How I Spent My Summer of 1982

The Making of Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600

Life is strange.

In the summer of 1982, I spent about three months creating a list of 4,096 numbers, meticulously ensuring that every single number was the right value, and in the correct place in the list. When I finished, the only tangible evidence of my work was that long list of numbers.

When the list was complete, after nearly 1,000 hours of work, the former Connecticut Leather Company¹ put the numbers (in order) into a computer memory chip and plastic case and sold it at stores throughout the country. And people actually bought it.

The list of numbers that I created was known to the public as the Atari 2600 version of the hit coin-op video game Donkey Kong. To create the list, I wrote a computer program in 6502 assembly language in about 3 months, with little sleep. With enormous pressure to submit final code in time for holiday sales, I finished the game with a push of 72 straight hours at my desk, after which I was told that I looked like a zombie.

This is the story of how that list was created.

For background, Nintendo’s Donkey Kong (the arcade game) was a breakthrough in video game design, and one of the most successful coin-operated games of the early 1980's. To be clear, I did not invent Donkey Kong. The game was designed by the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, who has gone on to be possibly the most successful video game designer in history. It was the…