It can now be said with pride: Donkey Kong Bananza has been a huge success for Nintendo. Just at its launch, it sold 127,000 physical copies in Japan (not counting digital sales), and it doesn’t seem to have lagged behind in the rest of the world. The character, especially after appearing in Super Mario Bros: The Movie, is in a golden moment where he not only has his own series (Donkey Kong Country and its derivatives) but is also a successful supporting character in Mario Kart or Smash Bros. He even has his own attraction at the Nintendo park! In short, the company can’t live without him… although there was a time when he simply fell into obscurity.
To act like a monkey
In 1981, after a Popeye game created by Shigeru Miyamoto was unable to use the characters due to licensing issues, the author was forced to create his own protagonists, replacing Bluto with an angry gorilla that throws barrels: Donkey Kong. Although Nintendo believed it was going to be a failure, it surprisingly ended up earning 280 million dollars that year, and the following year, with ports to consoles like Coleco and Game & Watch, it brought in an astonishing 4.4 billion more. How could they get rid of that gorilla?
That same year, taking advantage of the momentum, they created Donkey Kong Jr, and in 1983 it was time for Donkey Kong 3. However, the game did not take off (except in Japan), despite being directed by the same Miyamoto. On one hand, it changed the gameplay of the previous two to turn it into a shooter where Stanley -not Mario- had to defend Donkey from a group of bees. On the other hand, it coincided with the crash of the industry and was unable to recover, and the successful character they had created just two years earlier was already doomed to failure.
Moreover, in 1984 they allowed Hudson Soft to create a sort of sequel, The Great Counterattack, which was released only on personal computers exclusive to Japan like the NEC PC-8801. As you can see, it didn’t have much appeal, but Nintendo’s idea to revive the franchise was even worse: to turn the platform game… into a math game. Donkey Kong Jr. Math was released directly for NES and its gameplay was insane: to reach the gorilla, you had to reach numbers and arithmetic symbols until you could match the figure he was holding in his arms. A failure? How is that possible?
Donkey Plof
This was going to be the first in a series of educational NES games, including one where Donkey Kong taught music, but it came to nothing after the sales crash of Donkey Kong Jr. Math. What to do now with a character whose success had been burned out so quickly? Well, they decided to hand it over to SEGA to make a game where Donkey would become… a valet. Yes, as it sounds.
The game in question was going to consist of avoiding cars that were coming and going from the parking lot, and picking up the ones that were requested, which were parked in their spot. That’s all there is to it. Imagine if they saw little future in Nintendo to allow such a nonsense. The mastermind behind this idea was, by the way, an old acquaintance for all lovers of the darker side of video games: Stephen Radosh, the creator of Hotel Mario, probably the worst title in the history of the plumber, created exclusively for CD-i.
It took a decade for Donkey to have a new game, the Game Boy Donkey Kong, in 1994, the same year that the reboot we all know, Donkey Kong Country, finally arrived, a true masterpiece that forever resurrected the gorilla, gave him travel companions, and introduced wild and jungle platforming. For whatever reason, no one has thought of having Donkey teach math again.
