Miyamoto explains why he chose Mario over Donkey Kong
Even though Donkey Kong is still a pretty important Nintendo character today, his success pales in comparison to Mario’s fame. Yet, we can’t forget that Donkey Kong was very popular back in the day. Eventually, Shigeru Miyamoto chose to focus on the Italian plumber rather than the lovable ape. According to Miyamoto, this decision was made because he felt Donkey Kong was too big and also due to the fact that Nintendo wanted Mario to appear in additional titles.
“Well, the first reason is that Donkey Kong is just too darn big. And because he’s so big, we actually created Donkey Kong Junior to try to come up with the same sort of character, but in a smaller, more manageable size. And as we were looking at an 8-bit size, Mario became a much easier character to use. So that’s the first reason. My original goal was that I really wanted to use Mario in a lot of different games. So, for example, in the original Punch-Out! you’ll see Mario and Donkey Kong in the audience. You’ll see Mario is the referee in Tennis [a 1984 Nintendo Entertainment System game]. And then it became taking Mario and Luigi both and putting them in different situations in various games, and was the direction that I decided to take.”
