Donkey Kong was the first game designed by legendary Nintendo desinger Shigeru Miomoto. It was released as an arcade title in 1981.
The Donkey Kong franchise was partially inspired by the Popeye comic strip and the 1934 animated short "A Dream Walking". Nintendo had previously licensed Popeye for a number of products, but they opted to save the license for future projects and instead create new characters for this game. Mario, Donkey Kong, and Pauline would replace Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyle. Mario and Donkey Kong would go on to become some of Nintendo's most iconic characters. Donkey Kong's success established Nintendo as an industry leader.
The game was ported to the Famicom as one of the three launch titles in 1986. In fact, the architecture of the Famicom was specifically designed to ensure it could faithfully recreate the experience of Donkey Kong in the arcade.
Nintendo Famicom
Two years before it came to North America as the NES, Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan in July 1983. Arguably the first true 8-bit system, the Famicom was the beginning of the console wars.
The Famicom popularized many of the features that would define this era of gaming including the D-Pad controller, which Nintendo had introduced with the portable Game & Watch version of Donkey Kong.
While the North American NES was only a gaming console, the Japanese Famicom could be be expanded with various peripheral devices, including keyboards and disk drives, which turned the Famicom into a full fledged home computer. This helped keep the Famicom relevant for much longer, outliving its American counterpart by more than half a decade.