DK Impact

Assess the impact that your franchise has made on the video game industry as a whole and what did this franchise bring to the table that pushed the industry in a new way? 

Nintendo was losing but the success early in the 1980's was due to the release of Donkey Kong.

 "The success of the Donkey Kong series has resulted in Guinness World Records awarding the series with 7 world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. The records include: First Use of Visual Storytelling in a Video Game" for the rudimentary cut scenes featured in the original Donkey Kong arcade game, and "Most Collectible Items in a Platform Game" for Donkey Kong 64. "

"The game not only affected Nintendo  but every single video game developer in the world. Suddenly the bar was raised for graphics, sound, play control, and fun. DKC showed people how successful a video game could be, and how much money could be obtained from them."

Because of Donkey Kong the future consoles were able to sell at all.  The video game industry might have been more on the computer, than the console base we have today.

   Looking at it from this perspective, had Donkey Kong not come along in July 1981, it's unlikely any of the modern video game consoles would exist at all, and difficult to know when and if the US video game industry would have recovered, and what kinds of games we might have seen. 

The game became so popular artists, tv shows, etc..were making songs referenced to the game.  Still to this day it has been labeled as the third most popular arcade game of all time.

1982: Buckner & Garcia: "Do The Donkey Kong

   Discuss how your franchise has advanced the video game industry overall. 

Nintendo was losing but the success early in the 1980's was due to the release of Donkey Kong.

  Nintendo won a lawsuit against Universal studios that gave them the confidence to become a major player in the video game industry. Before this lawsuit, Nintendo was still considered a "new" to the U.S.

"The studio's president at the time, Sid Sheinberg, had seen the booming home video game market and felt his company should be getting in on the action. It didn't take long for his research to turn up the fact a game called Donkey Kong was a big hit with the kids, and it didn't take long for Sheinberg and Universal vice president Robert Hadl to come to the conclusion that Donkey Kong was infringing on their rights to the King Kong brand.P

So in April 1982 Nintendo and Coleco, which at the time was licensing the game for its consoles (remember, this is before the NES), were threatened with legal action. Nintendo were, absurdly, told to cease all sales of the game, get rid of any unsold copies they were sitting on and give Universal all the money they'd ever made from the game

Rather than bow to the bullying of the big company (Nintendo at the time being a much smaller outfit than it is today), Nintendo of America's attorney Howard Lincoln convinced the company to fight the looming court case, as he believed Universal didn't have a legal leg to stand on.P

After discussions between Nintendo and Universal failed to reach an agreement on the situtation, a lawsuit was filed in June 1982. In addition to filing against Nintendo, Universal also threatened six other companies, all of them involved in licensing Donkey Kong for other uses (TV shows, board games, etc).P

Universal claimed that a game about a giant ape throwing barrels and a man in overalls was so close to the plot of King Kong that it constituted an act of copyright infringement. One of Nintendo's arguments was that a movie about a giant ape that's captured on an island, breaks free, kidnaps a sexy lady and punches airplanes had nothing to do with its game.

The case, which went ahead in late 1983, didn't last long, Judge Robert Sweet ruling swiftly in Nintendo's favour. Rubbing salt in Universal's wounds was the fact Sweet also found that a game called King Kong, which Universal licensed to Tiger in retaliation to Donkey Kong, was infringing on Nintendo's copyrights, and that the game company was thus liable to a cut of its profits.P

Nintendo instead accepted damages from Universal, and while the case would linger on with appeals for a further three years, each found in Nintendo's favour, ensuring not only the continued success of Donkey Kong but of the company itself, whose fledgling American operations would have been under serious threat had they lost the case.P

All's well that ends well, though, and for Nintendo the outcome couldn't have been better. Not only was Donkey Kong free to resume his place as one of the company's great mascots, but Howard Lincoln would go on to become chairman of Nintendo of America. Even attorney John Kirby came out on top: in addition to rumours that Nintendo's Kirby character is named after him, he was given a sailboat by Nintendo as thanks for his work in the case, which was named - what else - Donkey Kong.P" 

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Why is franchise pivotal to the larger growth within the industry (i.e. identify the before and after). 

 It is 30 years later and is still coming out with games.  And, some consider it the superhero of video games.

Donkey Kong Country is the best selling (non bundled) 16-bit game of all time. Donkey Kong Country sold around nine million copies, which gives you a good idea of how much the video game industry has grown over the past two decades.

If not for Donkey Kong and it's hero Mario, the odds that Sonic the Hedgehog would have ever existed are low.

 \What innovations did it make? What role did it have in the popularizing previous innovations? 

Nintendo was losing but the success early in the 1980's was due to the release of Donkey Kong.

Before Donkey Kong there wasn't really characters in arcade games...

The hit game in Japan at the time was Radar Scope. Nintendo ordered 3,000 of them to try in America . It was a complete flop and they had to  go back to the drawing board.... Donkey Kong was it's next design. To recover their money spent they used the used the same hardware with a new game (DK) which allowed them to recover their losses.

A 3D model was made and saved as a color 2D image. This lead to a realistic look that no other game had been able to achieve. Which started the realistic look and lead to realistic animations of the game. They actually went to the local zoo's to see how gorillas acted naturally and were disappointed.

Donkey Kong's first arcade game was ranked best selling in the 1980's. It was a large improvement of all other games available. "In the game, the fan-named 'Jump Man' (the character would later become Mario) must ascend a construction site while avoiding obstacles such as barrels and fireballs to rescue Pauline, his girlfriend, from Donkey Kong." So, no Donkey Kong... no, Mario!

Donkey Kong "broke new ground with by using graphics as a means of characterization, including cut scenes to advance the game's plot, and integrating multiple stages into the gameplay".

The entire Mario franchise owes its success to Donkey Kong.

While most of you probably knew this, without Donkey Kong, we would be without the Mario series and all its spin-offs. And just a glance at what that franchise has brought us in terms of now-common innovation is even more remarkable than what Donkey Kong brought us. Super Mario Bros was the first-ever side-scrolling platform: A genre that has been going strong for 20 years, and has seen more realises than any other. Super Mario Kart was the first-ever mascot-based go-cart racer.

A small Massachusetts town had a ban on coin-operated games since 1983.  In Marshfield a town of about 24,000 people recently lifted the ban on the arcade games.  The ban was made a law because some people in the town believed the playing these games would lead to destructive behavior.  Like drug addiction, gambling and others similar to these.  The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 1982 and so it went into effect in 1983.  A resident of the town convinced some business owners that they should have a right to install arcade machines.  When the vote came up earlier this year the town repealed the ban.