Before we get started on this weeks blog, I feel I need to give a special shout out to the MartianOddity for commenting on this blog. The Sega Dude has commented before, but if truth be told I know him quite well so it doesn’t really count. Thanks MartianOddity and I hope to hear from you again soon:)
The bounty from our trip to Value Village this week was a nice addition to the Nintendo Museum… A Donkey Kong figurine from the Mario Kart series along with a Gameboy Advance copy of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance for $8 in total. A good find, and I’m excited to play Baldur’s Gate, but not nearly as cool as what I found on Craigslist.
Shigeru Miyamoto was the creator of the original Donkey Kong which was released in the United States in 1981 by Nintendo which had a love triangle between Mario, Pauline, and a gorilla… loosely based on the Popeye, Olive Oil, and Bluto relationship for which Nintendo failed to get a license to produce. This was also Nintendo’s mascot Mario’s first of many appearances. One thing I’ve always found it interesting was
how Donkey Kong received his name. Apparently Miyamoto thought “Donkey” was an English translation of “Crazy”, and Kong was from the 1933 movie King Kong.
The original Donkey Kong (DK) was an instant arcade classic, and there is currently a war going on between Steven Wiebe, Billy Mitchell, and the current DK Guiness world record holder Hank Chien with 1,064,500 points. The last time I was in Hollywood Florida I stopped in the restaurant that Billy’s family owns. I asked if he was around so I could meet him, but sadly he was not:( I was hoping to get an autographed picture of myself and the former champ and will attempt to again when I visit Florida again for spring break. Now that would be a nice piece of history to have in the Nintendo Museum! Billy, if anybody can beat Hank’s score it’s you. I’ve tried to dethrone him and failed miserably! Have faith in yourself and I know you can do it!
Billy Mitchell
Steven Wiebe
Hank “the King of Kong” Chien
Wow did I ever get off track! Last friday on Craigslist I purchased a 1981 arcade-mini version of Donkey Kong made by Coleco (Nintendo didn’t have a home system yet). I’ve always had a place in my heart for these little guys as when I was 6 years old for Christmas I got a Pac Man arcade-mini. I became obsessed with it. I wanted to be the Pac
Man King. I’ll never forget the time when I was doing really well at the game that my mom wrote me a note to give to my teacher explaining my lateness… I was getting my best score ever at around 58,000 points! While not of Billy Mitchell’s calibre, for a 6 year old this is an awesome score. Billy Mitchell by the way has a perfect score in the arcade version of Pac Man. I’m not really sure what a perfect score means, but it sounds ridiculously hard! Anyways I played my Pac Man machine so much when I first got it that I eventually had to stop playing because my thumb hurt too much.
Well this is a huge find, and one that likely won’t be topped for a while to come. I’m in Value Village at least once a week, and lately the spoils have been quite nice. I guess when it rains it pours. This DK arcade-mini will go nicely with the remake of the Frogger I picked up for $5 earlier this year. I would love to get the original, but it is’t every day that you come across these. I know a guy who has a Ms. Pac Man and is selling it for $100 but will let it go for $75. Is it worth it? What do you think? I mean there are several other arcade-minis that I need to complete the collection…. Donkey Kong Junior, Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, the original Frogger, Galaxian (am I missing any?). My sister in-law actually has a Galaxian arcade-mini which hopefully she will give me or “lend” to me indefinitely.
Oh, the guy who I bought the DK machine from asked if I was interested in some NES games. That was a no brainer… and nearly was the $2/game price he wanted. How could I go wrong. So we added Caveman Games, Ultima: Exodus, Overlord, Deadly Towers (a really crappy game!), Wrestlemania, Mad Max, and a not-so-great shape copy of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. That brings the collection of NES games to whopping 237… or 28.87% complete! A long ways to go and probably impossible to complete, but that’s partly why I got into this in the first place:)
My Nintendo Dimension 