1980s arcade gaming meets 1930s cinema. Double retro overload!
It does feel like that when you first set eyes on Shigeru Miyamoto’s legendary design. This was one of the earliest ‘climbing’ games, laying the foundations for the platform genre. And it’s packed with film tropes, from the damsel in distress to the giant ape – too packed, according to Universal City Studios, which filed a lawsuit against Nintendo alleging trademark infringement of King Kong. Universal lost; Nintendo won; gamers and everyman carpenters everywhere erupted in celebration. Probably.
Carpenters? Duh, Mario’s a plumber!
Not at first. He wasn’t even called Mario – he was an unnamed everyman, trying to rescue the generically named Lady, avoiding deadly barrels and removing rivets from towers in a flagrant breach of health and safety rules. He was at various points dubbed Jumpman and Mr Video, before Nintendo’s US staff renamed him Mario after their warehouse landlord, Mario Segale. That worked out pretty well for the character… but his quest in the game itself was tougher, not least due to a bug that gave him just four seconds to complete the 117th screen.
Yikes! Bet that made Mr Segale furious.
Indeed – and in the sequel Donkey Kong Jr, Mario acted in uncharacteristic fashion, squeezing the giant ape into a tiny cage and unleashing psychotic critters on DK’s son when he attempted a rescue. There were helicopters too – this was big-budget revenge. Eventually, the apes won, booting Mario across the screen and leaving him to forever take out his aggression on tortoise-like creatures instead. As for DK, he took refuge inside a greenhouse in Donkey Kong 3, annoying a pest control officer but – this time – no major film studios.
