1.3 gigabytes. There was so much information that was just unloaded for our dazzled eyes to see regarding Nintendo's 1980s feud with Universal over Donkey Kong. It's hard to imagine these days, and Mario's pair of blockbusters, but there was a time when the movie-making company was outraged by what it saw as copyright infringement regarding gaming's most iconic ape. Nintendo eventually prevailed, and there have been countless great games since, including last year's extraordinary Donkey Kong Bananza.
Famed content creator The Gaming Historian, who has revealed he's shutting down his beloved channel, delivered the news along with one hell of a parting gift: the aforementioned 1.3 gigabytes of court data. Some incredible tidbits have been revealed, things rarely seen by the public. Things that fell through the cracks of the industry… until now.
A parting gift
The gaming historian, whose real name is Norm Caruso, scoured the National Archives and Records Administration way back in 2020. His mission? To learn everything he can think of regarding Universal's case against Nintendo in 1982. This, to be clear, is generally available. The thing is, very few people have ever gone there with such thoughts in mind. Going through tens of thousands of documents is not quite as easy as checking Wikipedia.
Caruso scanned every document he found in the case. Universal claimed in 82 that the newly created Donkey Kong infringed on their intellectual property rights: King Kong. If there's a fictional gorilla with more cultural cache than Donkey, it's king, right? Under previous circumstances, this passionate investigative prowess would have prompted The Gaming Historian to create a several-hour video detailing every aspect of his findings.
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Alas, his heart just isn't in it anymore, and so he's shutting down his channel — so instead, he's left us with “a parting gift.” As of now, every single scanned document is on the Internet Archive. He has also sent these files to the Video Game History Foundation. Very nice. But let's jump into the best bits that have gone viral so far. (Props to GamesRadar for the catch.) First off, here are a bunch of potential names for the original Donkey Kong game (and, in some cases, probably the titular character himself) per Shigeru Miyamoto:
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The Kong family
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Funny Kong
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Build On (OK, maybe this one shouldn't have been his name)
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Giant Kong
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Big Kong
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King Chase
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King on the run
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Heart and King
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Lady and King
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City Kong
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Attack Kong
It's easy to look back at over 45 years of Donkey Kong and think there was no better name, but honestly, if you had read that list to me back then, I might have suggested Big Kong or City Kong. Maybe “Giant” and “Big” flew a little too close to the King Kong sun.
All the better, the documents shed light on how Miyamoto-san envisioned the Donkey Kong character at the time. The creator's intention was to bring Donkey Kong closer to a human than a gorilla in design:
“What I meant by 'stuffed doll' is the actor, in other words a human, wearing a gorilla suit and acting like a human.” -Shigeru Miyamoto's court deposition on Donkey Kong's design, translated
Is this still Miyamoto's view of today? I'm not so sure. The donkey has really evolved, hasn't it? In those days, at least, that was the gist. And I guess that kind of extends to, like, Bowser too? He's not a dinosaur turtle. He's more of a real guy. Featuring an iconic dinosaur turtle design. Even King Koopa himself almost went with more of an ox way, though. Things change – sometimes quickly, within the development cycle, when someone else points out that the look of the tortoise overcomes the bull.
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