Happy 45th Birthday Donkey Kong: His Guinness World Records Are Surprisingly Wild
July 9th marks 45 years since the original Donkey Kong arcade cabinet hit Japan in 1981, and the barrel-throwing, banana-loving ape has records worth celebrating. The most significant: the original Donkey Kong arcade game holds the Guinness World Records title for the first platform video game ever made. It also introduced the world to a young carpenter named Jumpman, who would later become Mario. The all-time high score record stands at 1,272,800 points, held by American Robbie Lakeman since June 2021, and it remains one of gaming's most fiercely contested achievements. Uniquely for an arcade game, Donkey Kong has no hard score limit, meaning someone could theoretically still come along and beat it. The original game sold around 15 million units across all its versions, making it the best-selling DK game of all time, even ahead of last year's Nintendo Switch 2 hit Donkey Kong Bananza.
There is also one delightful piece of DK lore worth knowing. The gorilla who threw barrels at Mario all those years ago is not technically the same ape who stars in modern games. That original Donkey Kong aged up and retired as Cranky Kong, first appearing in Donkey Kong Country in 1994. The current Donkey Kong is his grandson, or possibly his son — the lore, as Guinness World Records puts it, "is a little unclear and changes sometimes." Either way, the franchise shows no signs of slowing down. For comparison, the world's oldest living gorilla is Fatou of Germany, who recently turned 69. DK has a mere 24 years to catch her. Given his track record, do not rule it out.
