Donkey Kong games console (DK-52), Game and Watch, made by Nintendo in Japan in 1982

Two blocks of orange plastic, hinged together to fold out to reveal the screens and buttons. When closed, the top cover of the console has a silver top and the name of the console in black on it. When open, the top block has a screen and the title of the game, while the bottom block has several buttons and another screen. Both screens have the painted drawings of buildings, ladders, hooks and platforms of a variety of colours.

Given by Jenny Deedman

Given to the Museum in 2012 by Jenny Deedman.

Nintendo is among the world’s largest video games companies, originally founded in 1889 in Kyoto, Japan, as a manufacturer of hanafuda playing cards. Nintendo entered the electronic toy industry in 1966, producing a series of early light gun games, but not to great success. In 1974, they were able to secure the contract to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey home video games console in Japan, which marked their first entry into this market. Nintendo began to produce arcade games from 1975, although the company’s fortune was truly made in 1981 with the release of the Donkey Kong in 1981, the title character being designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, who also designed Nintendo’s signature character Mario (an early version of whom appeared in Donkey Kong as ‘Jumpman’).

The previous year, 1980, had seen the release of Nintendo’s first Game & Watch handheld console. The idea of simple handheld game supposedly sprung from Nintendo’s Gunpei Yokoi’s observation of a commuter fiddling with an LCD calculator whilst on a train. The Game & Watch series spanned several versions throughout the 1980s, until superseded in 1989 by the Game Boy. Many titles were released across the different versions, although the games were not interchangeable between them: each had a single, inbuilt game.

'Donkey Kong' was a popular arcade game released in 1981. In it, the player guided a heroic carpenter called Jumpman (who later became the heroic plumber Mario) to attempt to rescue his girlfriend from the eponymous gorilla, who had kidnapped her and taken her into a tall building. This version was released by Nintendo in 1982 on an early handheld games console, the Game and Watch. These consoles were a series of increasing complexity, each featuring a single game. The two screens allowed for bigger levels. The player would guide the hero from the bottom to the top, avoiding the barrels thrown by Donkey Kong, attempting to cut the wires holding the girder he stands on. When all four wires were cut, the player would win.

This was one of the most popular games in the Game and Watch series, selling more than one million copies worldwide. It was also the first piece of video game hardware to incorporate the familiar cross-shaped directional pad ('D-Pad') used to guide the character.

B.393-2012