter dated July 10, 1972. In the letter, Bushnell uses the term "video game" twice. Per video game historian Keith Smith, the sudden appearance suggested that the term had been proposed and readily adopted by those in the field. Around March 1973, Ed Adlum, who ran Cashbox ' s coin-operated section until 1972 and then later founded RePlay Magazine , covering the coin-op amusement field, in 1975, used

6900-557: A limited fashion to protect novel gameplay ideas, such as the navigation system in Sega's Crazy Taxi games. Sega sued Fox Interactive for patent infringement for their use of a similar system in The Simpsons: Road Rage , a case that was ultimately settled out of court. Trademarks have also been used in a very limited fashion to block other developers from using the same terminology for their games or gameplay. More recently, with

7130-504: A limited number of platforms, and exclusivity to a platform or brand is used by platform holders as a competitive edge in the video game market. However, games may be developed for alternative platforms than intended, which are described as ports or conversions. These also may be remasters - where most of the original game's source code is reused and art assets, models, and game levels are updated for modern systems – and remakes, where in addition to asset improvements, significant reworking of

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7360-558: A loss of over $ 100 million to Donkey Kong clones on various different platforms despite attempts at litigation to stop them; the matter was further complicated by the Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. case where Universal Studios who claimed ownership over King Kong attempted to take action against Donkey Kong and its clones, notably the Tiger Electronics handheld electronic game King Kong , but

7590-453: A major Nintendo franchise and heralded Donkey Kong's transition from villain to hero. Following the success, Nintendo purchased a large minority stake in Rare. Rare began developing concepts for a Donkey Kong Country sequel during production, and Nintendo green-lit the project immediately after the success. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest , released in 1995, features Diddy rescuing

7820-432: A minimum age is used by nearly all systems, along with additional descriptors to identify specific content that players and parents should be aware of. The regulations vary from country to country but generally are voluntary systems upheld by vendor practices, with penalty and fines issued by the ratings body on the video game publisher for misuse of the ratings. Among the major content rating systems include: Additionally,

8050-606: A mobile game named Magic Survival . Another major area of concern for software clones arises within China. From 2000 to 2015, the Chinese government had numerous restrictions on imports of hardware and software, and access to non-Chinese storefronts. While this allowed gaming on personal computers to flourish within China, the cost of acquiring both hardware and software was too expensive for many, leading to Chinese developers to create low-cost clones of popular Western and Japanese titles for

8280-630: A new character, Kiddy Kong , as protagonists, the Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! team sought to incorporate 3D-esque gameplay and Zelda -inspired role-playing elements. Although it was released late in the SNES's lifespan and after the launch of the Nintendo 64 , Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! sold well. Separate Rare teams developed the Game Boy games Donkey Kong Land (1995), Donkey Kong Land 2 (1996), and Donkey Kong Land III (1997), which condensed

8510-454: A number of clones appear on the App Store in early January, only to be removed in the wake of users criticizing the clone developers. The developers of Vampire Survivors fast-tracked the development of a mobile port of their game as a response to a number of clones that appeared on mobile app stores with stolen code and assets from the original game; Vampire Survivors itself was inspired by

8740-464: A perpetual license to the three patents and other technology sharing agreements, allowing them to continue to release their home version of Pong . This case was ultimately decided in Magnavox's favor against the remaining defendants in early 1977. However, just as with the arcade version, the home version of Pong drew a number of third-party hardware manufacturers to make Pong clones on the market, to

8970-551: A platform, the hardware which contains computing elements, to process player interaction from some type of input device and displays the results to a video output display. Video games require a platform, a specific combination of electronic components or computer hardware and associated software , to operate. The term system is also commonly used. These platforms may include multiple brandsheld by platform holders , such as Nintendo or Sony, seeking to gain larger market shares. Games are typically designed to be played on one or

9200-521: A point where it was estimated that Atari's Pong console represented only about a third of sales of home Pong consoles. Magnavox continued to pursue action against these Pong clones using the three patents, estimated to have won over US$ 100 million in damages from suits and settlements through the lifetime of the patents. Threats of lawsuits did not prevent more clones of the home console systems from being built, as these dedicated consoles were relatively risk free and easy to manufacture. This led to

9430-454: A principle in copyright law known as the idea-expression distinction , that copyright does protect the idea for a game only the game's unique expression. In 1980, Namco released Pac-Man which became a massive commercial success, leading to the development of numerous Pac-Man clones . Between October 1980 and December 1981, the Pac-Man game alone generated $ 150 million in sales. Philips

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9660-556: A prominent brand in America. Donkey Kong achieved further success in 1982, when Nintendo released a Game & Watch adaptation and licensed it to Coleco for ports to home consoles . It grossed $ 4.4 billion across various formats, making it one of the highest-grossing games of all time. In 1982, Universal City Studios filed a lawsuit alleging Donkey Kong violated its trademark of King Kong . The lawsuit failed when Nintendo's lawyer, Howard Lincoln , discovered that Universal had won

9890-508: A proposal for his idea from his superiors, Baer worked with Sanders engineers Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch to execute its design while keeping it within a low cost target. By 1967, the optimized design was ready to be shopped to other manufacturers as Sanders was not in that market area. To protect the idea, Sanders applied for and received three patents in Baer's, Harrison's, and Rusch's names, covering their "television gaming apparatus"; this included

10120-464: A relatively recent development in the humanities. The two most visible schools in this emerging field are ludology and narratology . Narrativists approach video games in the context of what Janet Murray calls "Cyberdrama". That is to say, their major concern is with video games as a storytelling medium, one that arises out of interactive fiction . Murray puts video games in the context of the Holodeck ,

10350-774: A sales disappointment. Rare began looking to be acquired, but Nintendo did not see Rare remaining valuable in the long term and opted against acquiring them. In September 2002, Microsoft acquired Rare for $ 375 million, making Rare a first-party developer for Xbox . Nintendo retained the rights to Donkey Kong under the terms of the acquisition. Donkey Kong Racing was canceled, and Rare reworked Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers and Diddy Kong Pilot into It's Mr. Pants (2004) and Banjo-Pilot (2005). After Microsoft acquired Rare, Nintendo relegated Donkey Kong to spin-offs and guest appearances in its other franchises, such as Mario Kart , Mario Party , and Super Smash Bros. In 2003, Nintendo and Namco released Donkey Konga (2003),

10580-455: A service . Today, video game development requires numerous interdisciplinary skills, vision , teamwork , and liaisons between different parties, including developers , publishers , distributors , retailers , hardware manufacturers, and other marketers, to successfully bring a game to its consumers. As of 2020 , the global video game market had estimated annual revenues of US$ 159 billion across hardware, software, and services, which

10810-510: A similar form as the known console, but typically could only play built in games frequently on a liquid-crystal display (LCD). Other bootleg consoles would take the workings of older systems and repackage them in a newer housing that appears like the known consoles capable of playing the games from the original system. The latter was particularly true of consoles that attempted to clone the Nintendo Entertainment System (known as

11040-590: A similar version running in a smaller coin-operated arcade cabinet using a less expensive computer. This was released as Computer Space , the first arcade video game , in 1971. Bushnell and Dabney went on to form Atari, Inc. , and with Allan Alcorn , created their second arcade game in 1972, the hit ping pong -style Pong , which was directly inspired by the table tennis game on the Odyssey. Sanders and Magnavox sued Atari for infringement of Baer's patents, but Atari settled out of court, paying for perpetual rights to

11270-522: A spin-off rhythm game . It was designed for the DK Bongos , a GameCube peripheral that resembles bongo drums . Nintendo of America executive Reggie Fils-Aimé opposed releasing Donkey Konga , concerned it would damage the Donkey Kong brand, but it sold well and received positive reviews. It was followed by Donkey Konga 2 (2004) and the Japan exclusive Donkey Konga 3 (2005). Donkey Kong Jungle Beat ,

11500-515: A system to play a basic table tennis game on a television screen. With the company's approval, Baer created the prototype known as the "Brown Box." Sanders patented Baer’s innovations and licensed them to Magnavox , which commercialized the technology as the first home video game console , the Magnavox Odyssey , released in 1972. Separately, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney , inspired by seeing Spacewar! running at Stanford University , devised

11730-424: A video game are primarily determined by the underlying set of rules, demands, and expectations imposed on the player. While many games rely on emergent principles , video games commonly present simulated story worlds where emergent behavior occurs within the context of the game. The term "emergent narrative" has been used to describe how, in a simulated environment, storyline can be created simply by "what happens to

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11960-412: A video game is first and foremost a game, which must be understood in terms of its rules, interface, and the concept of play that it deploys. Espen J. Aarseth argues that, although games certainly have plots, characters, and aspects of traditional narratives, these aspects are incidental to gameplay. For example, Aarseth is critical of the widespread attention that narrativists have given to the heroine of

12190-457: A way to distinguish them from console games , arcade games , or mobile games . Other terms such as "television game", "telegame", or "TV game" had been used in the 1970s and early 1980s, particularly for home gaming consoles that rely on connection to a television set . However, these terms were also used interchangeably with "video game" in the 1970s, primarily due to "video" and "television" being synonymous. In Japan , where consoles like

12420-565: A week of release. Meanwhile, the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series continued with Tipping Stars (2015) and Mini Mario & Friends: Amiibo Challenge (2016) for the Wii U and 3DS, and a remake of the first Mario vs. Donkey Kong (2024) with new levels and cooperative gameplay for the Switch. As of 2024, Tropical Freeze remains the Donkey Kong franchise's most recent major game. Nintendo and Vicarious Visions , with consultation from Miyamoto, worked on

12650-411: A word from Billboard ' s description of movie jukeboxes, Adlum started to refer to this new breed of amusement machine as 'video games.' The phrase stuck." Adlum explained in 1985 that up until the early 1970s, amusement arcades typically had non-video arcade games such as pinball machines and electro-mechanical games . With the arrival of video games in arcades during the early 1970s, there

12880-536: Is a clone of Blizzard Entertainment 's Hearthstone called Sleeping Dragon: Heroes of the Three Kingdoms created by Chinese developer Unico, released within a few months of Hearthstone 's beta release. Blizzard was ultimately successful in suing Unico for US$ 1.9 million in damages in 2014. In other cases, clones are made to address elements of the original game that are unsuitable under China's content restriction laws; for example, Tencent , which operated

13110-628: Is a play on the Moscow Kremlin and their theme music incorporates Soviet influences . Polygon summarized K. Rool as an archetypal game villain who "often wears disguises and invents strange gadgets for his elaborately evil schemes", such as dressing as a pirate captain in Donkey Kong Country 2 . Villains introduced in the Retro Studios Country games include the Tiki Tak Tribe, a race of floating masks who hypnotize animals into stealing

13340-431: Is a video game "appears highly eclectic and diverse". The gameplay experience varies radically between video games, but many common elements exist. Most games will launch into a title screen and give the player a chance to review options such as the number of players before starting a game. Most games are divided into levels which the player must work the avatar through, scoring points , collecting power-ups to boost

13570-459: Is frequently a cross-disciplinary field. Video game developers , as employees within this industry are commonly referred to, primarily include programmers and graphic designers . Over the years, this has expanded to include almost every type of skill that one might see prevalent in the creation of any movie or television program, including sound designers , musicians, and other technicians; as well as skills that are specific to video games, such as

13800-421: Is from 1947—a " cathode-ray tube amusement device " was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U.S. Patent 2455992. Inspired by radar display technology, it consists of an analog device allowing a user to control the parabolic arc of a dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets, which are paper drawings fixed to

14030-412: Is generally considered derogatory. True video game clones occur when competitors, on seeing the success of a video game title, attempt to compete by creating a near-copy of the existing game with similar assets and gameplay with little additional innovation; developer Jenova Chen compared the nature of these clones similar to plagiarism in which there is little attempt to distinguish the new work from

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14260-500: Is mostly isolated from the rest of the world due to the government's censorship, and all games published there must adhere to strict government review, disallowing content such as smearing the image of the Chinese Communist Party . Foreign games published in China often require modification by developers and publishers to meet these requirements. Video game development and authorship, much like any other form of entertainment,

14490-472: Is one of Nintendo's bestselling franchises, with more than 65 million copies sold by 2021. The original game was Nintendo's first major international success, rescued Nintendo of America from a financial crisis, and established it as a prominent force in the video game industry . The franchise has pioneered or popularized concepts such as in-game storytelling and pre-rendered graphics, inspired other games (including clones ), and influenced popular culture. In

14720-447: Is the primary means which one interacts with a video game. The narrative setting does not impact gameplay; a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of whether it takes place in a fantasy world or in outer space. An exception is the horror game genre, used for games that are based on narrative elements of horror fiction , the supernatural , and psychological horror . Genre names are normally self-describing in terms of

14950-571: Is three times the size of the global music industry and four times that of the film industry in 2019, making it a formidable heavyweight across the modern entertainment industry . The video game market is also a major influence behind the electronics industry , where personal computer component, console, and peripheral sales, as well as consumer demands for better game performance, have been powerful driving factors for hardware design and innovation. Early video games use interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example

15180-459: The Mario vs. Donkey Kong series by Nintendo Software Technology . Various studios have developed spin-offs in genres such as edutainment , puzzle , racing , and rhythm . The franchise also incorporates animation, printed media, theme parks, and merchandise. Miyamoto designed the original 1981 Donkey Kong to repurpose unsold arcade cabinets following the failure of Radar Scope (1980). It

15410-470: The Popeye franchise, but a licensing deal between Nintendo and King Features fell through. Bluto evolved into a gorilla, an animal Miyamoto said was "nothing too evil or repulsive". He named him Donkey Kong — donkey to convey stubborn and kong to imply gorilla . Popeye became Mario , the new protagonist, while Olive Oyl became Pauline , the damsel in distress . Miyamoto cited the fairy tale " Beauty and

15640-644: The Transformers franchise) voiced Mario and Donkey Kong Jr. Donkey Kong is also a recurring character in Captain N: The Game Master , a DIC Entertainment series that ran on NBC for 34 episodes between 1989 and 1991. Donkey Kong Country , a television series produced by the French-Canadian company Medialab Technology, ran for 40 episodes between 1997 and 2000, bridging the gap between Dixie Kong's Double Trouble and Donkey Kong 64 . Reflecting

15870-523: The Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test that clones that not only copy gameplay without excessive changes but also too much of the original game's look and feel were in violation of copyright law. This new approach gave developers a better means to fight against direct clones. Despite this, there has only been an incremental increase, with the courts applying this legal standard carefully to new cases. Legal scholars have argued that

16100-515: The Berne Convention . This typically only applies to the underlying code, as well as to the artistic aspects of the game such as its writing, art assets, and music. Gameplay itself is generally not considered copyrightable; in the United States among other countries, video games are considered to fall into the idea–expression distinction in that it is how the game is presented and expressed to

16330-637: The Clue VCR Mystery Game which required players to watch VCR clips between turns. To distinguish between these two, video games are considered to require some interactivity that affects the visual display. Most video games tend to feature some type of victory or winning conditions, such as a scoring mechanism or a final boss fight. The introduction of walking simulators ( adventure games that allow for exploration but lack any objectives) like Gone Home , and empathy games (video games that tend to focus on emotion) like That Dragon, Cancer brought

16560-549: The Country games, but require players to use the shoulder buttons to grab and climb pegboards to reach the end of a level. Diddy Kong Racing and Donkey Kong Barrel Blast are kart racing games that play similarly to the Mario Kart series, though Diddy Kong Racing features an adventure mode with boss fights and Barrel Blast has the player shake the Wii Remote and Nunchuk alternatively to accelerate. The Donkey Konga trilogy

16790-459: The Country series' gameplay for the handheld game console . Rare's Game Boy programmer, Paul Machacek, convinced Tim Stamper that developing Land as an original game rather than a port would be a better use of resources. A port of Country was eventually released for the Game Boy Color in 2000. Rare also developed a tech demo for a Virtual Boy Donkey Kong game, which was canceled after

17020-559: The Mario franchise, and Donkey Kong characters appear in Mario games such as Mario Kart , Mario Party , and Mario Tennis . Donkey Kong has also crossed over with other franchises in games such as Mario & Sonic and Super Smash Bros. Outside of video games, the franchise includes the animated series Donkey Kong Country (1997–2000), a themed area in Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios , soundtrack albums, and Lego construction toys. Donkey Kong

17250-542: The Returns soundtrack mostly comprises rearrangements of tracks from the original Donkey Kong Country , plus some new material by Yamamoto. He focused on what Tanabe felt made Donkey Kong Country 's music iconic, such as piano arrangements and the bassline . Wise left Rare during Returns ' development and collaborated with Yamamoto on the Tropical Freeze soundtrack. Technological advances allowed Wise to achieve

17480-540: The United Kingdom and Western Europe , this is common due to the historic relevance of domestically produced microcomputers. Other terms used include digital game, for example, by the Australian Bureau of Statistics . However, the term "computer game" can also be used to more specifically refer to games played primarily on personal computers or other types of flexible hardware systems (also known as PC game ), as

17710-485: The Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle ( Entertainment Software Self-Regulation ) would refuse to classify, and thus allow sale, of any game depicting Nazi imagery, and thus often requiring developers to replace such imagery with fictional ones. This ruling was relaxed in 2018 to allow for such imagery for "social adequacy" purposes that applied to other works of art. China's video game segment

17940-444: The abstraction test to find that Munchkin had in fact copied the unique expression of Pac-Man , particularly the character design . As a result of Atari's successful motion, Philips was legally barred from selling K.C. Munchkin . Courts later barred other clones of Pac-Man, including Packri-Monster by Bandai , Puckman by Artic International, and another similar game called Mighty Mouth . Siva Vaidhyanathan suggests that

18170-442: The auto battler genre by mid-2019. Another type of clone arose from developers in the modding , open source , and indie game communities, where these developers seek to recreate the mechanics of a popular title through reverse engineering , sometimes using their own original assets, and releasing the game typically for free and in homage to the original title. This allows the teams and users to expand upon original elements of

18400-476: The crash of the North American video game market in 1983 due to loss of publishing control and saturation of the market. Following the crash, the industry matured, was dominated by Japanese companies such as Nintendo , Sega , and Sony , and established practices and methods around the development and distribution of video games to prevent a similar crash in the future, many of which continue to be followed. In

18630-611: The first-person shooter and the Grand Theft Auto clone , respectively, in the few years after their release. However, at times and more frequently at the onset of the industry, developers would intentionally create video game clones of successful games and game hardware with few changes, which led to the flooded arcade and dedicated home console market around 1978. Cloning is also a major issue with countries that do not have strong intellectual property protection laws, such as within China . The lax oversight by China's government and

18860-409: The game designer . All of these are managed by producers . In the early days of the industry, it was more common for a single person to manage all of the roles needed to create a video game. As platforms have become more complex and powerful in the type of material they can present, larger teams have been needed to generate all of the art, programming, cinematography, and more. This is not to say that

19090-503: The idea–expression distinction , that one cannot copyright the underlying gameplay but can copyright a specific implementation of it. Case law until 2012 has generally favorable to clones, often ruling that clones of a game do not violate copyright since they meet scènes à faire principle, elements necessary for a specific theme of a game. However, in two separate U.S. cases in 2012, Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. and Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc. , courts found using

19320-458: The strategy video game Lemmings (1991). The Donkey Kong Country series features platforming gameplay in which players complete side-scrolling levels to progress, reminiscent of Nintendo's Super Mario series. The player begins in a world map that tracks their progress and provides access to the themed worlds and their levels. They traverse the environment, jump between platforms, and avoid enemy and inanimate obstacles. Each world ends with

19550-439: The 1950s and 1960s were simple extensions of electronic games using video-like output from large, room-sized mainframe computers . The first consumer video game was the arcade video game Computer Space in 1971. In 1972 came the iconic hit game Pong and the first home console , the Magnavox Odyssey . The industry grew quickly during the "golden age" of arcade video games from the late 1970s to early 1980s but suffered from

19780-519: The 1970s and 1980s before having a larger worldwide contribution. Today, the video game industry is predominantly led by major companies in North America (primarily the United States and Canada), Europe, and southeast Asia including Japan, South Korea, and China. Hardware production remains an area dominated by Asian companies either directly involved in hardware design or part of the production process, but digital distribution and indie game development of

20010-578: The 1974 reissued U.S. Patent RE28,507 for a "television gaming apparatus", U.S. Patent 3,659,285 for a "television gaming apparatus and method", and U.S. Patent 3,728,480 for a "television gaming and training apparatus". Sanders eventually licensed the technology and the patents to Magnavox , which used it to make the Magnavox Odyssey , released in 1972. In 1974, Magnavox sued several companies on patent infringement for creating and distributing table-tennis arcade games including Atari and Midway. Atari settled in 1976 and agreed to pay Magnavox US$ 1,500,000 for

20240-522: The 1983 crash, forming around the concept of publisher-developer dichotomies, and by the 2000s, leading to the industry centralizing around low-risk, triple-A games and studios with large development budgets of at least $ 10 million or more. The advent of the Internet brought digital distribution as a viable means to distribute games, and contributed to the growth of more riskier, experimental independent game development as an alternative to triple-A games in

20470-462: The 1993 game . A hierarchy of game genres exist, with top-level genres like "shooter game" and "action game" that broadly capture the game's main gameplay style, and several subgenres of specific implementation, such as within the shooter game first-person shooter and third-person shooter . Some cross-genre types also exist that fall until multiple top-level genres such as action-adventure game . A video game's mode describes how many players can use

20700-626: The 2000s, the core industry centered on " AAA " games, leaving little room for riskier experimental games. Coupled with the availability of the Internet and digital distribution , this gave room for independent video game development (or " indie games ") to gain prominence into the 2010s. Since then, the commercial importance of the video game industry has been increasing. The emerging Asian markets and proliferation of smartphone games in particular are altering player demographics towards casual gaming and increasing monetization by incorporating games as

20930-615: The Bear and Conker the Squirrel , later starred in the Banjo-Kazooie and Conker franchises. Rare began working on Donkey Kong 64 , the first Donkey Kong platform game to feature 3D gameplay, in 1997. They conceived it as a linear game similar to the Country series, but switched to a more open-ended design using the game engine from their 1998 game Banjo-Kazooie after 18 months. Transitioning Donkey Kong to 3D proved challenging since

21160-526: The Bear and Conker the Squirrel, were introduced in Diddy Kong Racing ahead of starring in their own games, Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001). Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. are early examples of the platform game genre. In both games, the player must guide the playable character (Mario in the first game, Donkey Kong Jr. in the second) to scale four levels while avoiding obstacles. The player jumps to dodge incoming obstacles (such as barrels) or cross gaps and climbs ladders or vines to reach

21390-516: The Beast " and the 1933 film King Kong as influences. Donkey Kong was one of the earliest platform games , with players controlling Mario as he ascends a construction site to rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong. Whereas previous platform games focused on climbing, Miyamoto placed an emphasis on jumping to avoid obstacles and cross gaps. He envisioned something akin to a playable comic strip that unfolded across multiple levels with unique scenarios. This

21620-561: The CEO of Allied Leisure had said in 1974 that "th[e] video game is yesterday's newspaper". The settlement was also likely due to pressure from the patent issues that had arisen around the home versions of Pong in the first generation of consoles that were occurring simultaneously. The base ideas of a home video game console were developed by Ralph H. Baer while working at Sanders Associates , where in 1966 he began work on what ultimately became his "Brown Box" prototype. After securing approval of

21850-408: The Chinese market, which persist today. Foreign companies are faced with difficulties in seeking legal action against the Chinese developers that have created these clones, making cloning a far less risky process. Thus, it is common for popular games from both Western and Japanese markets to see near-exact clones appear within China, often within weeks of the original game's release. A notable example

22080-725: The DS, which blend Country elements with puzzle gameplay inspired by Clu Clu Land (1984). Mario vs. Donkey Kong , a spin-off series that acts as a spiritual successor to the Game Boy Donkey Kong , was developed by Nintendo Software Technology . It began with a 2004 GBA game and continued with the DS sequels March of the Minis (2006), Minis March Again! (2009), and Mini-Land Mayhem! (2010). In contrast to other post- Country games, Mario vs. Donkey Kong restored Donkey Kong's villainous role. In 2008, Miyamoto expressed interest in

22310-690: The Famicom system in Japan), which was not available in some countries in the Eastern European and Chinese regions, leading manufacturers within those nations to make numerous bootleg versions , knowing that it would be near-impossible for Nintendo to seek legal action against them. Closed consoles were not the only cloned systems. The ZX Spectrum had been released in the United Kingdom in 1982 and its low cost compared to other home computers helped give birth to

22540-543: The Game Boy, with different level design that accounts for the system's low-quality display. Donkey Kong 64 blends Country elements with "collect-a-thon" gameplay reminiscent of Super Mario 64 (1996) and Banjo-Kazooie , with puzzles tailored to the unique abilities of the five playable characters (Donkey Kong, Diddy, Chunky, Tiny, and Lanky). Jungle Beat 's score attack emphasis challenges players to complete levels with as many points as possible. DK: King of Swing and DK: Jungle Climber are aesthetically similar to

22770-452: The Hedgehog franchise, as a playable character; in the Wii version of Punch-Out!! (2009) as the final boss; and in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (2017), a crossover between Mario and Ubisoft 's Raving Rabbids franchise, as the protagonist of an expansion pack . Activision 's toys-to-life game Skylanders: SuperChargers (2015) includes Donkey Kong as a playable character in

23000-637: The Internet or other communication methods as well as cloud gaming alleviate the need for any physical media. In some cases, the media serves as the direct read-only memory for the game, or it may be the form of installation media that is used to write the main assets to the player's platform's local storage for faster loading periods and later updates. Games can be extended with new content and software patches through either expansion packs which are typically available as physical media, or as downloadable content nominally available via digital distribution. These can be offered freely or can be used to monetize

23230-467: The Odyssey were first imported and then made within the country by the large television manufacturers such as Toshiba and Sharp Corporation , such games are known as "TV games", "TV geemu", or "terebi geemu". The term "TV game" is still commonly used into the 21st century. "Electronic game" may also be used to refer to video games, but this also incorporates devices like early handheld electronic games that lack any video output. The first appearance of

23460-413: The SNES, Game Boy , and Nintendo 64 until they were acquired by Microsoft in 2002; subsequent games have been developed by Nintendo, Retro Studios, Namco and Paon . The most recent major game was Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze in 2014. The main Donkey Kong games are platformers in which the player must reach the end of a level . Donkey Kong's role shifts between the antagonist as in

23690-485: The Templars . For cloning of original indie games by other indie developers, while such practices do exist, indie developers tend to rely on an informal code of honor to shun those who do engage in cloning. Clones may also be used as commentary or parody of the original game, usually in a manner considered transformative to qualify as fair use . Pyst is a parody of the adventure game Myst , taking place on seemingly

23920-498: The acquisition, Rare continued to develop games for Nintendo's handheld consoles since Microsoft did not have a competing handheld. It developed ports of the Country games for the GBA and Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo DS with additional content, released between 2003 and 2007. Meanwhile, Paon also developed DK: King of Swing (2005) for the GBA and DK: Jungle Climber (2007) for

24150-728: The age of the "one-man shop" is gone, as this is still sometimes found in the casual gaming and handheld markets, where smaller games are prevalent due to technical limitations such as limited RAM or lack of dedicated 3D graphics rendering capabilities on the target platform (e.g., some PDAs ). Video games are programmed like any other piece of computer software. Prior to the mid-1970s, arcade and home consoles were programmed by assembling discrete electro-mechanical components on circuit boards, which limited games to relatively simple logic. By 1975, low-cost microprocessors were available at volume to be used for video game hardware, which allowed game developers to program more detailed games, widening

24380-511: The antagonist to the protagonist. Rare's Kevin Bayliss redesigned him; alongside the red tie from the Game Boy game, he was given what GamesRadar+ described as "menacing, sunken eyes and [a] beak-like muzzle", and Bayliss designed him as blocky and muscular to make animating him easier. Rare's games characterize him as the descendant of the Donkey Kong character from the arcade games, who appears as

24610-461: The arcade games and the protagonist as in the Country games. The original games featured a small cast of characters, including Donkey Kong, Mario , and Pauline . Rare's games expanded the cast with friendly Kongs alongside the Kremlings , an army of antagonistic crocodiles led by Donkey Kong's nemesis King K. Rool . Mario, the protagonist of the 1981 game, became Nintendo's mascot and the star of

24840-402: The argument that had previously been used to thwart their 1988 lawsuit against Epyx, that none of the elements that were similar to Capcom's Street Fighter were protectable under copyright. The court noted the similarities between several moves and characters, but insisted "that the vast majority of the moves are unprotectable because they are commonplace kicks and punches". Capcom U.S.A. lost

25070-417: The avatar's innate attributes, all while either using special attacks to defeat enemies or moves to avoid them. This information is relayed to the player through a type of on-screen user interface such as a heads-up display atop the rendering of the game itself. Taking damage will deplete their avatar's health , and if that falls to zero or if the avatar otherwise falls into an impossible-to-escape location,

25300-539: The banana hoard, and the Snowmads, Viking invaders who summon a dragon to take over Donkey Kong Island. Mario, the protagonist of the 1981 game, went on to headline the Mario franchise. Although the franchises largely remain separate, they take place in the same fictional universe, and Donkey Kong and other Donkey Kong characters frequently appear as playable characters in Mario spin-offs such as Mario Kart , Mario Party , and Mario Tennis . Two Rare characters, Banjo

25530-526: The blocks changing in color when they land, and the game board filling up when the game is over. In weighing these arguments, Wolfson noted that Mino copied Tetris much more closely than a game like Dr. Mario , a game that utilized the rules of Tetris to express a similar idea in a unique and non-infringing way. Legal and industry experts agreed this signalled that United States courts were becoming more willing to grant broader video games for specific visual arrangements. Though copyright would not limit

25760-434: The cars in front of them and the obstacle. The programmer never wrote code to specifically create a traffic jam, yet one now exists in the game. Most commonly, video games are protected by copyright , though both patents and trademarks have been used as well. Though local copyright regulations vary to the degree of protection, video games qualify as copyrighted visual-audio works, and enjoy cross-country protection under

25990-459: The case of Midway, Atari providing Midway with a licensed Pong design that Midway released as Winner . One of those companies that had copied Pong was Allied Leisure, which had released its Paddle Battle arcade game in early 1973. When the market shifted from the two-player to four-player table tennis versions in mid-1973, Allied Leisure produced two new arcade games, Tennis Tourney and Ric-o-chet , both which Midway stated caused demand for

26220-594: The case of Zynga's Mafia Wars , which was accused of cloning David Maestri's Mob Wars ). In August 2012, Electronic Arts (EA), via its Maxis division, put forth a lawsuit against Zynga, claiming that its Facebook game, The Ville was a ripoff of EA's own Facebook game, The Sims Social . The lawsuit challenges that The Ville not only copies the gameplay mechanics of The Sims Social , but also uses art and visual interface aspects that appear to be inspired by The Sims Social . Pundits have noted that EA, unlike these previous developers, are financially backed to see

26450-401: The case on grounds that the copied elements were excluded from copyright protection, as generic scènes à faire. The case was one of several that made it difficult for a copyright holder to win a lawsuit against an alleged clone, and also allowed game genres to develop based on imitation and iteration. Many game mechanics from Street Fighter II became common to the genre, as well as aspects of

26680-463: The case to completion; EA themselves have stated in the lawsuit that "Maxis isn't the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product. But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it". The two companies settled out of court on undisclosed terms in February 2013. According to Brian Reynolds , the former lead gameplay designer at Zynga,

26910-478: The characters and foreground environments appear as silhouettes , and swinging vines. Barrels return from the original series and can be used as weapons or broken to uncover power-ups. One barrel variant releases a partner Kong when thrown. Each level contains collectibles such as bananas, letters that spell out K–O–N–G, balloons, and puzzle pieces. These items can be found within the main level or by discovering hidden bonus stages , where they are earned via completing

27140-528: The cloner take corrective actions. Cloning of video games came early in the arcade video game industry shortly after the release of Pong by Atari in 1972. Its success led to numerous companies buying a copy of the arcade machine to try to make their own versions. Atari's Nolan Bushnell called these vendors "jackals", but took no legal action and instead focused on making new games to try to outpace them. Bushnell also maintained contractual agreements with Bally Manufacturing and Midway Manufacturing ; in

27370-853: The commercial game, such as software bugs that were not fixed, improving gameplay concepts, support for different and newer computers or console platforms, or adding new ideas to the base gameplay principles, as well as easing game extensions through user-created mods or add-ons. Some examples of these clones include Freeciv based on the Civilization series, Osu! based on Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan , and Frets on Fire based on Guitar Hero . The open source nature of these clones also enable new utilities, such as developing artificial intelligence agents that have learned and improved their play in Freeciv which in turn can help advance artificial intelligence research. Such games must be careful not to redistribute

27600-515: The companies reached a settlement . Donkey Kong 3 , released in 1983, features shooter gameplay that departs from its predecessors. Instead of Mario, the player controls Stanley, an exterminator from the Game & Watch game Green House (1982), who must fend off Donkey Kong and a swarm of bees. Donkey Kong 3 was unsuccessful, as was an edutainment game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Donkey Kong Jr. Math (1983). Sega obtained

27830-417: The company sees potential new genres and game ideas that gain popularity, and then strive to add their own innovation and concepts to at, so that "[their] goal is to have the highest-quality thing". In 2009, Xio Interactive released a mobile game called Mino that was based on the gameplay of Tetris , with the belief that their game did not include any legally-protected elements. The game Mino featured

28060-431: The concept of building atop gameplay concepts from other developers to make novel games, but avoiding outright copying element for element as to make a direct clone. Broadly, video games lack a fixed medium, and fall into the same area as software copyright where underlying source code as well as art and other assets qualify for copyright, but the gameplay does not. In the United States specifically, video games fall into

28290-417: The console itself, while peripheral controllers are available as a separate purchase from the console manufacturer or third-party vendors. Similar control sets are built into handheld consoles and onto arcade cabinets. Newer technology improvements have incorporated additional technology into the controller or the game platform, such as touchscreens and motion detection sensors that give more options for how

28520-547: The court also noted that several aspects of the games were standard or common, and thus not protected by copyright. By the late 1980s, courts began to take a more permissive approach with video game clones, deciding that many elements of creativity cannot be protected, such as generic concepts, functional rules, and scènes à faire . One such ruling was the 1988 case Data East USA, Inc. v. Epyx, Inc. , where courts ruled that Epyx's game World Karate Championship did not infringe Data East's game Karate Champ , because none of

28750-454: The court determined that the idea of a vertically falling block game could not be protected by copyright, they determined that Tetris did have many unique elements making it eligible for copyright protection, including its twenty-by-ten square game board, the display of randomized junk blocks at the start of the game, the display of a block's "shadow" where it will land, and the display of the next piece to fall. Wolfson also granted protection to

28980-482: The court ruled in Nintendo's favor along with ordering Tiger to pay damages to Nintendo. BYTE reported in December 1981 that at least eight clones of Atari 's arcade game Asteroids existed for personal computers. The magazine stated in December 1982 that that year "few games broke new ground in either design or format ... If the public really likes an idea, it is milked for all it's worth, and numerous clones of

29210-423: The difficulty for foreign companies to take Chinese entities to court had enabled China to support a large grey market of cloned hardware and software systems. The industry remains challenged to distinguish between creating new games based on refinements of past successful games to create a new type of gameplay, and intentionally creating a clone of a game that may simply swap out art assets. The early history of

29440-482: The early 1980s included Space Invaders (1978), Pac-Man (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981), clones of which were available for various different platforms by 1983. Clones and variants numbered in the hundreds for Space Invaders and Pac-Man , more than a hundred for Frogger , and dozens for Donkey Kong . They were programmed by professional and amateur coders for platforms ranging from desktop microcomputers to graphing calculators . Nintendo estimated

29670-425: The elderly Cranky Kong . Cranky Kong provides scathing, fourth wall -breaking humor in which he unfavorably compares current games to older ones like the original Donkey Kong . Donkey Kong Jr. has made few appearances since Country , and Nintendo's stance on whether Rare's Donkey Kong is a grown-up Donkey Kong Jr. or a separate character has been inconsistent. Rare's games moved the franchise's primary setting from

29900-560: The end of the 1980s, courts had ruled in favor of a few alleged clones, and the high costs of a lawsuit meant that most disputes with alleged clones were ignored or settled through to the mid-2000s. In 2012, courts ruled against alleged clones in both Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. and Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc. , due to explicit similarities between the games' expressive elements. Legal scholars agree that these cases establish that general game ideas, game mechanics, and stock scenes cannot be protected by copyright – only

30130-635: The fighting game Mortal Kombat . With the costs of filing a lawsuit being very high compared to the expected outcome, many video game copyright holders became hesitant to sue alleged clones. Most lawsuits about alleged clones were settled between the mid-1990s through to the mid-2000s. The success of the 1993 game Myst led to a number of similar 3D adventure games, which were sometimes labeled as "Myst clones". Some video game genres are founded by archetypal games of which all subsequent similar games are considered derivatives; notably, early first-person shooters were often called " Doom clones", while

30360-400: The first clone was released 21 days after Threes! and the original was quickly overshadowed by 2048 , a clone that was developed over a weekend. While 2048 had been originally published freely and under an open-source license, Ketchapp developed an ad-supported version of 2048 that charted on the App Store. Following its sudden rise to popularity at the start of 2022, Wordle saw

30590-535: The first main Donkey Kong game since Donkey Kong 64 , was released for the GameCube in 2004. It returned to the Donkey Kong Country style of platforming, controlled using the DK Bongos. It was directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi as the debut project of Nintendo EAD Tokyo . Koizumi sought to create an accessible game with a simple control scheme to contrast with more complex contemporary games. It received positive reviews, but

30820-508: The first original Donkey Kong game in ten years. It features Mario as the player character and begins as a remake of the 1981 game before introducing over 100 puzzle-platforming levels that incorporate elements from Donkey Kong Jr. and Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988). Around 1992, Rare , a British developer founded by the brothers Tim and Chris Stamper , purchased Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) Challenge workstations with Alias rendering software to render 3D models . The move made Rare

31050-428: The format gained popularity; the low cost, ease and simplicity of the tools needed to develop these made cloning in that sector a significant problem. For example, Flappy Bird had been cloned dozens of times due to programming code clearinghouses offering templated code to which others could easily add their own art assets. The creators of Threes! spent 14 months developing the game and tuning its mechanics, but

31280-434: The game Tomb Raider , saying that "the dimensions of Lara Croft 's body, already analyzed to death by film theorists , are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different-looking body would not make me play differently... When I play, I don't even see her body, but see through it and past it." Simply put, ludologists reject traditional theories of art because they claim that the artistic and socially relevant qualities of

31510-421: The game and rush to make a clone of the game, either as a new arcade game or for home consoles; an occurrence which happened with Missile Command in 1980. This ultimately diluted the market for new arcade games. An early legal question was whether video games were even eligible for intellectual property protection, as both industry and legal experts were unclear on whether copyright law applied. One such game

31740-642: The game at the same type. This is primarily distinguished by single-player video games and multiplayer video games . Within the latter category, multiplayer games can be played in a variety of ways, including locally at the same device, on separate devices connected through a local network such as LAN parties , or online via separate Internet connections. Most multiplayer games are based on competitive gameplay, but many offer cooperative and team-based options as well as asymmetric gameplay . Online games use server structures that can also enable massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) to support hundreds of players at

31970-406: The game can also be exploited. On some consoles, cheat cartridges allow players to execute these cheat codes, and user-developed trainers allow similar bypassing for computer software games. Both of which might make the game easier, give the player additional power-ups, or change the appearance of the game. To distinguish from electronic games, a video game is generally considered to require

32200-463: The game copyright protection, and courts sided with Atari that even simple video games could become copyrightable works, as they were both fixed and original expression. Midway sued Artic for making Puckman , an alleged clone of Pac-Man , with Artic responding that video games were not "fixed in any tangible medium of expression" and thus ineligible for copyright. Courts sided with Midway that aspects of an arcade game were copyrightable, even though

32430-484: The game should they lose all their lives or need to stop the game and restart at a later time. These also may be in the form of a passage that can be written down and reentered at the title screen. Product flaws include software bugs which can manifest as glitches which may be exploited by the player; this is often the foundation of speedrunning a video game. These bugs, along with cheat codes , Easter eggs , and other hidden secrets that were intentionally added to

32660-501: The game. Video game can use several types of input devices to translate human actions to a game. Most common are the use of game controllers like gamepads and joysticks for most consoles, and as accessories for personal computer systems along keyboard and mouse controls. Common controls on the most recent controllers include face buttons, shoulder triggers, analog sticks , and directional pads ("d-pads") . Consoles typically include standard controllers which are shipped or bundled with

32890-399: The game. By definition, all video games are intended to output graphics to an external video display, such as cathode-ray tube televisions, newer liquid-crystal display (LCD) televisions and built-in screens, projectors or computer monitors , depending on the type of platform the game is played on. Features such as color depth , refresh rate , frame rate , and screen resolution are

33120-560: The game. Today, many games are built around a game engine that handles the bulk of the game's logic, gameplay, and rendering. These engines can be augmented with specialized engines for specific features, such as a physics engine that simulates the physics of objects in real-time. A variety of middleware exists to help developers access other features, such as playback of videos within games, network-oriented code for games that communicate via online services, matchmaking for online games, and similar features. These features can be used from

33350-474: The games' pre-rendered 3D graphics, Donkey Kong Country was produced using computer animation , accomplished with motion capture technology. The series adopts a sitcom approach and follows Donkey Kong as he attempts to protect a magical artifact, the Crystal Coconut, from King K. Rool. The creative direction was largely dictated by the limitations of early motion capture technology; Simon Racioppa, one of

33580-485: The growth of the size of development teams in the industry, the problem of cost has increased. Development studios need the best talent, while publishers reduce costs to maintain profitability on their investment. Typically, a video game console development team ranges from 5 to 50 people, and some exceed 100. In May 2009, Assassin's Creed II was reported to have a development staff of 450. The growth of team size combined with greater pressure to get completed projects into

33810-456: The high costs of a legal dispute combined with the specific facts of each alleged clone have made these cases difficult to predict, and thus it is still rare that they proceed to trial. Wired compared a history of these rulings both for and against infringement, and described the idea-expression distinction – that copyright law won't protect an idea, only its expression – as "simple to state" but "difficult to apply". Patents have been used in

34040-586: The idea of games that did not have any such type of winning condition and raising the question of whether these were actually games. These are still commonly justified as video games as they provide a game world that the player can interact with by some means. The lack of any industry definition for a video game by 2021 was an issue during the case Epic Games v. Apple which dealt with video games offered on Apple's iOS App Store . Among concerns raised were games like Fortnite Creative and Roblox which created metaverses of interactive experiences, and whether

34270-427: The images that appeared on the screen were transient. Stern Electronics, Inc. v. Kaufman similarly decided that the look and feel of a game was fixed, and thus copyrightable, despite differences in the images between different player playthroughs. Thus, it became widely established that video games were eligible for copyright protection, against potentially infringing clones. The most widely cloned arcade games in

34500-553: The imitation of standard game elements, this decision would have the greatest impact on games that copied exact shapes and colors. In 2012, Spry Fox, LLC v. Lolapps, Inc. was heard in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington , brought by Spry Fox against developer Lolapps over their game Yeti Town which Spry Fox claimed was a copyright-infringing clone of Triple Town . At

34730-665: The initial hearings, the judge followed similar logic used in the Xio case to order a preliminary injunction in favor of Spry Fox, as Yeti Town had the same look-and-feel as Triple Town when simply viewed side by side. The case was subsequently settled out of court, with Spry Fox gaining ownership of the Yeti Town property by the end of 2012. Since these cases in 2012, legal scholars have found that courts have been more scrutinizing of look-and-feel in cases involving video game clones. Clones of social and mobile games have continued to flourish as

34960-450: The insects. The 1994 Game Boy game begins with the four stages from the original Donkey Kong , but after completing the fourth, the player is presented with over 100 additional stages that introduce puzzle-platform gameplay in which Mario must scout each level within a time limit to locate a key. Mario can pick up and throw objects and enemies, similar to Super Mario Bros. 2 , and perform acrobatics to reach otherwise inaccessible areas of

35190-406: The judge failed to agree to a preliminary injunction, ruling that while a drawing of the printed circuit board may have copyright protection, the physical board itself would not and instead would be covered by patents, which were not involved in this case. The case was settled out of court in 1974 for undisclosed terms, believed due to factors relating to a short downturn in the market, as David Braun,

35420-450: The larger " AAA " game studios, and are often experiments in gameplay and art style. Indie game development is aided by the larger availability of digital distribution, including the newer mobile gaming market, and readily-available and low-cost development tools for these platforms. Although departments of computer science have been studying the technical aspects of video games for years, theories that examine games as an artistic medium are

35650-661: The larger game and the individual experiences themselves were games or not in relation to fees that Apple charged for the App Store. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers , recognizing that there was yet an industry standard definition for a video game, established for her ruling that "At a bare minimum, video games appear to require some level of interactivity or involvement between the player and the medium" compared to passive entertainment like film, music, and television, and "videogames are also generally graphically rendered or animated, as opposed to being recorded live or via motion capture as in films or television". Rogers still concluded that what

35880-454: The late 1970s, the Japanese company Nintendo shifted its focus from producing toys and playing cards to arcade games . This followed the 1973 oil crisis , which increased the cost of manufacturing toys, and the success of Taito 's arcade game Space Invaders (1978). In 1980, Nintendo released Radar Scope , a Space Invaders -style shoot 'em up . It was a commercial failure and put the newly established subsidiary Nintendo of America in

36110-417: The late 2000s and which has continued to grow as a significant portion of the video game industry. Video games have a large network effect that draw on many different sectors that tie into the larger video game industry. While video game developers are a significant portion of the industry, other key participants in the market include: The industry itself grew out from both the United States and Japan in

36340-599: The late 2000s has allowed game developers to flourish nearly anywhere and diversify the field. Video game clone The legality of video game clones is governed by copyright and patent law. In the 1970s, Magnavox controlled several patents to the hardware for Pong , and pursued action against unlicensed Pong clones that led to court rulings in their favor, as well as legal settlements for compensation. As game production shifted to software on discs and cartridges, Atari sued Philips under copyright law , allowing them to shut down several clones of Pac-Man . By

36570-452: The latter also encompasses LAN games , online games , and browser games . More recently, the video game industry has expanded onto mobile gaming through mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablet computers ), virtual and augmented reality systems, and remote cloud gaming . Video games are also classified into a wide range of genres based on their style of gameplay and target audience . The first video game prototypes in

36800-456: The levels. This gameplay would serve as the basis for Mario vs. Donkey Kong , which introduces stages in which Mario must guide six Mini-Mario toys to a toy box while protecting them from hazards. Mario vs. Donkey Kong 's sequels make guiding the Mini-Mario toys the focus, with each stage requiring the player to do so with touchscreen controls. This gameplay has been frequently compared to

37030-469: The license after Nintendo offered them its catalog of characters and they chose Donkey Kong, though the designer Gregg Mayles recalled that it was Nintendo that requested a Donkey Kong game. Nintendo figured licensing Donkey Kong posed minimal risk due to the franchise's dormancy. Rare's reboot , Donkey Kong Country , featured side-scrolling gameplay that Mayles based on the Super Mario series. It

37260-455: The license to develop a game featuring a playable Donkey Kong as a parking attendant , but it was canceled after Sega's David Rosen and Hayao Nakayama arranged a management buyout from Gulf and Western Industries in 1984. The franchise went on an extended hiatus, while the spin-off Mario franchise found success on the NES, cementing Mario as Nintendo's mascot . Donkey Kong's appearances in

37490-475: The main gameplay, the Rare games' world map contains areas where players can converse with non-player characters , such as Cranky, who provide advice, collectibles, and save points . The Retro Studios games feature shops (run by Cranky in Returns and Funky in Tropical Freeze ) where the player can purchase items like power-ups and lives. The Donkey Kong Land trilogy condenses the SNES Country gameplay for

37720-659: The major content system provides have worked to create the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC), a means to streamline and align the content ratings system between different region, so that a publisher would only need to complete the content ratings review for one provider, and use the IARC transition to affirm the content rating for all other regions. Certain nations have even more restrictive rules related to political or ideological content. Within Germany, until 2018,

37950-462: The market to begin recouping production costs has led to a greater occurrence of missed deadlines, rushed games, and the release of unfinished products. While amateur and hobbyist game programming had existed since the late 1970s with the introduction of home computers, a newer trend since the mid-2000s is indie game development . Indie games are made by small teams outside any direct publisher control, their games being smaller in scope than those from

38180-405: The market. Due to loss of publishing control and oversaturation of the market, the North American home video game market crashed in 1983 , dropping from revenues of around $ 3 billion in 1983 to $ 100 million by 1985. Many of the North American companies created in the prior years closed down. Japan's growing game industry was briefly shocked by this crash but had sufficient longevity to withstand

38410-523: The most technologically advanced UK developer and situated them high in the international market. Rare began experimenting with using the technology in a boxing game. At the time, Nintendo was embroiled in a console war with Sega, whose Genesis competed with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Nintendo wanted a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993), which featured graphics by Disney animators. Lincoln, who became

38640-496: The original Super Smash Bros. (1999) as the only heavyweight fighter, with slow but powerful attacks. Diddy Kong was added as a playable fighter in Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008), while King K. Rool was added in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018). Smash games also feature Donkey Kong stages and music. Donkey Kong appears in Mario & Sonic , an Olympic Games -themed crossover between Mario and Sega's Sonic

38870-774: The original game and possibly from scratch is performed. The list below is not exhaustive and excludes other electronic devices capable of playing video games such as PDAs and graphing calculators . Early arcade games, home consoles, and handheld games were dedicated hardware units with the game's logic built into the electronic componentry of the hardware. Since then, most video game platforms are considered programmable, having means to read and play multiple games distributed on different types of media or formats. Physical formats include ROM cartridges , magnetic storage including magnetic-tape data storage and floppy discs , optical media formats including CD-ROM and DVDs , and flash memory cards. Furthermore digital distribution over

39100-579: The original game assets when the rights owners release the game as freeware, as did OpenRA , a Command & Conquer: Red Alert clone. It even incorporated code from the original game after Electronic Arts re-licensed it under the GPL later, as was the case for many game engines in ScummVM , which subsequently has been used for official re-releases by numerous companies, starting with Revolution Software 's Sold Out label budget release of Broken Sword: The Shadow of

39330-445: The original game's assets or they could face legal issues. OpenSC2K , an open-source recreation of SimCity 2000 , was shut down by Electronic Arts after it was found that OpenSC2K used assets from SimCity 2000 . Some projects that started as reverse engineered game engine recreations , faithful enough to directly use separately acquired assets from the original game by players who own it, may later become game clones by including

39560-517: The original. Video game clones are seen by those developing them as low risk; knowing that a game or genre is popular, developing a clone of that game would appear to be a safe and quick investment, in contrast with developing a new title with unknown sales potential. Further, cloning of games from smaller developers, particularly indie developers , is more frequent as these small teams lack the financial resources to pursue legal recourse. Instead, these teams often appeal to social influence to try to have

39790-472: The patents. Following their agreement, Atari made a home version of Pong , which was released by Christmas 1975. The success of the Odyssey and Pong , both as an arcade game and home machine, launched the video game industry. Both Baer and Bushnell have been titled "Father of Video Games" for their contributions. The term "video game" was developed to distinguish this class of electronic games that were played on some type of video display rather than on

40020-409: The platform, as directed by the game's programming. This often will include sound effects tied to the player's actions to provide audio feedback, as well as background music for the game. Some platforms support additional feedback mechanics to the player that a game can take advantage of. This is most commonly haptic technology built into the game controller, such as causing the controller to shake in

40250-399: The player interacts with the game. Specialized controllers may be used for certain genres of games, including racing wheels , light guns and dance pads . Digital cameras and motion detection can capture movements of the player as input into the game, which can, in some cases, effectively eliminate the control, and on other systems such as virtual reality, are used to enhance immersion into

40480-502: The player that can be copyrighted, but not the underlying principles of the game. Because gameplay is normally ineligible for copyright, gameplay ideas in popular games are often replicated and built upon in other games. At times, this repurposing of gameplay can be seen as beneficial and a fundamental part of how the industry has grown by building on the ideas of others. For example Doom (1993) and Grand Theft Auto III (2001) introduced gameplay that created popular new game genres,

40710-433: The player will lose one of their lives . Should they lose all their lives without gaining an extra life or "1-UP" , then the player will reach the " game over " screen. Many levels as well as the game's finale end with a type of boss character the player must defeat to continue on. In some games, intermediate points between levels will offer save points where the player can create a saved game on storage media to restart

40940-419: The player's hands to simulate a shaking earthquake occurring in game. Video games are frequently classified by a number of factors related to how one plays them. A video game, like most other forms of media, may be categorized into genres . However, unlike film or television which use visual or narrative elements, video games are generally categorized into genres based on their gameplay interaction, since this

41170-430: The player." However, emergent behavior is not limited to sophisticated games. In general, any place where event-driven instructions occur for AI in a game, emergent behavior will exist. For instance, take a racing game in which cars are programmed to avoid crashing, and they encounter an obstacle in the track: the cars might then maneuver to avoid the obstacle causing the cars behind them to slow or maneuver to accommodate

41400-413: The popularity of social and mobile game stores like Apple's App Store for iOS system and Google Play for Android-based systems, a large number of likely-infringing clones have begun appearing. While such storefronts typically include a review process before games and apps can be offered on them, these processes do not consider copyright infringement of other titles. Instead, they rely on the developer of

41630-462: The publishing of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in China, was forced to pull the game due to content related to violence and terrorism, and instead replaced it with a clone, Game for Peace , which otherwise reused assets from Battlegrounds but removed blood and gore. Video game clones are generally difficult to prevent through intellectual property laws such as copyright , patents , or trademarks . The game industry has generally been built on

41860-450: The question of what are the essential factors of a video game that separate the medium from other forms of entertainment. The introduction of interactive films in the 1980s with games like Dragon's Lair , featured games with full motion video played off a form of media but only limited user interaction. This had required a means to distinguish these games from more traditional board games that happen to also use external media, such as

42090-525: The revolutionary impact of Donkey Kong Country . At E3 2001 , Nintendo and Rare announced three Donkey Kong projects: the GameCube game Donkey Kong Racing and the Game Boy Advance (GBA) games Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers and Diddy Kong Pilot . However, development costs were increasing, the Nintendo 64 did not perform as well as Nintendo's previous consoles, and the GameCube was also expected to be

42320-556: The ruling had a chilling effect on competition for Pac-Man , despite the court stating that copyright did not control the idea of a maze-chase game . Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1984 that "Atari bought itself about a million dollars worth of unfavorable publicity by bullying some very nice teen-aged programmers; surely they could have been smoother about it". The Atari v. Philips decision established that video game clones could be held liable for copying other games, because K.C. Munchkin! had substantial similarities to Pac-Man . However,

42550-469: The same approach of using falling tetromino blocks to form complete lines on a playfield and score points. Mino also added new power-ups and game modes to the basic Tetris gameplay. While there had been many Tetris clones over the years, Mino was eventually downloaded more than six million times, culminating in The Tetris Company filing a lawsuit against Xio Interactive in December 2009. While

42780-463: The same island as Myst but vandalized by numerous groups. Hatetris became a variant of Tetris where the next tetranomial provided is the worst possible for the current board. New concerns related to cloned video games came with the rise of social network and mobile games , typically which were offered as freemium titles to entice new players to play. The rising popularity of these games with casual players led to widespread clones. Zynga

43010-637: The same time. A small number of video games are zero-player games , in which the player has very limited interaction with the game itself. These are most commonly simulation games where the player may establish a starting state and then let the game proceed on its own, watching the results as a passive observer, such as with many computerized simulations of Conway's Game of Life . Most video games are intended for entertainment purposes. Different game types include: Video games can be subject to national and international content rating requirements. Like with film content ratings, video game ratings typing identify

43240-544: The scope of what was possible. Ongoing improvements in computer hardware technology have expanded what has become possible to create in video games, coupled with convergence of common hardware between console, computer, and arcade platforms to simplify the development process. Today, game developers have a number of commercial and open source tools available for use to make games, often which are across multiple platforms to support portability, or may still opt to create their own for more specialized features and direct control of

43470-490: The screen, so they conceived a plot in which Mario had caged him and Donkey Kong Jr. had to save him. To develop Donkey Kong Jr. (1982), Nintendo reverse-engineered Ikegami's Donkey Kong code, making it the first game that Nintendo developed without outside help. Following Donkey Kong Jr. 's release, Ikegami sued Nintendo for copyright infringement . In 1990, the Tokyo High Court ruled in favor of Ikegami, and

43700-605: The screen. Other early examples include Christopher Strachey 's draughts game, the Nimrod computer at the 1951 Festival of Britain ; OXO , a tic-tac-toe computer game by Alexander S. Douglas for the EDSAC in 1952; Tennis for Two , an electronic interactive game engineered by William Higinbotham in 1958; and Spacewar! , written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell , and Wayne Wiitanen's on

43930-573: The sequel while another is introduced. The Retro Studios games star Donkey Kong with other characters as his sidekicks. Players primarily control one Kong, with the second increasing their health . In the Retro Studios games, other characters ride on Donkey Kong's back to provide special abilities; for instance, Diddy's jetpack allows him to temporarily hover. Country 's game mechanics include blasting out of barrel cannons, vehicle sequences with minecarts and barrel-themed rockets, levels in which

44160-445: The series for lacking the adventure of the Country games, while GameSpot called its aged animation "nightmare fuel" and "visually disturbing". Video game A video game , also known as a computer game or just a game , is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick , controller , keyboard , or motion sensing device) to generate visual feedback from

44390-435: The short-term effects, and Nintendo helped to revitalize the industry with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in 1985. Along with it, Nintendo established a number of core industrial practices to prevent unlicensed game development and control game distribution on their platform, methods that continue to be used by console manufacturers today. The industry remained more conservative following

44620-524: The similarities were protected under copyright. This was based on the idea that the general gameplay of a martial arts game was an idea that was free for anyone to use, and could not be protected by copyright as unique expression. In 1991, game developer Capcom released Street Fighter II . Its popularity led to an explosion of interest in the fighting game genre . Other companies rushed to capitalize, and Data East released their own one-on-one fighting game called Fighter's History in 1994. As it

44850-430: The software of games were subsequently used in unlicensed copies for other systems. Cloning of arcade video games was popular during the arcade's " golden age " in the early 1980s. Arcade games, prior to mass production, were made in limited numbers for field testing in public spaces; once news got out that a new arcade game from industry leaders like Atari was out in the open, third-party competitors would be able to scope

45080-471: The sound of the Korg Wavestation synthesizer. Fischer attempted to give levels a sense of purpose and drew inspiration from film composers such as Alan Silvestri and Klaus Doldinger . Graeme Norgate and Grant Kirkhope adapted Wise's Country soundtracks for the first two Donkey Kong Land games, while Fischer adapted the Dixie Kong's Double Trouble soundtrack for Donkey Kong Land III . Fischer

45310-604: The success of the open-world formula in Grand Theft Auto led to the genre of GTA clones . The genre of endless runners is based on the success and simplicity of the game Canabalt . Such cloning can also cause a relatively-sudden emergence of a new genre as developers attempt to capitalize on the interest. The battle royale genre grew rapidly after the success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale across 2017 and 2018, while Dota Auto Chess released in January 2019 spawned several commercial games in

45540-428: The system's commercial failure. The first Donkey Kong game for the Nintendo 64, Diddy Kong Racing , a kart racing game , was released as Nintendo's major 1997 Christmas shopping season product. Rare originally developed it as a sequel to its NES game R.C. Pro-Am (1988), but added Diddy Kong to increase its marketability. It received favorable reviews and sold 4.5 million copies. Two playable characters, Banjo

45770-484: The target age group that the national or regional ratings board believes is appropriate for the player, ranging from all-ages, to a teenager-or-older, to mature, to the infrequent adult-only games. Most content review is based on the level of violence, both in the type of violence and how graphic it may be represented, and sexual content, but other themes such as drug and alcohol use and gambling that can influence children may also be identified. A primary identifier based on

46000-404: The team had been unable to accomplish on the Wii, such as lighting and translucency effects and dynamic camera movement. Tropical Freeze was released in 2014 to favorable reviews, but it sold poorly in comparison to Returns ; Nintendo Life attributed this to the Wii U's commercial failure. It achieved greater success when it was ported to the Switch in 2018, outselling the Wii U version within

46230-457: The technology was still new. The designers could not replicate the detail of Country 's pre-rendering on the Nintendo 64, which rendered graphics in real time . Donkey Kong 64 was released in November 1999, accompanied by a US$ 22 million marketing campaign. It was Nintendo's bestselling game during the 1999 Christmas season and received positive reviews, though critics felt it did not match

46460-405: The term "video game" emerged around 1973. The Oxford English Dictionary cited a 10 November 1973 BusinessWeek article as the first printed use of the term. Though Bushnell believed the term came from a vending magazine review of Computer Space in 1971, a review of the major vending magazines Vending Times and Cashbox showed that the term may have come even earlier, appearing first in

46690-546: The term in an article in March 1973. In a September 1982 issue of RePlay , Adlum is credited with first naming these games as "video games": "RePlay's Eddie Adlum worked at 'Cash Box' when 'TV games' first came out. The personalities in those days were Bushnell, his sales manager Pat Karns, and a handful of other 'TV game' manufacturers like Henry Leyser and the McEwan brothers. It seemed awkward to call their products 'TV games', so borrowing

46920-555: The term may be used to make a comparison between games. As copyright law does not protect game mechanics , the reuse of such ideas is generally considered acceptable. For example, Grand Theft Auto III spurred a number of games that have been called GTA clones but which are not direct copies of assets or mechanical ideas. In these cases, games that are "clones" of another are generally not implied to have committed any intellectual property infractions, and otherwise considered legally acceptable practices, although calling such games clones

47150-404: The top of the level. In the first game, Mario can destroy obstacles by obtaining a hammer power-up , while in the second, Donkey Kong Jr. can do so by knocking pieces of fruit down from vines. Points are awarded for dodging or destroying obstacles, collecting items, and completing stages quickly. The player begins each game with three lives , which they lose if they touch an obstacle or fall from

47380-425: The two parties together to try to negotiate prior to action. While Apple, Google, and Microsoft took steps to stem the mass of clones based on Swing Copters after its release, experts believe it is unlikely that these app stores will institute any type of proactive clone protection outside of clear copyright violations, and these experts stress the matter is better done by the developers and gaming community to assure

47610-477: The two-player Winner to drop dramatically. To stay competitive, Midway acquired one of Allied's games to compare the printed circuit board to that from Winner as to determine what was the new components for making it a four-player game, and added that to Winner 's board, and released as Winner IV . Allied Leisure filed suit against Midway claiming copyright infringement of using its printed circuit board design in making Winner IV and unfair competition, but

47840-503: The type of gameplay, such as action game , role playing game , or shoot 'em up , though some genres have derivations from influential works that have defined that genre, such as roguelikes from Rogue , Grand Theft Auto clones from Grand Theft Auto III , and battle royale games from the film Battle Royale . The names may shift over time as players, developers and the media come up with new terms; for example, first-person shooters were originally called "Doom clones" based on

48070-452: The unique expression of those ideas. However, the high cost of a lawsuit combined with the fact-specific nature of each dispute has made it difficult to predict which game developers can protect their games' look and feel from clones. Other methods like patents, trademarks, and industry regulation have played a role in shaping the prevalence of clones. 'Adaptation' is such a flattering word. So much nicer than 'copyright infringement' Cloning

48300-545: The versions released on Nintendo platforms. A Donkey Kong cartoon produced by Ruby-Spears aired as part of CBS 's hour-long Saturday Supercade programming block in 1983. The cartoon follows Mario and Pauline as they attempt to capture Donkey Kong after he escapes from a circus. Game Informer described the series as "abysmal... filled with bad puns and ridiculous situations". Soupy Sales voiced Donkey Kong, while Peter Cullen and Frank Welker (who later garnered recognition for voicing Optimus Prime and Megatron in

48530-422: The video game industry, following the first game hardware releases and through 1983, had little structure. Video games quickly took off during the golden age of arcade video games from the late 1970s to early 1980s, but the newfound industry was mainly composed of game developers with little business experience. This led to numerous companies forming simply to create clones of popular games to try to capitalize on

48760-612: The video game sector in the UK as well as Western Europe. The system could not be imported into the Eastern bloc countries, but enterprising companies found ways to clone the ZX Spectrum hardware at even lower cost. With teenagers and young adults able to afford these hardware clones, they too were able to begin developing their own games and helped to launch the video game industry within these countries. While hardware itself became difficult to clone,

48990-410: The work that has been cloned to initiate a complaint regarding the clone, which may take time for review. The cloned apps often are purposely designed to resemble other popular apps by name or feel, luring away purchasers from the legitimate app, even after complaints have been filed. Apple has released a tool to streamline claims of app clones to a team dedicated to handle these cases, helping to bring

49220-511: The writers, noted restrictions including characters being unable to pick up objects and introducing new locations and characters being discouraged. Donkey Kong Country was produced with little input from Nintendo, and was the final Western series that Nintendo licensed before it shifted to producing and distributing anime . The series was popular in France and Japan, though less so in the United States. Retrospectively, Hardcore Gaming 101 criticized

49450-423: The years following Donkey Kong 3 were limited to cameos in unrelated games. The 1987 Official Nintendo Player's Guide advertised a Donkey Kong revival for the NES, Return of Donkey Kong , which was never released. In the early 1990s, Philips obtained the license to use five Nintendo characters, including Donkey Kong, in games for their CD-i format. Philips contracted Riedel Software Productions to make

49680-459: Was Breakout , which inspired many games, including Arkanoid , which itself inspired many other clones. When Atari decided to register its Copyright in Breakout , Register of Copyrights Ralph Oman refused to register the work because it "did not contain at least a minimum amount of original pictorial or graphic authorship, or authorship in sounds". Atari challenged Oman's decision not to award

49910-485: Was a commercial disappointment. A Wii version, featuring revised Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls, was released in 2008 as part of the New Play Control! line. A racing game that used the DK Bongos, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast , was developed by Paon for the GameCube, but was moved to the Wii with no support for the peripheral. It was released in 2007 to negative reviews, with criticism for its controls. Despite

50140-405: Was a major success and was followed by the sequels Donkey Kong Jr. (1982) and Donkey Kong 3 (1983). The franchise went on a hiatus as Nintendo shifted its focus to the spin-off Mario franchise. Rare's 1994 reboot , the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game Donkey Kong Country , reestablished Donkey Kong as a major Nintendo franchise. Rare developed Donkey Kong games for

50370-571: Was developed by the Taiko no Tatsujin developers and features the same gameplay: they are rhythm games in which the player must hit scrolling notes to the beat of the music with accurate timing, with stylized notes corresponding to different buttons. Players build combos by hitting two or more notes; the combo ends when they miss a beat. The music for Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. was composed by Yukio Kaneoka, one of Nintendo's earliest audio engineers . Kaneoka wanted to take players on an adventure with

50600-416: Was free to expand it, introducing Donkey Kong's sidekick Diddy Kong (who replaced Donkey Kong Jr.) and the antagonistic Kremlings . After 18 months of development, Donkey Kong Country was released in November 1994 to acclaim, with critics hailing its visuals as groundbreaking. It was a major success, selling 9.3 million copies and becoming the third-bestselling SNES game . It reestablished Donkey Kong as

50830-434: Was initially some confusion in the arcade industry over what term should be used to describe the new games. He "wrestled with descriptions of this type of game," alternating between "TV game" and "television game" but "finally woke up one day" and said, "What the hell... video game!" While many games readily fall into a clear, well-understood definition of video games, new genres and innovations in game development have raised

51060-426: Was later revealed, Data East created design documents that referred to Street Fighter II several times. Several people noticed the similarities and raised the issue with Capcom, reaching the president, Kenzo Tsujimoto . Capcom soon sued Data East for copyright infringements, in both America and Japan. Capcom also sought a preliminary injunction to stop Data East from distributing Fighter's History . Data East used

51290-504: Was one of several developers who attempted to create their own maze game, resulting in K.C. Munchkin! released in 1981. Atari sued Philips in Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp. , claiming that the game K.C. Munchkin! had illegally copied their game Pac-Man . The court initially refused Atari ' s motion to bar the sales of Munchkin , but Atari succeeded on appeal, with Judge Harlington Wood applying

51520-425: Was one of the first major developers in social network games, and had long been criticized by the video game industry as cloning popular social and casual games from other developers, includes those of smaller developers without the resources to fight back in courts (as in the case of Tiny Tower by NimbleBit , which Zynga has cloned in their game, Dream Heights ) or that are willing to settle out of court (as in

51750-721: Was primarily composed by David Wise , who worked at Rare from 1985 to 2009. After Wise moved with a portion of the Diddy's Kong Quest team to work on Project Dream , Eveline Fischer —who composed a portion of the first Country —handled the majority of Dixie Kong's Double Trouble . Wise composed a replacement soundtrack for the 2005 GBA port of Dixie Kong's Double Trouble after Rare had problems converting Fischer's score. Wise drew inspiration from Koji Kondo 's Super Mario and Legend of Zelda music, Tim and Geoff Follin's Plok! (1993) soundtrack, and 1980s synthesizer -heavy rock music, dance music and film soundtracks. He aimed to imitate

51980-577: Was released for the Wii in 2010. It sold 4.21 million copies in under a month and received positive reviews, with critics considering it a return to form for the franchise. Monster Games developed a Nintendo 3DS version in 2013, while a high-definition remaster is scheduled for the Nintendo Switch in 2025. Retro developed a sequel, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze , for the Wii U . The Wii U's greater processing power allowed for visual elements that

52210-456: Was set to compose music for Donkey Kong 64 , but shifted to working on sound effects. She was replaced by Kirkhope, who composed alongside the Banjo-Kazooie games and Perfect Dark (2000). Nintendo Life described Kirkhope's Donkey Kong 64 score as closer in spirit to his work on Banjo-Kazooie than to Wise's Country music. Donkey Kong 64 's introduction features the " DK Rap ",

52440-455: Was the first Donkey Kong game neither directed nor produced by Miyamoto, though he provided support and contributed design ideas. Donkey Kong Country was one of the first games for a mainstream home video game console to use pre-rendered graphics, achieved through a compression technique that allowed Rare to convert 3D models into SNES sprites with little loss of detail. Because Donkey Kong did not have much of an established universe, Rare

52670-627: Was uncommon in contemporary arcade games, which typically featured a single scenario that repeated. As he lacked programming expertise, Miyamoto consulted technicians on whether his ideas were possible. Four programmers from Ikegami Tsushinki spent three months turning Miyamoto's design into a finished game. Although Miyamoto's team was told it would be a failure, Donkey Kong became Nintendo's first major international success upon its release in July 1981. The $ 280 million windfall gain rescued Nintendo of America from its financial crisis and established it as

52900-448: Was working on another Switch Donkey Kong game, separate from the canceled 3D platformer. The original Donkey Kong features three characters: Donkey Kong, a large, antagonistic gorilla; Mario, the overall-wearing protagonist; and Pauline, Mario's girlfriend. Donkey Kong follows Mario as he ascends a construction site to rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong, his escaped pet ape. In the sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. , Mario imprisons Donkey Kong in

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