Your first introduction to the 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game?

[Barrels2007]

Love these stories.  Some have been playing DK since the early 1980s while others discovered it much later.  Shigeru Miyamoto's groundbreaking game has truly spanned generations and survived countless gaming trends.

[Atokad2887]

first time playing a DK cab was in 89 at a small goodwill in enterprise alabama. never made it past the first level on the first day but that game, its colors, the sounds...was love at first site and stuck forever

[JNugent]

Hills Department Store. I was seven years old.  I used to watch the older kids and teenagers play.  But I couldn't make it off of 1-1.

[GDL]

I believe I'd played a few times before, but the first time I really remember playing was at a grocery store named Bob's Super Store in Kearney, NE.

I was waiting for my sister to get off work and they had a Donkey Kong machine in the front of the store.  A couple of kids were playing who were getting scores of 30k to 50k.  They showed me how to get past the elevator screen and I saw the cement factory for the first time. 

They called jumping from the second elevator to bypass the lower right part of the elevator screen "murfing" and it has stuck with me ever since.  Jumping to the upper platform was "super murfing".

Good times.

[guwu]

I grew up in a small german town which's only attraction at that time was an indoor swimming pool. Attached to this was a cafeteria where us kids had a Coke or chips after swimming. At one point (I must have been around 10 years old, so ca. 1985) they put an arcade cabinet in that cafeteria - which happened to be one of those white licensed DK cabs built in Germany at that time. While the other kids spent their money on sweets I instantly fell in love with that game and played it as much as possible. That love holds on to this day and I still can't believe that I now own my very own blue Nintendo DK cab since last year

[Barrels2007]

They called jumping from the second elevator to bypass the lower right part of the elevator screen "murfing" and it has stuck with me ever since.  Jumping to the upper platform was "super murfing".

"Super murfing"...I love that!  So cool you remember that.

That love holds on to this day and I still can't believe that I now own my very own blue Nintendo DK cab since last year

There's nothing like owning the real McCoy!   After childhood years spent begging for quarters, I never take for granted the DK machine in my basement that I can play for free!

[tilt]

Believe I was around... 11? But this was the late 2000s or early 2010s. I had really gotten on a retro kick as a kid. Started with the Atari 2600, then NES, and eventually arcade machines. I built a bar top Mortal Kombat 2 cabinet with my dad around this age, used some interface called Maximus arcade I believe. Anyway, I eventually got around to playing a ton of different arcade games.

Here is a video I made as a 12 year old about converting an old random cabinet to a 60-in-1 Donkey Kong machine:

I was very proud of this at the time, but obviously the camera work is pretty shoddy now lol. Anyway, from there I managed to get around 100k. I credit videos like those from John's arcade (

for really getting me into it. I distinctly remember looking at TG at the time, and Billy's 1.06m was at the top. Different times, eh? That score seemed impossible then.

Anyway, I played solo until about 2013, and I believe a YouTube comment by Corey Chambers on a video brought me to DKF, and Ethan happened to be streaming. Immediately, I was so drawn to this community. I think the rest of this story is well documented here and elsewhere ;p.

I credit this community and the retro community in general for kickstarting all my career successes nowadays, through all the tinkering and fixing. I would have never gotten such an early start as an electrical engineer otherwise. And most perhaps most importantly, the immense confidence I got from being one of the best in the world at something so early on was priceless. I hope one day we can relive those days, of 2013-2016 and also the fun of the 2020 tournaments on Kong League I organized. Wait and see!

[Flobeamer1922]

The first time I encountered the arcade version of Donkey Kong was probably when my parents and I drove down to Florida on vacation around 20 years ago. It was either at this hotel in Daytona Beach that had a 60-in-1 cabinet, or at the old Pac-Man Cafe in Orlando that had a DK/DK Jr./MB cabinet. Either way, I was really young back then, and I couldn't tell you much about my experience playing the game.

After that, I wouldn't get to play it again until I discovered MAME back in January of 2009. I thought it was kind of neat, but I didn't think much else of it for the next eight years. I'd argue my proper introduction to the game was when I watched Summoningsalt's since-deleted Donkey Kong World Record Progression video in 2017. That video was the catalyst for me. Wouldn't be in this community today if it weren't for that.

[Simpsons99]

First time i ever saw or played a DK Machine ... Was in 1981 Pizza Time theater *Chuck E Cheeses