Ever wonder how Mario came to be?

That was a pretty cool little video. I thought it was cool to hear why Mario looks like he does, the rationale behind his hat, mustache, gloves, etc...
 
Evidently the landlord reference of Mario was because Nintendo of America was behind on its payments to to the warehouse owner where Radarscope machines were stored. He was lenient enough that he didn't throw them on the street, but made it clear he was unhappy with NoA. They were thankful enough to acknowledge his lenience to the corporate office in Japan.

As many on this board may probably remember, Radarscope was a Nintendo game that was very big in Japan but flopped in the US. So, there were many unsold Radarscope cabinets (red) in storage. NoA was on the verge of collapse, and a "Hail Mary pass" was thrown by introducing another Nintento Japan game which was incorrectly translated from "Stubborn Gorilla" by Miyamoto into English as "Donkey Kong."

The unsold inventory was converted to Donkey Kong, which is why the red Donkey Kong cabinets are considered more valuable than the later blue ones.
 
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Some of that information was in the Rise of the Video games program that was on Discovery channel. There was five or six parts to it and they had a really long segment on Donkey Kong. If you have not see this program, you really should see at least the first few episodes. I was not nearly as interested in the later shows since it is a chronological set and the later ones are PC games and new consoles, online games, etc.

You can watch most of it on Youtube. Here is a link to the part about Mario.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_nNxAR8xAU&feature=PlayList&p=9D75D8BEA4381CAA&index=1
 
...which was incorrectly translated from "Stubborn Gorilla" by Miyamoto into English as "Donkey Kong."

Well, Miyamoto looked through an english thesaurus, and he liked the words donkey and kong, so he went with them. It was a lot less accidental than some people like to think. And of course, Donkey Kong works much better than Stubborn Gorilla.

-Adam
 
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