A Pair of Rare Nintendo Arcade Games Head to the Switch

There were plenty of Nintendo games in the arcades back in the day. A pair of new arcade games are heading to the Switch and the games include three different versions of “Donkey Kong” and a game I’ve never heard of called “Sky Skipper”. The “Donkey Kong” versions heading to Switch include the original early version that was in Japan only that had some bugs in it.

The second version is the later original Kong for Japan that had the bugs in that early version fixed. The third Kong version is the international version that arcade fans in the US will remember feeding quarters to back in 1981. As for “Sky Skipper”, this game is exceedingly rare and arcade fans wont remember it. The game is circa 1981 and Nintendo of America never officially launched the game.

Ten arcade cabinets were built for the title and distributed out to location tests in bars and arcades where the game flopped. Apparently, gamers of the era didnt like the game so those ten cabinets were all that were ever made. As far as we know only one of those cabinets is still around today and it is at Nintendo HQ.

Nintendo exec Don James, who happens to be the only current Nintendo of America employee that was around in 1981, said, “We kept one original Sky Skipper cabinet in our archives at Nintendo of America. We got the call to go dig up the game. They pulled the ROMs out, copied them, and sent them to Japan.” The game will land in July on the Switch reports Kotaku.