A massive trove of court documents related to Universal's 1983 lawsuit against Nintendo has suddenly become publicly available online. These documents include everything from mundane court records to testimony from Nintendo legends like Shigeru Miyamoto, Gunpei Yokoi, and Hiroshi Yamauchi. Perhaps most immediately interesting are some of Miyamoto's original ideas for Donkey Kong.
Video game researchers are already combing through these documents for new insights into Nintendo history, and you're free to do the same – they're all available for your perusal on the Internet Archive. These documents come courtesy of excellent YouTuber Norman Caruso, who you might know better as The Gaming Historian. Today, Caruso announced that he's retiring from his YouTube channel, but as a "parting gift" he's left us with these documents, which he scanned from the National Archives in Kansas City while researching for a video he no longer plans to finish.
The documents all relate to Universal's lawsuit against Nintendo over what it claimed were similarities between its film, King Kong, and Nintendo's arcade game, Donkey Kong. As a result, much of the material concerns the origins of the Donkey Kong character, and the name that both he and the game share. In one development document, Miyamoto laid out a stack of potential names for the arcade game, including:
- Giant Kong
- Big Kong
- Kong on the Run
- Kong Chase
- Steel Kong
- Mad Kong
- Heart & Kong
- Lady & Kong
- Attack the Kong
- Kong Attacker
- City Kong
- Build On
- Family Kong
- Funny Kong
In a testimony given during the trial, Miyamoto said that Build On was his "favorite name for the game." I guess it makes sense given the game's construction theme, but I gotta say, I'm glad Miyamoto lost that fight.
But there is another major revelation from Miyamoto's testimony that's blowing my mind. He tried to make Donkey Kong "close to a human being as compared to the usual gorilla," he said. "And I tried to make it as a human being wearing stuffed doll." There's some awkward wording in the deposition because of the translation, but Miyamoto later clarified, "What I meant by stuffed doll is the actor, in other words a human being, wearing gorilla costume and act like a human being."
So yes, Miyamoto originally envisioned Donkey Kong not as a gorilla, but as a man in a gorilla suit. I can only imagine how something like Donkey Kong Bananza might look if Miyamoto's headcanon had carried forward.
There's much, much more waiting to be found in these documents, which comprise 1.3 gigabytes of material, and you can be sure that video game historians are already picking them apart for new insights into Nintendo's early days in game development.
If you want to relive Nintendo's '80s era, check out our guide to the best NES games ever made.
