Donkey Kong was the 1981 arcade game widely recognized as the first video game to feature a continuing story across multiple levels.
Nintendo designed the game after an earlier plan to create an arcade title based on Popeye characters did not proceed as expected. Shigeru Miyamoto led the project, which introduced a carpenter who climbs construction sites to rescue a captured woman from a giant ape. The characters later became Mario, Pauline, and Donkey Kong.
Its story was communicated through opening scenes, intermissions, and changing level layouts rather than through long blocks of text. That structure made the player’s goal clear and gave the game a sense of progression beyond repeating one screen.
The claim is sometimes simplified as “the first game with a story,” but earlier games had themes, settings, or brief narrative ideas. Donkey Kong’s important distinction was its connected, multi-stage presentation of a continuing rescue scenario.