The Cassette Vision is a second generation home video game console made by Epoch Co. and released in Japan on July 30, 1981. A redesigned model called the Cassette Vision Jr. was released afterwards.
100-547: The term cassette is a contemporary Japanese synonym for ROM cartridge , not to be confused with the magnetic cassette tape format. In terms of power, it is comparable to the Atari 2600 . The Cassette Vision has unusual controls: four knobs built into the console itself, two for each player (one for horizontal, one for vertical), plus two buttons per player. The system originally retailed for ¥ 13,500 , with games priced at ¥4,000 . The Cassette Vision sold around 400,000 units, and
200-407: A Japanese-English dictionary for something that would mean "stubborn gorilla", or that "Donkey" was meant to convey "silly" or "stubborn"; "Kong" was common Japanese slang for "gorilla". A rival claim is that he worked with Nintendo's export manager to come up with the title, and that "Donkey" was meant to represent "stupid and goofy". In 2001, Miyamoto stated that he thought the name would convey
300-521: A broader denotational or connotational sememe and thus overlap within a semantic field . The former are sometimes called cognitive synonyms and the latter, near-synonyms, plesionyms or poecilonyms. Some lexicographers claim that no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language) because etymology , orthography , phonic qualities, connotations , ambiguous meanings, usage , and so on make them unique. Different words that are similar in meaning usually differ for
400-586: A budget of $ 267,000 (equivalent to $ 895,000 in 2023) according to Miyamoto. Ikegami Tsushinki was subcontracted for some of the development, with no role in the game's creation or concept, but to provide "mechanical programming assistance to fix the software created by Nintendo". Nintendo instructed Ikegami to produce a program according to its instructions and put it onto read-only memory (ROM) chips on printed circuit boards (PC boards). This later led to mutual lawsuits in 1983, as Ikegami asserted ownership over Donkey Kong which Nintendo denied as Ikegami
500-547: A comic strip license played a major part, Donkey Kong marked the first time that the storyline for a video game preceded the game's programming rather than simply being appended as an afterthought. An unrelated Popeye game was released by Nintendo for the Game & Watch the following month, as well as a game called Popeye for arcades in 1982. Yamauchi wanted primarily to target the North American market, so he mandated that
600-422: A complete plot. The game opens with the gorilla climbing a pair of ladders to the top of a construction site, accompanied by a variation on the musical theme from Dragnet . He drops Pauline and stomps his feet, warping the steel beams. He moves to his final perch and sneers. A melody plays, and the level starts. This brief animation sets the scene and adds background to the gameplay, a first for video games. At
700-613: A complete story. It also notably had multiple, distinct levels that progressed the storyline. Donkey Kong was also one of the first Japanese games brought to Western regions that introduced a surreal concept using cute artwork, a representation of typical Japanese fantasy but unusual to Western audiences. For that reason, Donkey Kong and similar games that followed were briefly called "novelty games" by Western gaming press. Donkey Kong and other such games helped to acclimate Western audiences to Japanese approaches to game design, narrative, and abstraction that would become key elements in
800-437: A connection between the two Kongs. On October 4, 1984, the court upheld the previous verdict. Nintendo and its licensees filed counterclaims against Universal. On May 20, 1985, Judge Sweet awarded Nintendo $ 1.8 million for legal fees, lost revenues, and other expenses, but he denied Nintendo's claim of damages from those licensees who had paid royalties to both Nintendo and Universal. Both parties appealed this judgment, but
900-510: A considerable fee for all rights to Donkey Kong , but Nintendo declined after three days of internal discussion. Rivals Coleco and Atari, Inc. approached Nintendo in Japan and the United States respectively. In the end, Yamauchi granted Coleco exclusive console and tabletop rights to Donkey Kong because he believed that "it [was] the hungriest company". In addition, Arakawa believed that as
1000-460: A construction site made of crooked girders and ladders while jumping over or hammering barrels and oil drums tossed by Donkey Kong. Stage two involves climbing a five-story structure of conveyor belts , each of which transport cement pans. The third stage involves the player riding elevators while avoiding bouncing springs. The final stage requires Mario to remove eight rivets from the platforms supporting Donkey Kong; this causes Donkey Kong to fall and
1100-481: A debugger to trace through the game's code. The game was ported by Nintendo Research & Development 2 to Nintendo's Family Computer (Famicom) console and released in Japan on July 15, 1983, as one of the system's three launch games . Masayuki Uemura , the Famicom's lead architect, designed the console specifically to faithfully recreate Donkey Kong . It is an early Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game in
SECTION 10
#17328840102431200-567: A form of onoma ( ὄνομα 'name'). Synonyms are often from the different strata making up a language. For example, in English, Norman French superstratum words and Old English substratum words continue to coexist. Thus, today there exist synonyms like the Norman-derived people , liberty and archer , and the Saxon-derived folk , freedom and bowman . For more examples, see
1300-686: A lawyer and the president of MCA and Universal City Studios , learned of the game's success and suspected it might be a trademark infringement of Universal's own King Kong . Nintendo was given 48 hours to turn over all profits from the game and dispose of all Donkey Kong inventory. On April 27, he met with Arnold Greenberg of Coleco and threatened to sue over Coleco's home version of Donkey Kong . Coleco agreed on May 3 to pay royalties to Universal of 3% of their Donkey Kong ' s net sale price, worth about $ 4.6 million. Meanwhile, Sheinberg revoked Tiger's license to make its King Kong game, but O. R. Rissman refused to acknowledge Universal's claim to
1400-475: A love triangle between a gorilla, a plumber with a large hammer, and a girlfriend, mirroring the rivalry between Bluto and Popeye for Olive Oyl . Bluto became an ape, which Miyamoto said was "nothing too evil or repulsive". He would be the pet of the main character, "a funny, hang-loose kind of guy". Miyamoto has named " Beauty and the Beast " and the 1933 film King Kong as influences. Although its origin as
1500-579: A metonym is a type of synonym, and the word metonym is a hyponym of the word synonym . The analysis of synonymy, polysemy , hyponymy, and hypernymy is inherent to taxonomy and ontology in the information science senses of those terms. It has applications in pedagogy and machine learning , because they rely on word-sense disambiguation . The word is borrowed from Latin synōnymum , in turn borrowed from Ancient Greek synōnymon ( συνώνυμον ), composed of sýn ( σύν 'together, similar, alike') and - ōnym - ( -ωνυμ- ),
1600-402: A more established company in the U.S., Coleco could better handle marketing. In return, Nintendo received an undisclosed lump sum plus $ 1.40 per game cartridge sold and $ 1 per tabletop unit. On December 24, 1981, Howard Lincoln drafted the contract. He included language that Coleco would be held liable for anything on the game cartridge, an unusual clause for a licensing agreement. Arakawa signed
1700-439: A mouth, a cap obviates the animation of hair, and colored overalls distinguish his arm movements. The artwork of the cabinets and promotional materials make these cartoon-like character designs even more explicit. Pauline, for example, is depicted as disheveled like the 1930s King Kong ' s Fay Wray in a torn dress and stiletto heels . Like Pac-Man (1980), Donkey Kong has cutscenes , but innovates by advancing
1800-493: A novel genre that did not match the style of games that came before it. The genre was initially referred to as "Donkey Kong-type" or "Kong-style" games, before the genre eventually came to be known as platform games. The game was also a milestone in terms of video game storytelling and cutscenes. While there were earlier games that either told a story or used cutscenes, Donkey Kong combined both concepts together to introduce its own new concept: using cutscenes to visually advance
1900-472: A plot, and integrating multiple unique stages into the gameplay. Donkey Kong pioneered the platform game genre before the term existed, is the first to feature jumping, and is the first video game with a damsel in distress narrative. It had a limited release in Japan on July 9, 1981, before receiving a wide release some weeks later. Although Nintendo of America's staff was initially apprehensive, Donkey Kong succeeded commercially and critically, becoming
2000-551: A previous case that King Kong ' s scenario and characters were in the public domain (by way of the Novelisation of the 1933 film). Judge Sweet ruled in Nintendo's favor, awarding them Universal's profits from Tiger's game ($ 56,689.41), damages and attorney's fees. Universal appealed, trying to prove consumer confusion by presenting the results of a telephone survey and examples from print media where people had allegedly assumed
2100-473: A reason: feline is more formal than cat ; long and extended are only synonyms in one usage and not in others (for example, a long arm is not the same as an extended arm ). Synonyms are also a source of euphemisms . Metonymy can sometimes be a form of synonymy: the White House is used as a synonym of the administration in referring to the U.S. executive branch under a specific president. Thus,
SECTION 20
#17328840102432200-540: A score of 1,141,800. Lakeman's record was then broken by John McCurdy on January 11, 2021, with a score of 1,272,700. Lakeman reclaimed the world record only five months later on June 8, scoring 100 more points than McCurdy. Making the new record 1,272,800. In 2018, Mitchell was stripped of his records by Twin Galaxies and banned from submitting new scores after Twin Galaxies concluded that Mitchell had illicitly used emulators to achieve his scores. Twin Galaxies prohibits
2300-425: A settlement the following year; the terms of it were never disclosed. In 1996 Next Generation listed the arcade, Atari 7800, and cancelled Coleco Adam versions as number 50 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", commenting that even ignoring its massive historical significance, Donkey Kong stands as a great game due to its demanding challenges and graphics which manage to elegantly delineate an entire scenario on
2400-403: A single screen. In February 2006, Nintendo Power rated it the 148th best game made on a Nintendo system. In 2017, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Donkey Kong to its World Video Game Hall of Fame . Today, Donkey Kong is the fifth most popular arcade game among collectors. Donkey Kong spawned a number of other titles with a mix of running, jumping and vertical traversal,
2500-441: A steadily decreasing bonus counter. The player starts with three lives with a bonus life awarded at 7,000 points. A life is lost when Mario touches Donkey Kong or any enemy object, falls too far, or lets the bonus counter reach zero. The game ends when all lives are lost. Each of the four single-screen stages represents 25 meters of the structure Donkey Kong has climbed: 25, 50, 75, and 100 meters. Stage one involves Mario scaling
2600-458: A success. In his 1982 book Video Invaders , Steve Bloom described Donkey Kong as "another bizarre cartoon game, courtesy of Japan" and said it was one of the "most exciting variations" on Pac-Man ' s maze theme along with Sega 's Frogger due to how players need to "scale from the bottom of the screen to the top" which make them "more like obstacle courses than mazes" since "you always know where you're going — up". In January 1983,
2700-488: A theme that's become all too familiar since the success of Donkey Kong ". That year Sega released a Donkey Kong clone called Congo Bongo in arcades. Although using isometric perspective , the structure and gameplay are similar. Crazy Kong was officially licensed from Nintendo and manufactured by Falcon for some non-US markets. Nevertheless, Crazy Kong machines found their way into some American arcades, often installed in cabinets marked as Congorilla . Nintendo
2800-482: A total of approximately 20 kilobytes of content. Yukio Kaneoka composed a soundtrack to serve as background music for the levels and story events. The circuit board of Radar Scope was restructured for Donkey Kong . The Radar Scope hardware, originally inspired by the Namco Galaxian hardware, was designed for a large number of enemies moving around at high speeds, which Donkey Kong does not require, so
2900-612: Is coinages , which may be motivated by linguistic purism . Thus, the English word foreword was coined to replace the Romance preface . In Turkish, okul was coined to replace the Arabic-derived mektep and mederese , but those words continue to be used in some contexts. Synonyms often express a nuance of meaning or are used in different registers of speech or writing. Various technical domains may employ synonyms to convey precise technical nuances. Some writers avoid repeating
3000-719: Is an update of the NES version that reinstates the cement factory stage and includes some animations absent from the original NES version, and has only ever been released on the Virtual Console . It was preinstalled on 25th Anniversary PAL region red Wii systems, which were first released in Europe on October 29, 2010. In Japan, a download code for the game for the 3DS Virtual Console was sent to users who purchased New Super Mario Bros. 2 or Brain Age: Concentration Training from
3100-407: Is considered one of the most important games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the greatest and most popular arcade games of all time . It has been frequently referenced in pop culture and subsequent video games and has an active high score competition . Following 1980's Space Panic , Donkey Kong is one of the earliest examples of the platform game genre, even prior to
Cassette Vision - Misplaced Pages Continue
3200-454: Is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning. Words may often be synonymous in only one particular sense : for example, long and extended in the context long time or extended time are synonymous, but long cannot be used in the phrase extended family . Synonyms with exactly the same meaning share a seme or denotational sememe , whereas those with inexactly similar meanings share
3300-597: The Arcade Classics Series , released in June 1986 in North America and October 15 in Europe. Omitted are the cement factory stage and most of the cutscenes, because early ROM cartridges do not have enough memory. It includes a new song composed by Yukio Kaneoka for the title screen. Both Donkey Kong and its sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. , are included in the 1988 NES compilation Donkey Kong Classics . A complete remake of
3400-631: The Coleco Gemini , in 1983. Atari obtained the license for home computer versions of Donkey Kong and released it for the Atari 8-bit computers . When Coleco unveiled the Adam Computer , running a port of Donkey Kong at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Illinois, Atari protested that it was in violation of the licensing agreement. Yamauchi demanded that Arnold Greenberg , Coleco's president, withdraw his Adam port. Greenberg complied, and
3500-539: The Nintendo eShop from July 28 to September 2, 2012. In North America, a download code for Original Edition for the 3DS Virtual Console was sent to users who purchased one of five select 3DS games on the Nintendo eShop and registered it on Club Nintendo from October 1, 2012, to January 6, 2013. In Europe and Australia, it was released for purchase on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in September 2014. The original arcade version
3600-518: The Picture Processing Unit (PPU) chip for the NES. The NES version was re-released as an unlockable game in the first Animal Crossing , both through its Nintendo Space World 2000 demo as well as the final game. It was also published on Virtual Console for the Wii , Wii U , and Nintendo 3DS . The Wii U version is also the last game that was released to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of
3700-608: The TV Tennis Electrotennis in 1975, the first video game console released in Japan. In 1980, it released the TV Vader , a dedicated home console that featured a clone of Space Invaders , which was moderately successful. Based on its experience with designing handheld electronic games and other kinds of video game hardware, Epoch began work on creating a video game console that utilized interchangeable ROM cartridges to play software. Epoch supervisor and designer Masayuki Horie
3800-489: The kill screen , due to a programming error that kills Mario after a few seconds, effectively ending the game. The 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters portrays Steve Wiebe 's attempts to break the Donkey Kong world record, then considered to have been held by Billy Mitchell . In the early 2010s, Hank Chien set a record of 1,138,600 points. This was broken four years later by Robbie Lakeman with
3900-720: The list of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English . Loanwords are another rich source of synonyms, often from the language of the dominant culture of a region. Thus, most European languages have borrowed from Latin and ancient Greek, especially for technical terms, but the native terms continue to be used in non-technical contexts. In East Asia , borrowings from Chinese in Japanese , Korean , and Vietnamese often double native terms. In Islamic cultures, Arabic and Persian are large sources of synonymous borrowings. For example, in Turkish , kara and siyah both mean 'black',
4000-450: The maze and shooter games common at the time, and Judy and Lincoln expressed reservations over the strange title. Still, Arakawa adamantly believed that it would be a hit. American staff began translating the storyline for the cabinet art and naming the characters. They chose "Pauline" for the Lady, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's warehouse manager Don James . Arakawa suggested that
4100-606: The 1982 Arcade Awards gave it the award for the best single-player video game and the Certificate of Merit as runner-up for Coin-Op Game of the Year . In September 1982, Arcade Express reviewed the ColecoVision port and scored it 9 out of 10. Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games in 1983 stated that "Coleco did a fabulous job" with Donkey Kong , the best of the console's first five games and "the most faithful adaptation of
Cassette Vision - Misplaced Pages Continue
4200-496: The CPU (μPD777C or μPD778) directly in the cartridge while the shell of the console would only contain the power supply, the controls and the NTSC video and sound generation hardware. According to documents posted online by NEC engineer Tetsuji Oguchi, the μPD777 has a resolution of 75 × 60 with up to twenty-five 7 × 7 pixel sprites in eight colors (six colors + orange + blue-cyan). Sound
4300-652: The Cassette TV Game in 1979. The console's name comes from the Japanese synonym for ROM cartridge . As the country's home console market possessed few "major" competitors, the Cassette Vision quickly rose in popularity and sales, becoming the best-selling game console in Japan at the time. It claimed 70% of the market by 1982, surpassing the Cassette TV Game and Bandai's import of the Intellivision . Horie believes part of
4400-647: The Cassette Vision and therefore the only peripheral that use the AUX connection. This connector was later removed when Epoch released the Cassette Vision Jr, a trim down version of the Cassette Vision, making the Gun incompatible with that version of the console. Epoch decided to capitalize on the NEC uPD77xx chipset, as they had already used to develop games on this platform (TV Baseball and TV Vader). To achieve this, Epoch decided to put
4500-473: The Cassette Vision sold an estimated 400,000 units. There are twelve games for this system: In the same year as the launch of the Cassette Vision, Epoch released a light gun to go with the Big Sports 12 game. The cartridge contains a collection of twelve games, including four that required the use of the light gun. The gun connects to the console via the AUX connector. This is the only accessory available for
4600-660: The Famicom version were sold; the Famicom Mini version for the Game Boy Advance later had a further 160,000 units sold, for a total of 1 million units sold in Japan. The Atari 8-bit computer version sold 25,502 units in 1986 and 1990. This totals 15,206,025 units sold worldwide for the Game & Watch, ColecoVision, Atari and Famicom ports. As of 2015 , all versions of the original Donkey Kong are estimated to have grossed $ 4.4 billion in revenue. In April 1982, Sid Sheinberg ,
4700-500: The Germanic term only as a noun, but has Latin and Greek adjectives: hand , manual (L), chiral (Gk); heat , thermal (L), caloric (Gk). Sometimes the Germanic term has become rare, or restricted to special meanings: tide , time / temporal , chronic . Many bound morphemes in English are borrowed from Latin and Greek and are synonyms for native words or morphemes: fish , pisci- (L), ichthy- (Gk). Another source of synonyms
4800-541: The Japanese version of the NES, the Famicom. The original arcade version of the game appears in the Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64 , and it must be beaten to finish the game. Nintendo released the NES version on the e-Reader and for the Game Boy Advance Classic NES Series in 2002 and 2004, respectively. In 2004, Namco released an arcade cabinet which contains Donkey Kong , Donkey Kong Jr. , and Mario Bros. Donkey Kong: Original Edition
4900-438: The arcade successor to Donkey Kong , Ikegami sued Nintendo for the unauthorized duplication of the Donkey Kong program code. Nintendo managed to settle the dispute out of court after the two companies came to an agreement. At the time of the suit, computer programs were not considered copyrightable material. The Tokyo High Court gave a verdict in 1989 that acknowledged the originality of program code. Ikegami and Nintendo reached
5000-624: The bundled ColecoVision version sold 2 million units, while the Atari 2600 version sold 4 million units in 1982 for $ 100 million , making it one of the best-selling Atari 2600 games . It was also one of the earliest cartridges available for video game rental at certain stores in 1982. Atari's 1987 re-release for the Atari 2600 sold a further 180,523 units for $ 1,258,282 by 1990. Coleco's Mini-Arcade tabletop versions of Donkey Kong , along with Pac-Man , Galaxian , and Frogger , had combined sales of three million units. In Japan, 840,000 units of
5100-527: The console's success lay in its accessibility and appeal towards consumers. Epoch had difficulty producing consoles and satisfying demand due to the costs of manufacturing them. In response, Epoch released the Cassette Vision Jr. , a cost-effective remodel, on July 19, 1983. This version was priced at ¥ 5,000, far lower than the original model, and was designed specifically to be cheap and more affordable for consumers. The Cassette Vision Jr. retains most of
SECTION 50
#17328840102435200-492: The cost of the console itself, incur more R&D cost and delay the release of the console. Synonym A synonym is a word , morpheme , or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language , the words begin , start , commence , and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous . The standard test for synonymy
5300-420: The decade that followed with the release of the NES. Computer and Video Games called Donkey Kong "the most momentous" release of 1981, as it "introduced three important names" to the global video game industry: Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Mario. These three figures went on to play a significant role in video game history. Donkey Kong paved the way for the NES, known as the Famicom in Japan. Following
5400-566: The development team removed unnecessary functions and reduced the scale of the circuit board. The gameplay and graphics were reworked for updated ROM chips, and the existing CPU , sound hardware, and monitor were left intact. The character set, scoreboard, upper HUD display, and font are almost identical to Radar Scope , with palette differences. The Donkey Kong hardware has the memory capacity for displaying 128 foreground sprites at 16x16 pixels each and 256 background tiles at 8x8 pixels each. Mario and all moving objects use single sprites,
5500-557: The document the next day, and, on February 1, 1982, Yamauchi persuaded the Coleco representative in Japan to sign without review by the company's lawyers. Coleco bundled the game with the ColecoVision console, which went on sale in August 1982, though the individual cartridge was also available in stores. Coleco offered Atari 2600 and Intellivision versions as well. Coleco's Atari 2600 port
5600-410: The eponymous Donkey Kong character is the game's de facto villain. The hero is a carpenter originally unnamed in the Japanese arcade release, later named Jumpman and then Mario. Donkey Kong kidnaps Mario's girlfriend, originally known as Lady and later renamed Pauline. The player must take the role of Mario and rescue her. This is the first occurrence of the damsel in distress scenario that provided
5700-626: The former being a native Turkish word, and the latter being a borrowing from Persian. In Ottoman Turkish , there were often three synonyms: water can be su (Turkish), âb (Persian), or mâ (Arabic): "such a triad of synonyms exists in Ottoman for every meaning, without exception". As always with synonyms, there are nuances and shades of meaning or usage. In English, similarly, there often exist Latin (L) and Greek (Gk) terms synonymous with Germanic ones: thought , notion (L), idea (Gk); ring , circle (L), cycle (Gk). English often uses
5800-614: The four to six months that the average game lasted. It remained Nintendo's top seller into mid-1983, with steady sales in Japan. A total of 65,000 arcade units were sold in Japan, and 67,000 arcade units in the United States, for a total of 132,000 arcade units sold in Japan and the United States. Nintendo's Game & Watch handheld version of Donkey Kong released in 1982 sold 8 million units. Coleco had sold 6 million Donkey Kong cartridges for home consoles, grossing more than $ 153,000,000 (equivalent to $ 483,000,000 in 2023) and earning Nintendo more than $ 5 million in royalties;
5900-547: The game and avoided royalties altogether. Universal City Studios unsuccessfully sued Nintendo, alleging that Donkey Kong violated its trademark of the King Kong franchise . Donkey Kong 's success positioned Nintendo for market dominance for the 1980s and 1990s. The game debuts Mario, who became Nintendo's mascot and one of the world's most recognizable characters. It was mass marketed in multitudes of products, including breakfast cereal, toys, and television cartoons. Donkey Kong
6000-456: The game be given an English title, as with many previous Nintendo games. Miyamoto decided to name the game for the ape, who he said was the strongest character. The story of how Miyamoto came up with the name "Donkey Kong" varies. A false urban myth says that the name was originally meant to be "Monkey Kong", but was misspelled or misinterpreted due to a blurred fax or bad telephone connection. Another, more credible story claims Miyamoto looked in
6100-543: The game in its second year of release in America, totaling $ 280 million in US cabinet sales by 1982 (equivalent to $ 940,000,000 in 2023). In Japan, the annual Game Machine charts listed Donkey Kong as the highest-grossing arcade game of 1981, and then the sixth highest-grossing arcade game of 1982, with Game Machine later listing the game in its October 1, 1983 issue as the twentieth most successful table arcade cabinet of
SECTION 60
#17328840102436200-499: The game is near perfect and that anyone can be caught in Donkey Kong "fever". Donkey Kong was popular worldwide, garnering a positive reaction from consumers, and was a significant commercial success for Nintendo, pulling them out of financial troubles. After the game's initial 2,000 arcade cabinets sold out, more orders were made. Arakawa began manufacturing the electronic components in Redmond because waiting for shipments from Japan
6300-559: The game was not published. The Atari 8-bit conversion of Donkey Kong contains one of the longest-undiscovered Easter eggs in a video game. Programmer Landon Dyer's initials appear if the player dies under certain conditions and returns to the title screen. This remained undiscovered for 26 years until Dyer revealed it on his blog, stating that "there's an Easter egg, but it's totally not worth it, and I don't remember how to bring it up anyway". The steps required to trigger it were later discovered by Don Hodges, who used an emulator and
6400-419: The hero to be reunited with Pauline. These four stages combine to form one level. After each level, the stages repeat with increased difficulty. For example, Donkey Kong begins to hurl barrels faster and sometimes diagonally, and fireballs speed up. The victory music alternates between levels 1 and 2. The fourth level consists of five stages with the final stage at 125 meters. Level 130 is colloquially known as
6500-453: The highest score without using the hammer. The current world record in this category was set by Jeff Wolfe on July 8, 2008, with a score of 735,100. Some other categories include most points for different levels, and fewest points. Donkey Kong is considered to be the earliest video game with a storyline that visually unfolds on screen. Set on a construction site in New York City ,
6600-626: The highest-grossing game of 1981 and 1982. It was ported to the Game & Watch , selling eight million units, while Nintendo licensed the game to Coleco , a developer of arcade conversions for home consoles , selling six million cartridges. It was later ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), designed to replicate its technological capabilities; both the game and NES were integral in spreading Japanese video games to Western audiences. Donkey Kong 's various ports sold more than 15 million units worldwide. Other companies cloned
6700-420: The limited memory of Atari 2600 cartridges forced him to omit two of the original game's four levels. Coleco's sales subsequently doubled to $ 500 million and its earnings quadrupled to $ 40 million. Coleco also released stand-alone Mini-Arcade tabletop versions of Donkey Kong , along with Pac-Man , Galaxian , and Frogger in 1982. Coleco also bundled a copy of Donkey Kong with its Atari VCS clone,
6800-732: The managers of two bars in Seattle, Washington, to set up Donkey Kong machines. The managers initially showed reluctance, but when they saw sales of $ 30 a day—or 120 plays—for a solid week, they requested more units. In their Redmond headquarters, a skeleton crew composed of Arakawa, his wife Yoko, James, Judy, Phillips, and Stone gutted 2,000 surplus Radar Scope machines and applied the Donkey Kong conversion kits imported from Japan, consisting of motherboards , power supplies, and marquee graphics. The game officially went on sale in July 1981. Makers of video game consoles were interested. Taito offered
6900-498: The market becoming cornered with other competing platforms from companies like Atari and Nichibutsu . Epoch chose to discontinue the Cassette Vision in August 1984 due to poor sales. It released Elevator Panic , its final game, in the same month. The company refocused its efforts on designing a successor to the Cassette Vision that could compete with Nintendo and Sega, which became the Super Cassette Vision . In its lifetime,
7000-549: The month. In the United States, Donkey Kong topped the Play Meter arcade charts in October 1981, setting a weekly earnings record, and it was later listed by RePlay as the highest-grossing arcade game of 1982. It was also among the thirteen highest-grossing arcade games of 1983 in the United States. According to Electronic Games in June 1983, the home versions contributed to the arcade version's extended popularity, compared to
7100-435: The name of "Jumpman", a name originally chosen for its similarity to the popular brands Walkman and Pac-Man , be changed to "Mario" after Mario Segale , the landlord of the original office space of Nintendo of America. These character names were used in promotional materials, although Mario was called Jumpman in the operations manual and instructions. Donkey Kong was ready for release. Stone and Judy convinced
7200-660: The original arcade game on the Game Boy , titled Donkey Kong (referred to as Donkey Kong '94 during development) contains levels from both the original Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. arcades. It starts with the same gameplay and four locations as the arcade game and then progresses to 97 additional puzzle-based levels. It is the first game to have built-in enhancement for the Super Game Boy system. Upon release in arcades, Computer and Video Games compared it favorably with King Kong and predicted that it would likely become
7300-603: The original video game I have seen". The magazine's Danny Goodman stated that of Coleco's three console versions, the one for the ColecoVision was the best, followed by Atari and Intellivision. Computer and Video Games reviewed the ColecoVision port in its September 1984 issue and scored it 4 out of 4 in all four categories of Action, Graphics, Addiction and Theme. Ed Driscoll reviewed the Atari VCS version of Donkey Kong in The Space Gamer No. 59. Edwards commented that
7400-433: The same as he died , yet my passport has expired cannot be replaced by my passport has died . A thesaurus or synonym dictionary lists similar or related words; these are often, but not always, synonyms. [REDACTED] The dictionary definition of synonym at Wiktionary Donkey Kong (arcade game) Donkey Kong is a 1981 arcade video game developed and published by Nintendo . As Mario ,(known at
7500-504: The same features as the Cassette Vision, omitting the volume dial controller and having a redesigned keyboard layout to make certain games more intuitive to play. The Cassette Vision Jr. was successful for its low price point and lack of competition, and like its predecessor was commercially successful. Four days before the Jr.'s release, Nintendo released the Family Computer (Famicom), which
7600-422: The same word in close proximity, and prefer to use synonyms: this is called elegant variation . Many modern style guides criticize this. Synonyms can be any part of speech , as long as both words belong to the same part of speech. Examples: Synonyms are defined with respect to certain senses of words: pupil as the aperture in the iris of the eye is not synonymous with student . Similarly, he expired means
7700-471: The screen which was eventually found too hard to program, though a similar concept came later in the Popeye arcade game. Miyamoto then thought of using sloped platforms, barrels, and ladders. When he specified that the game would have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to implement the game repeatedly. Nevertheless, they followed Miyamoto's design, creating
7800-594: The small startup company on a major order of 3,000 Radar Scope . Its poor reception in America filled a warehouse with 2,000 unsold Radar Scope machines, so Arakawa requested that the parent company president (and his father-in-law) Hiroshi Yamauchi send a conversion kit of new game software. Yamauchi polled the company's entire talent pool for fresh game design concepts to save the distressed startup. This yielded Shigeru Miyamoto 's debut as lead game designer of his Donkey Kong concept, and Yamauchi appointed head engineer Gunpei Yokoi as project supervisor with
7900-427: The stage, a heart appears between Mario and Pauline, but Donkey Kong grabs her and climbs higher, causing the heart to break. The narrative concludes when Mario reaches the end of the rivet stage. He and Pauline are reunited, and a short intermission plays. Nintendo of America was founded in 1980 with minor success at importing its parent's arcade cabinets from Japan. In early 1981, its president Minoru Arakawa bet
8000-441: The success of Donkey Kong , Nintendo began developing the Famicom, the hardware of which was largely based on the Donkey Kong arcade hardware, with the goal of matching the system's powerful sprite capabilities in a home system. Nintendo wanted the Famicom to match the Donkey Kong arcade hardware, so they took a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet to semiconductor chip manufacturer Ricoh for analysis, which led to Ricoh producing
8100-417: The taller Pauline uses two sprites, and the larger Donkey Kong uses six sprites. Hiroshi Yamauchi thought the game was going to sell well and phoned to inform Arakawa. Nintendo of America's distributors, Ron Judy and Al Stone, brought Arakawa to the lawyer Howard Lincoln to secure a trademark. The game was sent to Nintendo of America for testing. The sales manager disliked it for being too different from
8200-449: The template for countless video games released after. The game uses graphics and animation for characterization. Donkey Kong smirks upon Mario's demise. Pauline has a pink dress and long hair, and a speech balloon crying "HELP!". Mario, depicted in red overalls and a red cap, is an everyman character, a type common in Japan. Graphical limitations and the low pixel resolution of the small sprites prompted his design. A mustache implies
8300-423: The term being coined; the U.S. gaming press used "climbing game" for games with platforms and ladders. As the first platform game to feature jumping, Donkey Kong requires the player to jump between gaps and over obstacles or approaching enemies whilst Donkey Kong throws barrels at the player, setting the template for the future of the genre. With four unique stages, Donkey Kong was the most complex arcade game of
8400-408: The thought of a "stupid ape". Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project. He was not a programmer, so instead consulted technicians for concept feasibility. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, and have different movements and reactions. Yokoi thought Miyamoto's original design was too complex, though he had some difficult suggestions, such as using see-saws to catapult the hero across
8500-540: The time as "Jumpman") the player runs and jumps on platforms and climbs ladders to ascend a construction site and rescue Pauline from a giant gorilla, Donkey Kong . It is the first game in the Donkey Kong series and Mario's first appearance in a video game. Donkey Kong was created to salvage unsold arcade cabinets following the failure of Nintendo's Radar Scope (1980), and was designed for Nintendo of America 's audience. Hiroshi Yamauchi , Nintendo's president at
8600-448: The time, and one of the first arcade games with multiple stages, following games such as 1980's Phoenix and 1981's Gorf and Scramble . In addition to the goal of saving Pauline , the player has a score. Points are awarded for the following: leaping over obstacles; destroying objects with a hammer power-up; collecting items such as hats, parasols, and purses; removing rivets from platforms; and completing each stage according to
8700-440: The time, assigned the project to first-time video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto . Drawing inspiration from " Beauty and the Beast " and 1930s American media such as Popeye and King Kong , Miyamoto developed the characters and scenario and designed the game alongside chief engineer Gunpei Yokoi . It was the most complex arcade game at that point, using graphics for characterization, including it and cutscenes to illustrate
8800-560: The trademark. When Universal threatened Nintendo, Howard Lincoln and Nintendo refused to cave. In preparation for the court battle, Universal agreed to allow Tiger to continue producing its King Kong game as long as they distinguished it from Donkey Kong . Universal sued Nintendo on June 29 and announced its license with Coleco. The company sent cease and desist letters to Nintendo's licensees, all of which agreed to pay royalties to Universal except Milton Bradley and Ralston Purina . Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo, Co., Ltd.
8900-447: The use of emulators for high scores they publish because they allow undetectable cheating. In 2020 Guinness World Records reversed its decision and reinstated Billy Mitchell's previous world records, based on new evidence including eyewitness reports and expert testimonials. There are other world record categories for Donkey Kong besides highest score. One of the most popular is the "No Hammer Challenge" where competitors try to get
9000-525: The verdict was upheld on July 15, 1986. Nintendo thanked John Kirby with the gift of a $ 30,000 sailboat named Donkey Kong and "exclusive worldwide rights to use the name for sailboats". Kirby , the protagonist of the Kirby series, was named in John Kirby's honor. The court battle also taught Nintendo they could compete with larger entertainment industry companies. After the release of Donkey Kong Jr. ,
9100-549: Was monophonic , but the chip was capable of generating polyphony . Having the ROM, the RAM and the CPU in one chip, Epoch/NEC were able to create a chip that would support 48-bit instructions which was way faster than systems using a separate ROM at the time. Using 8-bit ROM through a bus would have divided the speed by 4. Although having only the ROM on the cartridge would have reduced their cost drastically, it would have greatly increased
9200-503: Was a subcontractor who had already been paid. Game Machine called it "simply a nuisance tactic" on the part of Ikegami. By late March 1981, Nintendo was also pursuing a license to make a game based on the Popeye comic strip. When they experienced technical issues, Nintendo took the opportunity to create new characters that could be marketed and used in later games. Miyamoto came up with many characters and plot concepts, but he settled on
9300-621: Was assigned as the designer and hardware engineer of the Cassette Vision. Horie previously worked on the Digit-Com 9, a baseball LSI , and several of the company's earlier dedicated consoles. The console was to represent "the perfection or maturation" of Epoch's previous console efforts, most notably the TV Baseball from 1979. Epoch wanted the Cassette Vision to be based around cartridges to help clear out space in one's house, as its dedicated machines were usually big and took up room. The Cassette Vision
9400-590: Was heard in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Judge Robert W. Sweet. Over seven days, Universal's counsel, the New York firm Townley & Updike, argued that the names King Kong and Donkey Kong were easily confused and that the plot of the game was an infringement on that of the films. Nintendo's counsel, John Kirby , countered that Universal had argued in
9500-664: Was not the first cartridge-based console released in Japan; earlier examples include the Video Cassette Rock by Takatoku Toys and the TV Jack 5000 by Bandai . Because of the way Epoch designed its previous consoles, the development team working under Horie was unable to separate the ROM and CPU in the console. The Cassette Vision was released in Japan on July 30, 1981, at a retail price of ¥ 13,500. Epoch based its marketing strategy on what worked for Atari and its Video Computer System in 1977, which Epoch had released in Japan as
9600-440: Was programmed by Garry Kitchen . Kitchen was contracted to port the game through his brother Steve, who had connections to an executive at Coleco. He was given only three or four months to develop the port and worked without sleep for the last 72 hours before shipping. Kitchen received no assistance from Nintendo and minimal aid from Coleco, who only provided him with an arcade machine for temporary use. These factors combined with
9700-784: Was re-released as part of the Arcade Archives series for Nintendo Switch on June 14, 2018, and the NES version was re-released as one of the launch titles for Nintendo Switch Online on September 19. Donkey Kong was one of the most widely cloned video games in the early 1980s, along with Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980). By 1983, Donkey Kong clones had become available on various different platforms. The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers lists 17 different Donkey Kong clones released for various home platforms. There were so many games with multiple ladder and platforms stages by 1983 that Electronic Games described Nintendo's own Popeye game as "yet another variation of
9800-408: Was similarly designed around interchangeable cartridges. The Famicom quickly overtook the Cassette Vision in popularity and became the leading game console in Japan, largely for its ability to produce high-quality conversions of arcade games like Donkey Kong . The Cassette Vision was unable to compete with the Famicom, and later Sega 's SG-1000 , due to the inferior hardware it possessed, as well as
9900-468: Was taking too long. The game's success led to Arakawa expanding Nintendo of America. By October, Donkey Kong was selling 4,000 units a month, and by June 1982, Nintendo had sold 60,000 Donkey Kong machines in the United States, earning $ 180 million. Judy and Stone, who worked on straight commission, became millionaires. Arakawa used Nintendo's profits to buy 27 acres (11 ha) of land in Redmond in July 1982. Nintendo earned another $ 100 million on
10000-506: Was the best selling video game console in Japan before Nintendo 's Family Computer . It received a successor called the Super Cassette Vision . Founded in 1958 by Maeda Taketora, Epoch was originally a manufacturer of plastic baseball boards, before transitioning to designing toys, board games, and playing cards. Epoch rose to become one of Japan's largest toy companies during the 1960s and 1970s, in part due to its family-run business model. The company partnered with Magnavox to release
#242757