Gaming Historian releases full 1983 Donkey Kong court case documents as final gift
The YouTuber known as Gaming Historian has published the complete legal paper trail from Nintendo's landmark 1983 court battle against Universal over the rights to Donkey Kong. The document dump, released as a parting gift after the creator announced a retirement from educational retro gaming content, offers an unprecedented look inside one of the most significant lawsuits in video game history.
Gaming Historian, a producer of extensively researched documentaries sometimes compared to the work of Ken Burns, announced in early April that he would no longer make educational videos about retro games, citing burnout. To mark the occasion, the personality left fans with the full collection of documents from the Universal vs. Nintendo case. The cache includes everything from evidence presented during the proceedings to logs of witness interrogations, giving history buffs a chance to see how the lawsuit actually unfolded.
The case itself is well known to gaming history enthusiasts: in 1983, Universal claimed that Nintendo's Donkey Kong character infringed on its rights to King Kong. Nintendo successfully argued that its ditsy gorilla was not influenced by the other famous gorilla of the time, because the franchise actually began as a licensed adaptation of Popeye the Sailor Man. Decades later, both King Kong and Donkey Kong are thriving, and the entertainment giants are now happily collaborating on the box office juggernaut that is the Super Mario Bros. franchise.
Among the documents released are Nintendo's original design documents for the first Donkey Kong game and the first handwritten list of names the company considered for the franchise now known as Super Mario Bros. There are dozens of pages where Gunpei Yokoi, the father of the Game Boy, describes the initial meeting where Nintendo came up with the classic ladder game concept. The repository is also full of entertaining exchanges from a lawyer referred to as "Mr. Kirby" — that would be John Kirby, the naming inspiration behind the pink ball character — in a trial where people uttered sentences like, "You can't have a pronoun for a gorilla."
Miyamoto's deposition proves a highlight
One of the most fascinating finds in the document cache is the deposition of Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary game designer. Throughout the questioning, Miyamoto kept insisting that he couldn't remember when specific ideas were thought up or by whom. He often pointed to Yokoi as the authority on any given subject. Yokoi, naturally, deferred to Miyamoto in his own deposition. The circular nature of these depositions, alongside the language barrier, made for some tedious exchanges.
Miyamoto gave away nothing except for the fact that Donkey Kong is a gorilla that exists. Someone at Nintendo might have written down the words "King Kong" at some point during or after the creation of Donkey Kong, he acknowledged. But Miyamoto maintained that he hadn't considered a comparison between the two characters until the lawsuit itself.
When asked what other names he considered for Donkey Kong, Miyamoto's response was characteristically evasive: "The names which were in my mind." The exchange has been described as "iconic" by those who have reviewed the documents.
The document dump serves as a fitting final gift from a creator known for deep dives into gaming history. While Gaming Historian has stepped away from producing new educational content, this release ensures that one of the most important legal battles in video game history remains accessible to anyone curious about the nitty-gritty of how the case actually played out inside the courtroom.