Since his first appearance in 1981, Donkey Kong game and for over thirty two years Mario's characters has been seen in over 200 hundred games. Today Mario is considered to be a franchise, selling all sort of gadgets, toys and also appearing in media; e.g. movies, music etc.

Mario

One of the most recognizable character in the gaming industry, since the nineteen eighties and so profitable it became a franchise. Mario is an Italian plumber with mustache, designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, staff artist at Nintendo Co ltd. The story of Mario games was pretty simple and the gameplay addictive, as the first Mario games were released on Nintendo Entertainment System which consisted cartridges, which were gaming cassettes that couldn’t handle as much memory as todays blu ray discs. Back in the 1980, when 16 bit games ruled the market and Japanese gaming industry, Nintendo has released their biggest hit so far, ‘Radar scope’, which was an imitation of the classic arcade game, Space Invaders.

After Nintendo decided to set up an American branch, (NOA – Nintendo of America) and start selling their Japanese hit, Radar Scope, which had not been so successful and left NOA with over two thousand unsold units. 
It was due the competition, and found itself amongst arcade kings such as Atari or Namco developers, Radar Scope was unsuccessful and Nintendo of America desperately and quickly needed a game that would take out the competition and bring huge profits. 
The president and CEO of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, has found a solution and hired Shigeru Miyamoto, who worked as a staff artists at the time for Nintendo Co. Ltd.

In order to make sure their game scores huge sales, Yamauchi had an idea to make his game based on a already popular in America character. It happened to be that Popeye: movie adaptation was coming out on cinema screens, and Shigeru Miyamoto had transferred and modified popular from the Popeye the sailor comic characters in to his game.

This resulted in the creation of Donkey Kong game where the players are on a mission to rescue a damsel in distress who is Jumpman’s girlfriend captured by his mistreated pet, ape Donkey Kong.

The three main characters of Popeye: the sailor were modified so that they would fit into Shigeru Miyamoto’s game idea, the antagonistic brute, Bluto became a giant ape, Donkey Kong, which means ‘stupid gorilla’, as Miyamoto stated in the interview for Nintendo Online Magazine.

The Olive Oyl which is the girl Popeye falls in love with, became the Lady captured by Donkey Kong and Popeye was transformed into carpenter, also referred to as Jumpman.

The Jumpman of Donkey Kong is Mario’s first appearance ever in the games, he received his name after a landlord of Nintendo of America’s office barged in on a company meeting demanding an overdue rent.