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Donkey Kong’s Fascinating History

The road to video game development is fascinating; we will never tire of hearing stories of hurdles faced by developers and the incredible solutions developers came up with to create the titles that shaped our youth. Nintendo in particular has an incredibly rich early history. Mario’s development is incredible, as is the supporting titles that made the company into a powerhouse in the early 1980′s.

Since Nintendo’s in-house development group is well known today as the driving force behind world class titles that drive the company’s hardware to its limits and push their systems’ technical boundaries, it’s interesting to know that their earliest hit titles were not developed by Nintendo at all, but by the programming equivalent of ‘ghost writers’ – developers who wrote software for customers without receiving credit for their work. Those early arrangements threatened Nintendo’s early success in a shroud of lawsuits and content battles.

Read about Donkey Kong’s History at Gamasutra