25 Things You Never Knew About "Donkey Kong"

One of the longest undiscovered easter eggs in the history of video games can be found in the Atari 400 version of Donkey Kong. Landon Dyer, the programmer who built the version set it up to where if a player died under certain conditions and waited for the game to cycle back to the title screen, his initials would be displayed. It took 26 years for it to be revealed and that was only when Dyer posted it on his blog. Unfortunately, he doesn't remember how to get to it so don't count on seeing it anytime soon.

There were two sequels to the Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat game that came ou on the Gamecube. Donkey Kong: Jungle Fever and Donkey Kong: Banana Kingdom were both released in video game arcades in Japan but never touched North American soil.

When the original Donkey Kong Country dropped in 1994, it became the best selling Super Nintendo video game that wasn't bundled in with the system.

In Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong's Quest, there is a feature where the player is ranked alongside three big Nintendo stars: Mario, Yoshi and Link. If you pay attention, you'll also see a sign on the bottom right of one of the podiums that reads, "No hopers" and shows what looks like Sonic the Hedgehog's sneakers and Earthworm Jim's ray gun. Obviously a sneak diss at two of the most popular video game characters at the time not under the Nintendo brand.

The damsel in distress that Mario must save in Donkey Kong isn't Princess Peach from the Super Mario Bros. games. In fact her name is Pauline and before that, her name was simply "The Lady." If you ever wondered why she looks a hot mess with her dishovelled hair and wreck of a dress, it was done on purpose to emulate Fay Wray, the female lead in the King Kong movie.

Back in 2010, two retailers, GAME and Gamestation held a promotion where the first 20 customers at select stores could get a copy of Donkey Kong Country Returns by trading in a bunch of bananas. We could only imagine what the trade-in for a new Lesiure Suit Larry game would be.

The first Donkey Kong game was made to fill a spot in Nintendo's video game roster when a game based on the Popeye comic strip fell through. DK's creator Shigeru Miyamoto came up with the idea of doing a game with a love triange between a carpenter, his girlfriend and a gorilla be the story. Miyamoto came up with the name Donkey Kong because he felt that "donkey" would translate into the sense of "stupid ape" in English. Ironically, that stupid ape was smart enough to know how to toss and roll barrels at Mario.

"It's on like Donkey Kong/You wanted that fast buck, now I gotta light that ass up" was the line Ice Cube started "Now I Gotta Wet'Cha" with on his 1992 Predator album. Nine years later, you'll hear "It's on like Donkey Kong" in the commercial for Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D. That's because Nintendo filed to trademark the phrase.

Donkey Kong's creator Shigeru Miyamoto was not a fan of the Donkey Kong Country series and went as far to say publicly, "Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as the art is good." Those same words came back to haunt him when the game and its sequels went on to sell over a million copies each. With a plate full of humble pie, Miyamoto offered an apology.

In the latest release, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D there is a "DK" barrel in Cranky Kong's shop. If you scroll over it, Cranky will say, "It's dangerous to go alone. Buy this!" The Legend of Zelda fans should get a good chuckle as it's a nod from the original game when an old man gives Link a sword and says, "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this."

Universal City Studios took Nintendo to court back in 1982 over the Donkey Kong name saying that the video game's title and plot were too similar to that of the King Kong movie. Nintendo beat the case because King Kong is as old as dirt and therefore open to the public domain. Womp, womp.

There was going to be a sequel to Nintendo's classic remote controlled car racer R.C. Pro Am for the N64 but when Shigeru Miyamoto was approached with the idea he decided that Diddy Kong should be the mascot for the game. In 1997, Diddy Kong Racing was born.

In the new Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, if you stand around idle for an exented period of time, Donkey Kong will sit down and start playing with what looks like a Nintendo DS Lite. Listen closely and you'll hear the sound effects from the original Donkey Kong arcade game.

Oddly enough, when developers visited a local zoo to check out real-life gorillas, they felt that the movements weren't good enough to translate to a video game's pace. Instead they went with a horse.

Contrary to popular belief, Donkey Kong didn't start wearing his signature red necktie in Donkey Kong Country. The great ape first broke out his cool haberdashery in the 1994 Gameboy remake of the original Donkey Kong.

At the time when Donkey Kong was at its most popular, a slew of knock-off games came pouring out to the public. Monkey Kong, Congo Bongo and the more recent Krazy Kong all bit hard from the classic title. There was even a King Kong tabletop LCD game in 1981 that Tiger Electronics (more recently known for their Giga Pets and Furby toy lines) put out.

When creating the name for Diddy Kong, the names "DK Lite," "Diet DK," "Titchy Kong" and "Dinky Kong" were thrown around. The devs wanted to go with Dinky Kong but Rare's lawyers were against it and so it became Diddy Kong. Ironically during a time when a music producer who would later take on the name Diddy was fashioning a career borrowing music samples.

There are no water-based levels in Donkey Kong Country Returns() The reason is because it was felt that the water levels in past titles felt too slow. There were initial plans to keep the levels in DKCR but because "it just wasn't the kind of gameplay we were looking for," according to Nintendo manager Kensuke Tanabe, it was dropped.

Everyone likes to talk about Mario's brother Luigi being the often ignored family member but the two plumbers actually have a cousin named Stanley from Donkey Kong 3 who we never heard from again. Also a part of the blue collar workforce, Stanley was an exterminator who shot puffs of poison up Donkey Kong's butt. That may be the reason why he's never been invited to parties in the Mushroom Kingdom.

Donkey Kong Country (1994) was the first video game ever to use wire-frame 3D technology. That's what made the the animation so much smoother than other video games at the time.

Donkey Kong had two national television shows, Donkey Kong was part of the Saturday Supercade line-up of cartoons based on video game characters in 1983. In 1997, DK returned to the tube on the Donkey Kong Country series. In the first Donkey Kong cartoon, the video game gorilla was voiced by legendary actor/comedian Soupy Sales who also pllayed in sitcoms Wings, Boy Meets World and The Beverly Hillbillies.

In the hidden depths of video games that would hopefully remain forgotten is Donkey Kong Jr. Math. It was only released on the Japanese version of the NES (Famicom) and challenged players as Donkey Kong Jr. to solve a variety of math problems. Reason being that the Famicom was being marketed as a family computer and Nintendo was very serious about the console's image. Nothing is more family friendly than hammering a kid with math so there you have it. Math nerds looking to give Donkey Kong Jr. Math a spin can get their hands on it from Nintendo via Virtual Console or by clicking this link.

On the second board of the third level of Donkey Kong Country Returns where Donkey Kong is fired from a barrel into the mouth of a large monkey statue, if you look closely, the statue is wearing the same American flag-inspired tie worn by Donkey Kong arcade game champion Billy Mitchell.