Real-life Donkey Kong plays with his Nintendo

Nintendo appears to have found a new spokesman for their game machines — a giant ape.

At the San Francisco Zoo Friday, it was a gorilla named Bawang, not Donkey Kong, who could be seen playing Nintendo's latest handheld gaming gadget — the super-sized Nintendo DSi XL.

Photographer Christina Spicuzza was watching the gorillas when a boy dropped his game machine into the gorilla enclosure. A gorilla named Bawang was quick to snatch up the device.

"The gorilla was very interested in trying to figure it out," Spicuzza said, explaining that the ape flipped it over and put it up to her eyes several times.

It wasn't long before a young gorilla named Hansai made a grab for the machine. But Bawang is Hansai's adoptive mother and the big ape apparently had no intention of letting the little one play video games at his young age. She kept the machine well out of her child's reach.

Spicuzza managed to shoot several photos of the gorillas with the DSi XL and a short video before her camera battery died.

There's another video here.