Steve Wozniak was booted off of Dancing with the Stars, and can finally leave behind the fast paced world of competitive dancing to return to his carefree life of a nerdionaire (nerd billionaire). Don’t feel bad for Woz though. America no longer has to suffer through Wozniak’s bad dancing and Wozniak can continue to swim in his money bin (3.6 billion worth). It’s a win/win situation. It looks like the twitter nation and mac users around the world just didn’t have enough pull to keep Steve Wozniak in the contest. And even though Woz is off of Dancing with the Stars, his legend lives on. And no I’m not talking about the iPhone or Apple Computer. His wireless hardware, Wheels of Zeus? Hardly. Steve Wozniak’s legacy is a gorilla in a red tie.
Steve Wozniak is, in fact, Donkey Kong. The facial similarities are too much to be ignored, but it’s not just the spot on looks. Woz’s friend and co-founder, Steve Jobs, dropped out of college to work for Atari. Atari would go on to license such games as Pac-Man and… Donkey Kong. Coincidence? It was Steve Jobs that got Wozniak in with Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. Before Apple was even a glimmer, Wozniak designed games for Atari such as Breakout. It’s easy to to see that Japan would take notice of Wozniak, his beard, his jowls, and his Breakout skills. In fact, Japanese game publisher Taito would go on to port Breakout as Arkanoid. They knew Wozniak existed and they went out of their way to copy without his permission.
Surely a meeting took place in Tokyo that went something like this: “Look at these upstart Americans moving in on video games with their body hair and man boobs… let us make him a monkey.” And so it was said and so it was done.
Apple went public in 1980. Donkey Kong was released by Nintendo in 1981. The computer industry was a small world in the 80’s. Were paths never crossed? When Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto was trying to picture a “stupid and goofy” ape, how could his mind not wander to Steve Wozniak. Urban legend states that original names for Donkey Kong were Monkey Kong and Woz Kong.
While there’s no undisputed evidence that Donkey Kong is based of of Steve’s friendly grin if I was ever around Woz holding a barrel I would be prepared to jump.
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