Concept and Creation
In 1981, Nintendo was pursuing a license to make a game based on the Popeye comic strip. When this fell through, Nintendo decided that it would take the opportunity to create new characters that could then be marketed and used in later games. Miyamoto came up with many characters and plot concepts, but he eventually settled on a gorilla/carpenter/girlfriend love triangle that mirrored the rivalry between Bluto and Popeye for Olive Oyl. Bluto was replaced by an ape, which Miyamoto said was "nothing too evil or repulsive", and the pet of the main character. Miyamoto has also named "Beauty and the Beast" and the 1933 film King Kong as influences for the character.
Miyamoto believed "donkey" meant "stupid" in English, and assumed the name Donkey Kong would convey the sense "stupid ape" to an American audience. When he suggested this name to Nintendo of America, he was laughed at, but the name stuck.
Read more about this topic: Donkey Kong (character)
Famous quotes containing the words concept and/or creation:
“Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)