Your birth year
2006
Donkey Kong
1981Platform
Donkey Kong is 25 years older than you
It's from 1981, before you were born.
- Developer
- Nintendo
- Genre
- Platformer
- Debut
- Arcade (1981)
- Designer
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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About
As of 2026, it's 45 years old.
Donkey Kong is the game where a giant ape kidnaps a woman and a stubby little carpenter climbs scaffolding to rescue her by jumping over barrels — and that carpenter, originally named 'Jumpman,' would go on to become Mario, the most famous character in gaming. Not bad for a guy invented to dodge barrels.
Released in 1981, it was Nintendo's first huge hit and basically invented the platformer, the entire genre of jumping over things to reach a goal.
Simple, frantic, and accidentally world-historic, Donkey Kong is the game that launched a mustachioed plumber and a billion-dollar empire from a pile of barrels.
