Donkey Kong History

Donkey Kong (or Donki Kongu in Japanese) was first released by Nintendo in 1981 and is considered to be one of the earliest Platform games ever created.
The goal of the man is to bring the jumpman, which was later known as Mario, to Pauline, and rescue her from the evil Donkey Kong.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, back then the president of Nintendo, the developer Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo chief engineer Gunpei Yokoi, wanted to design a game for the north American market, so they were aiming at creating a game inspired from well known movies such as King Kong and Popeye.
Universal City Studios sued Nintendo claiming trademark violations of King Kong, but Nintendo won in the courtroom, and managed to continue its marketing efforts in North America.

On November 1981, Nintendo and the US based company Coleco signed an agreement that will grant all right in the American market to Coleco.
At first, Coleco offered the game as part of their ColecoVision bundle, and later they developed the Atari 2600 version.
By mid 1982, more then 50 companies asked to use the image of Donkey Kong and Mario in various advertisements, foods and even Japanese manga.
One of the biggest makers of arcade consoles, Taito, even proposed to buy the all the rights of the name Donkey Kong, but Nintendo refused.

In 1982, Nintendo released the second game of the series, Donkey Kong Junior, and in 1986 the third game Donkey Kong 3.
One of the most famous spin-off is, of course, Mario bros which was released in 1983.