Miyamoto reveals new secrets about making Donkey Kong – Nintendo’s company bath, working with NoA, Mario’s age, more

Earlier today, Nintendo published a new interview with Shigeru Miyamoto about Donkey Kong on its Japanese website. It was conducted in celebration of the NES Classic Edition/Famicom Mini due out on the market next month.

To say that the interview was interesting would be an understatement. It’s unfortunately Japanese-only right out, but Wired has provided a pretty good rundown of what was talked about. Miyamoto revealed how Nintendo’s company bathtub helped soothe his thoughts, working with Nintendo of America and pushed for Donkey Kong’s name, how he tried conveying that Mario was in his 20s, and more.

Head past the break for a summary of Wired’s article. We encourage you to read their full piece here as well.

– As previously mentioned, Mario was named “Mr. Video” and “Jumpman” by Miyamoto
– Nintendo’s American branch christened him “Mario” due to his resemblance to their landlord, Mario Segale
– Donkey Kong was supposed to have human voice samples
– Nintendo had a company bathtub

On how Miyamoto didn’t work on the NES version of Donkey Kong, but he did work on other games…

– Miyamoto had nothing to do with the 1983 Famicom version of Donkey Kong

“The porting of arcade games to Famicom, we left in the hands of a different team. In order to get the Famicom off to a good start, I was working on the rest of the software lineup.”

– Only three games were available for Famicom on its launch day
– The team hoped to have about 7 games available in short order.

“I personally really wanted there to be a Baseball game, and so I was working on that, as well as games like Tennis and Golf. I was directly in charge of the character design and the game design.”

– Any game on the Famicom is designed around Miyamoto’s low-level specs
– 8-bit systems could only pull from a palette of 64 possible colors
– Miyamoto helped to hand-pick which colors it would support
– Miyamoto told his friends he was going to disappear; then spent 4-5 months on Nintendo’s property
– Miyamoto had to create Donkey Kong under intense time pressure
– Nintendo of America was sitting on many unsold cabinets of a failed arcade game called Radarscope, and it needed a replacement game immediately
– Miyamoto knew he was going into intense crunch time, and telephoned several of his friends, saying, “You probably won’t hear from me for about two or three months”
– This was about how long it took to create a full game in those days, but Donkey Kong ended up taking about 4-5 months

“At the time, I was living in company-owned housing, just across the river from the office. So every day, I was just going back and forth between the office and the company housing. Thank goodness we had a company bathtub!”

“Yes (there was a company bath). At that time, our office was in Tobakaido, which also housed the hanafuda factory. There was a water boiler that was used to make the hanafuda, and the water from this boiler was also used for a bathtub. The employees making the hanafuda could wash their sweat away in the bath after work, and at night when nobody was around, you could hang out there for a long time. It totally saved me. It was really effective at letting me put my ideas in order.”

– Miyamoto used Nintendo of America’s ideas sometimes, but fought them when he thought he was right

“At that time, while I was making Donkey Kong, the conversations were all around how ‘globalism is important’ and ‘we should think worldwide.’ We listened to a lot of Nintendo of America’s opinions, but not all of them. For example, for the game’s title, I was trying to convey the idea of ‘stupid monkey.’ ‘Donkey’ of course referred to the animal, but the dictionary I used said that it had a secondary meaning of ‘idiot.’ Nintendo of America said that this was not the case, and ‘donkey’ didn’t mean ‘idiot.’”

– They said it sounded like she was talking about seaweed

“It’s a mystery. But I just liked the sound of it, so I decided to stand my ground on ‘Donkey Kong.’ And within a year, everyone was saying ‘Donkey Kong’ with no hesitation.”

– Miyamoto thought the details of Donkey Kong‘s storyline would make it clear that Mario was supposed to be in his twenties, but he was wrong

“I didn’t think he was an old man. I thought he was more like 24 to 26 years old. When you think of the story—Mario kept Donkey Kong locked up, so he escaped with his girlfriend—he was a young guy, a bachelor. But of course, now there are people who think he’s around 40 years old.”

On how the game was supposed to talk to you in English…

“The lady stolen away by Donkey Kong was supposed to yell out, ‘Help, Help!’ And when Mario jumped over a barrel, she was supposed to yell, ‘Nice!,’ complimenting him. But some people within the company said, ‘Doesn’t the pronunciation sound a little weird?’ So we tested it on a native English speaker, a professor. They said it sounded like she was talking about seaweed: ‘Kelp, Kelp!’”

“At that point in development, we couldn’t fix it. ‘Help!’ was replaced with Donkey Kong’s growl, and ‘Nice!’ was replaced with the pi-ro-po-pon-pon! sound. It’s really good that we went with pi-ro-po-pon-pon!. When you walk past an arcade and hear that sound, it’s really catchy. So even though we took out the voices, it still had great results. From this experiences, I learned the importance of having good sound effects.”

– The official onomatopoeia for Mario’s jumping sound is pi-ro-po-pon-pon

On how he learned to loosen up after this game…

“I was pretty serious when I was making this. For example: If you were to fall from a height equal to your own body height, you’d probably break your foot, right? So in Donkey Kong, if you fall 1.5 times Mario’s height, you die. But later I thought, isn’t it better if you don’t die from such a thing? So in Mario Bros., even if you fall five times Mario’s height, you don’t die. But still, please enjoy this very serious game in which you die if you fall off a single platform.”