Donkey Kong, sometimes referred to simply as DK, is a Nintendo video game character that first appeared in 1981 as the enemy of Mario (then referred to as Jump Man), kidnapping his girl Pauline. The muscular gorilla lives deep within the jungle, wearing since 1994 a characteristic necktie (pretty much all his clothing). He is both the protagonist and antagonist of the Donkey Kong games. He was created by Shigeru Miyamoto.

Now that everyone's on the same level here, a bunch of students over at UCSC (10 to be more precise) have successfully recreated the first level of a Donkey Kong game (they do not specify the title), using no more, no less than 6400 post-it notes, which they painted and stuck to the windows of every floor of the building. Click on the picture to your left to enlarge and see what they've amazingly accomplished. But hold on a minute. Do you see what I see? Mario? Is that Mario? But then why isn't the game called Mario VS Donkey Kong or something like that?

It's because Mario wasn't all that famous back then. I mean, yeah sure people enjoyed playing as the little Italian carpenter/plumber/construction worker (who even knows anymore) called Jump Man back then, when the game didn't even bear his name, but Donkey Kong was the vicious enemy, kidnapping his girlfriend, thus he was more spectacular. I doubt Pauline was a faithful girlfriend while in the custody of the muscular gorilla.

Anyway, I hope you can appreciate what the team of 10 students from UCSC managed to do with 6400 post-it notes, giving us a chance to remember the 8-bit era, when games used to focus on the idea and not on looks - the innocent appearance of the first true video games.