I honestly thought he was named after the vacuum company because he sucks up stuff like a vacuum cleaner does.
This case was absolutely wild too.
Universal was arguing that Nintendo infringed on their brand, as they have done with a bunch of companies in the past.
Those companies typically just adhered to C&D rather than fight it, but Kirby was sure he could win it.
Kirby spent the first part of the case arguing all the ways that Donkey Kong was different from King Kong, and then closed his argument by citing a case between Universal and RKO pictures(The studio that made King Kong), where they themselves had successfully argued that King Kong was in the public domain.
So…RKO Pictures makes king kong. Universal pictures then gets sued by RKO, and Universal argues it’s in the public domain.
Then universal tries sueing Nintendo to protect their IP. Nintendo then shows King Kong is in public domain.
Soooooo…if I make Danky Kang, as a new IP, who wants to bet Nintendo would instantly sue me?
Make it a donkey instead of a gorilla.
Now Nintendo sues you if you call an ape in a video game “Kong”. Probably.
And then there’s Chunky!..he’s dead…
One way to find out
The difference is that donkey kong isn’t 100 years old and therefore isn’t in the public domain.
Donkey Kong came out in 1980. I was born in 1983. My hair is grey, my back hurts, and I FEEL like I’m 100 years old. And in this country, we don’t deal with laws or facts. It’s all about how we FEEL.
Therefore, Donkey Kong is 103 years old.
Neither was King Kong in 1980.
And here’s the degoogled link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2019/11/20/nintendo-kirby/
TIL there’s a Kirby vacuum company.
And of course someone else already said this lmaoooo
TIL there was a Kirby vacuum cleaner company
Yeah, there is a US Vacuum cleaner company called KIRBY.
I don’t know whether they’re still in business or of they’ve gone defunct.
But yeah, Kirby is also a vacuum company.
And apparently Nintendo’s cute little pink Blob being named Kirby like the vacuum cleaner is purely coincidental.
Those vacuums sucked… …in a bad way.
They were very heavy and kind of awkward. They did have a lot of suction and utility but all of the add-ons/attachments made it stupid annoying to store and use.
He’d be a ghost white character when he was named. Kirby’s first appearance was on the OG monochrome GameBoy, and he was white on the box art. He picked up his pink & red color scheme in his second game, on the NES.
No, he was always meant to be pink and is depicted as such on the Japanese box art. The North American box art got it wrong.
Okay but why does White Kirby look like that one Mario character? (I think his name is Boo/Teresa?)
Boos don’t have feet. Ipso facto Kirby is just round, not a ghost.
A pre-death ghost, if you will.
