(piano music)

Today on Game Life we talk to the Donkey Kong

dad himself, Mike Mika,

about how he hacked a classic game for his daughter.

I did not know Donkey Kong had a dad.

That is not what I said.

Donkey Kong's dad.

(upbeat electronic music)

So something very interesting happened

to you recently

to make you into America's sweetheart,

the Donkey Kong dad.

The father of America's sweetheart.

Move over Sandra Bullock. (laughs)

Yeah, totally.

So, tell us what happened in your own words.

My daughter and I, we play a lot of games

and one of her favorite games is Donkey Kong

and Mario in general.

I figured starting with those games is a great,

safe way to introduce someone as young as three

to video games.

So, we're playing through Mario

and we played through Donkey Kong

and then I introduced her to Super Mario Bros. 2

which lets you pick from four different characters.

Of course.

She immediately gravitated to Princess Toadstool,

which, you know, fine with me,

that's all she would want to play with.

Now, to be fair, I gravitated towards

Princess Toadstool also, but, you know.

That's fine.

She actually has my favorite skill in the game,

which is the ability to kind of slowly drift down.

Of course.

Yeah, I can get really far with this character.

So, she was really taken by that

and we went back to Donkey Kong.

She immediately, after playing for almost a week now

on the other one, she's like, I wanna play as the girl.

And I'm like, I don't know.

I had to explain to her that this before

that other game and you can select the character,

but it kind of stuck with me.

Later that night, I was sitting going like,

I should be able to solve this problem for her

because this is what I do for a living.

I make games.

Right I make games

and when she asks for something I should be able to do,

I should be able to deliver.

Yeah, typically, when a child asks a parent

to do something completely impossible,

it's like you have to explain to them like,

no, I mean--

Daddy can't go into the game

and change the graphics, honey.

Right, right.

So, I spent the rest of that night

just hacking the RAM, trying to figure out

how to do it and all the challenges

that went along with that

and by morning I had a working version.

Yeah.

But the difference here,

probably from any other things I've done,

is I kept posting to Facebook my progress.

And so, as I was doing it, I would get a little

response back from people, Hey this is really awesome.

Do you mind if I post it here or post it there?

Do you mind if I tweet about it?

Another friend of mine, he's like,

Do you mind if I post it to Reddit?

I'm like, sure, why not?

Yeah.

Showed my daughter the next morning,

she loved it.

It was really fun.

She did not that you had stayed up

all night No.

reanimating the girl character.

For all she knew, it was like, Dad finally

figured it out. (laughs)

You just select her from the main menu.

She enjoyed that and she still prefers

to play that version.

Late that night,

my phones just going off the hook.

Hundreds of text messages, people are saying like,

Your story, it's going big.

At this point it was like number 16

on Reddit and climbing

and it just exploded.

It touched a nerve. Oh yeah.

You didn't expect it to,

but it really resonated with people.

Yeah, it was like this very simple hack.

I just wanted to

do this for my daughter.

Cause she wanted this thing.

But, what I not realized was

this is coming on the tail end

of a pretty big thing going on, online particularly.

The tropes versus video games.

Anita Sarkeesian who is kind of posing the

question of like, This is just an age old thing.

It's not been shattered yet really in these games

And here's how old it is, and that sort of thing.

It's just showing like you know,

it's the guy rescuing the girl over and over

and over again Even Donkey Kong was like

her first real-- It was.

Well, that was the thing,

it all came out of Donkey Kong.

But one thing it did kind of show us

this exposed that there still is issues with this.

Do you alter a masterpiece?

Is that right to do?

Do you try to placate sexes in a game or whatever?

Do you have to a male and a female character

in every game?

All these questions were coming up

and people were arguing and debating about this.

The responses I was getting on YouTube

and actually through Gmail and everything else.

I started to get everything from, This is amazing, to

weird, veiled death threats.

It was just unbelievable the amount of trolls

that come out of the woodwork.

Actually you guys helped out,

you helped out particularly in that.

Yeah. I was able to

reach out to everybody through an article

through Wired, which I explained

my intentions and what I actually did.

That was kind of profound to me.

I'd been making games for almost 20 years.

This thing I did really turned it upside down for me.

And you got some serious...

You're here on Game Life, obviously

This is the pinnacle. Yeah, obviously.

I mean, on the ladder up to this,

(laughing) you appeared on such other

lesser shows as, oh I don't know

Good Morning America, I think. Yeah.

That was actually pretty exciting

for my parents, right?

Of course. Right.

They've been following me, but it's like,

Oh yeah, he's in those game magazines or whatever.

My mom calling me up saying, This nice lady

from CNN called.

I think you should call her back.

And they're all excited about it.

I realized like things I do

and things I can be doing can have an effect on people.

Ultimately, a positive effect.

The amount of positivity that came out of this

and the letters I've received from it

has been amazing.

(upbeat electronic music)

Hi, this is Mike Mika.

I'm here with my friend's on Game Life.

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