'Donkey Kong Dad': The things we make can have a positive effect

- "Donkey Kong Dad" Mike Mika in an interview with Wired Game|Life. A few months ago, Mike Mika decided to do something special for his young daughter. He didn't anticipate that his overnight ROM hack to allow his child to play as conventional damsel-in-distress Pauline would explode into a sensation. "I make games, and when she asks me for something I should be able to do, I should be able to deliver," he tells Game|Life in a new video interview (above). "What I did not realize was that this was coming on the tail end of a pretty big thing going on online, particularly [Feminist Frequency's] Tropes vs Video Games... It exposed that there are still issues with this." Mika received a wide range of responses to the ROM hack, including claims that he was vandalizing a work of art and veiled death threats. However, he received a great deal of positive feedback as well. "I've been making games for almost twenty years," he says. "This thing I did really turned it upside-down for me."