… and the Donkey Kong King of the Arcade
October 10, 2023
It was in October of 1980 when the United States was truly invaded by the Japanese. We are not talking about the military here. No, the first wave of this invasion featured four ghosts named Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde and a round yellow fellow with a huge pie shaped mouth dubbed Pac-Man. The game, which had been released in Japan a little over four months earlier, was an instant hit. Young people flocked to arcades and taverns where Pac-Man eagerly gobbled up their quarters.
Soon, Pac-Man merchandise flooded America as did other Japanese companies looking to capitalize on Pac-Man fever.
From the Infallible Wikipedia:
“When Pac-Man was released, the most popular arcade video games were space shooters—in particular, Space Invaders and Asteroids. The most visible minority were sports games that were mostly derivatives of Pong. Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre. Pac-Man is often credited with being a landmark in video game history and is among the most famous arcade games of all time. It is also one of the highest-grossing video games of all time, having generated more than $2.5 billion in quarters by the 1990s.
The character has appeared in more than 30 officially licensed game spin-offs, as well as in numerous unauthorized clones and bootlegs.According to the Davie-Brown Index, Pac-Man has the highest brand awareness of any video game character among American consumers, recognized by 94 percent of them. Pac-Man is one of the longest running video game franchises from the golden age of video arcade games. It is part of the collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.”
There were a number of other Japanese companies which, seeing the success of Pac-Man released arcade games, but there were two companies which dominated the market in 1982: Sega (Pac Man) and Nintendo. While Sega established its US headquarters in Irvine, California, Nintendo first landed in Tukwila, Washington
And that’s where my hubby enters the scene. In 1981 he was hired by a CPA firm in Burien who had a client that needed an auditor. So he was sent out to do the job and thus began a seven year relationship with a different Japanese invader: Donkey Kong.
While many think of Nintendo as a behemoth company, when Donkey Kong was first sold into the US market they had a grand total of six employees: two Seattle based salesmen; the company president (Mr. A – the son in law of Nintendo’s Japanese founder); two Japanese developer/engineers; and one American to assemble and make the arcade games compatible for the US market.
It was in June 1982, as Donkey Kong’s popularity skyrocketed to the top of the arcade market (and made the two US salesmen millionaires), that the hubby was hired as the company’s US controller. Those were crazy days with incredible long hours but also a real sense of family within the fledgling company.
In 1982 we hosted an April Fool’s day party the theme of which was bad jokes and to play video games. The hubby was even able to have a couple of full size arcade games (borrowed from Nintendo) for the attendees to enjoy. We continued this tradition for several years.
By the time he left the company in the late 1980’s we had acquired a variety of Donkey Kong themed items: mugs, cups, socks, both electronic and board games, shirts, a bulletin board, an aped shaped ‘bank’ and, the most prized possession of all: an electronic cocktail tabletop Donkey Kong game.
Over the years all of the Donkey Kong stuff has moved with us several times. Perhaps the items are worth some money. But that was never the point. More that these things are reminders of that crazy chapter in our lives, some good, some not so good. So I keep them in a cupboard because… well, just because it’s part of our history.
When the daughter and her (then boyfriend) hubby moved back to the PNW in 2020, we gifted them the cocktail table Donkey Kong Game. Of course it came with the stipulation that we could visit it if we were so inclined. But that rarely happens. Our son-in-law does sometimes fire the game up when they have friends over. Unlike the days of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong fever, however, quarters are no longer needed. All you have to do is plug the thing in, press a button, and soon Donkey Kong has abducted the maiden with Mario chasing them up the steel girder, jumping over the never ending barrels.
When the machine comes to life, one is struck by the simplicity of the 40 year old computer graphics, long ago eclipsed by more sophisticated games and machines. Even so, every once in a while it’s fun to escape back to the 1980’s when arcade games were king and the Japanese took the country by storm.
To read more about these two arcade phenomenon’s click here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_(video_game) (there are errors in this not-so Infallible Wikipedia article. Specifically, Nintendo’s first headquarters were in Tukwila, not Redmond, Washington)
barbaradevore.com 