Father Hacks ‘Donkey Kong’ for Daughter- Wins Dad of Year Award

Being a gamer, I have heard this argument quite a bit. Why aren't there more female heroes? This dad was asked that by his daughter and rather than brushing the question off, he decided to do something about it.

Mike Mika's 3-year-old daughter was playing as Princess Peach in Super Mario 2 but was upset that she couldn't play as Pauline, the female in the classic Donkey Kong. She wanted to be Pauline and rescue Jumpman (Mario). After seeing how sad she was that she couldn't do that he decided to heed the call of his daughters wishes and stayed up all night hacking and changing the code in the game to make it so you could play as Pauline and rescue Mario.

 She's played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn't in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I'm up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline. I'm using the 2010 NES Donkey Kong ROM. I've redrawn Mario's frames and I swapped the palettes in the ROM. I replaced the M at the top with a P for Pauline. Thanks to Kevin Wilson for giving me the lead on the tools and advice.