There are certain seminal moments in history, and July 9, 1981, should surely stand among them. That was the day Nintendo officially began selling Donkey Kong to arcades—and introduced the world to a mustachioed little fellow named Jumpman.
Jumpman was a simple soul with a simple talent: jumping.
He jumped over barrels thrown at him by the game’s eponymous gorilla villain. He hurdled fireballs scooting across the iron beams of the busted construction site where he and Donkey Kong did battle. He leapt, leapt, leapt—all in pursuit of the Princess, his lady love who had been captured by the abominable ape.But to leap is not always to live, and so July 9, 1981 was also the first day that Jumpman began dying. A lot. When players fed a quarter into one of the 60,000 Donkey Kong machines sold in that first year, it bought them three precious lives, none of which lasted very long. As Billy Mitchell, one of the greatest Donkey Kong players in history, put it: “The average game of Donkey Kong doesn’t last a minute. It’s sheer brutality.”
So, in the spirit of celebrating the 36th birthday of the character formerly…
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