Miyamoto's Donkey Kong Jr.

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Miyamoto made Donkey Kong Jr. and then Mario brothers as an arcade game. That's what introduced Luigi and you had two plumbers. The setting was underground and the green pipes, that's how they became plumbers. They finally get the license got in the same van. Nintendo goes to John Kirby a few years later and says, we've got this great game and development and we're going to name the protagonist after you. And that is how Kirby got his name.

You may think you know the Nintendo story: a plumber named Mario, a princess named Zelda… and didn’t they buy the Seattle Mariners at some point? We thought we knew it too. And then we started researching and were blown away.

The lovable Disney-like Nintendo that we know today is a 130 year-old a playing card company (i.e. gambling), forged in the shadowy world of the Yakuza and shaped by a four-generation cycle of bitter family betrayal. And its unlikely transformation into a global multi-billion dollar media monopoly was led by an iron-fisted patriarch who — amazingly — never played a video game in his life! Get ready for one of our favorite stories Acquired has ever told — we couldn’t make this one up if we tried!

ACQ2 Show: