Super Mario by Jeff Ryan Read Free Book Online Page A

“owners” of King Kong , because anyone could do whatever he wanted with King Kong. Kong was as unownable as Huck Finn. Then, Kirby asked for a summary dismissal of the suit. Granted.
    The word “hubris” might not be strong enough for Universal at that time. It had, after all, knowingly collected millions of dollars, and started a half dozen lawsuits, all on a claim that it had proven, in the public record no less, to be bogus. How did it think it was going to succeed?
    Judge Robert W. Sweet tore into Universal, in a blow-by-blow beating as thorough as it was brutal. First, Universal didn’t own King Kong . Second, even if it did, Donkey Kong wasn’t a copy of King Kong . Third, even if it was , it would be considered parody, which is legal.
    Sweet was just getting started. Any company Universal had hit with cease-and-desist letters had the right to sue Universal to get back its “royalty” payments and more. There was one clear copyright violation that came to light, though. Judge Sweet felt Tiger’s King Kong game, even with its superficial changes (a fireman’s hat!) was a clear knockoff of Donkey Kong . Universal had to pay a license fee to Nintendo for Tiger’s game. Universal’s loss could only have been greater if the judge ordered back royalties to the planet Earth for its use in the film company’s logo.
    Universal countersued Nintendo, and the ensuing battle took a few more years to conclude. Universal lost every suit. In the end, it had to pay nearly $2 million to Nintendo to cover its rival’s legal fees. This wasn’t counting all the other lawsuits it had on its hands, or the millions in fees it spent trying to prove, in an “abuse of judicial process,” that Donkey Kong and King Kong were one and the same.
    Coleco got its money back (via Universal buying a chunk of its stock), but its lack of business fortitude was now public. It and Atari were both working on computers. Coleco was going to include Donkey Kong on a floppy disc as the pack-in game for its “Adam” computer. Adam premiered, playing Donkey Kong , at a Chicago trade show. Coleco was promptly contacted by lawyers from Atari. Nintendo had licensed the floppy-disc rights to Atari for its Atari 800 computer. Coleco had assumed it had them, as part of the console and tabletop rights. Yamauchi intervened, and bullied Coleco into shelving its unlicensed game. He almost certainly chose to play a game of chicken with Coleco because he remembered Coleco caving in to Universal. Coleco caved again. (The floppy-disc version for Atari’s computer, the Atari 800, was never released.)
    Nintendo’s victory, in comparison, was unparalleled. Most other game companies either went out of business or were gobbled up by the big boys. But Nintendo faced down a muscular extortionist of a rival. Like a boy who realizes during a bully showdown that he has become a man, Nintendo learned how powerful it really was, after a mere two years. Howard Lincoln, for his part, rose from being Nintendo’s lawyer to being its senior vice president and general counsel.
    And trial attorney John Kirby was given a boat. The thirty-thousand-dollar sailboat was named, of course, Donkey Kong . Kirby was also given “exclusive worldwide rights to use the name for sailboats.” Finally, as Mr. Segale before him, Mr. Kirby may have been rewarded with Nintendo’s greatest honor. Starting in 1992, Nintendo released a popular series of games about a cute little pink fluffball. His name? Kirby.

4 – MARIO’S EARLY YEARS
    THE VIDEO GAME CRASH OF 1983
    V oice actor Peter Cullen may not have a recognizable name, but everyone’s heard his pipes. For the last twenty years he’s been everyone from the sad-sack Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh, to the villainous K.A.R.R. in Knight Rider , to the clicking flange-jawed Predator. He hit the trifecta of giant-morphing-robot cartoons in the early eighties, doing voices for Go-Bots , Voltron , and most memorably Optimus Prime in Transformers