It's recently been revealed that Miyamoto didn't in fact code Donkey Kong:http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/funny-occasionally-dirty-hidden-messages-favorite-games-192013980.htmlWhen Nintendo first got into creating arcade video games, it didn't yet have the capability to program them itself. This hidden message in the code of Donkey Kong shows that development of Nintendo's breakout hit was at least partially outsourced to a company called Ikegami Tsushinki:CONGRATULATION !IF YOU ANALYSE DIFFICULT THIS PROGRAM,WE WOULD TEACH YOU.*****TEL.TOKYO-JAPAN 044(244)2151 EXTENTION 304 SYSTEM DESIGN IKEGAMI CO. LIM.[/align:21bulryz]
He (Hiroshi Tamauchi) approached a young industrial designer named Shigeru Miyamoto, who had been working for Nintendo since 1977, to see if Miyamoto thought he could design an arcade game. Miyamoto said he could. Yamauchi appointed Nintendo's head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi, to supervise the project. Nintendo's budget for the development of the game was $100,000. Some sources also claim that Ikegami Tsushinki was involved in some of the development. They played no role in the game's creation or concept, but were hired by Nintendo to provide "mechanical programming assistance to fix the software created by Nintendo."
Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project. He lacked the technical skills to program it himself, so instead came up with concepts and consulted technicians to see if they were possible. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, move in different manners and react in various ways. Yokoi thought Miyamoto's original design was too complex. Another idea Yokoi suggested was to use see-saws to catapult the hero across the screen; this was too difficult to program. Miyamoto then thought of using sloped platforms, barrels and ladders. When he specified that the game would have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to make the game repeatedly. Nevertheless, they followed Miyamoto's design, creating about 20,000 lines of code.