Comments 2

Re: Feature: Shining A Light On Ikegami Tsushinki, The Company That Developed Donkey Kong

Ogre

I know it's mentioned in the article but it seems like people are kind of skimming over the fact that Ikegami was responsible for the coding/development of EVERY single one of Nintendo's arcade video games up until DK Jr. in 1982. NCL could make electro-mechanical style games thanks to Yokoi, but they had nobody in house with the required coding skills (eventually leading them to hire Iwata for his abilities to port arcade games to the NES hardware), so Nintendo absolutely needed Ikegami at that point in time.

If Donkey Kong wasn't a hit, there might not have been a lawsuit and Nintendo might still own the DK code, but Nintendo of America would have probably been forced to close up shop.