#201: Banana Gump Co.
The thing about the Donkey Kong game is that he collects bananas. It's his schtick, his raison d'etre. And yet, while he collects them, all he does, in game, is sit on them, hording them for the eventual, kremling-zombie apocalypse (apparently). There are two issues I see with this:
One, while a gorilla eating bananas is fine, and I have no problem with the concept of it as way for him to gain lives (eat food, get health, get lives), the bananas are only there for lives. DK doesn't have a health meter, so it's not as if the bannas would help him there (in fact, if he did have a health meter, it would be a completely different kind of game). And, as we see at the end of the game, he doesn't actually eat the bananas, he just leaves them in his banana cave to sit and rot.
In fact, after the first game in the series, the bananas serve even less of a purpose because it's not as if DK is collecting them to go back in his horde (as was the plot of the first game), but instead they are there only to help the characters earn lives.
Secondly, the collecting of bananas works as well as Mario collecting coins. Neither DK nor Mario actually spend their collection item. In fact, when they decided to have Dinkey Kong spend money, they invented a different currency for him: Kremling Coins (Bear Coins too, at one point). It makes the collecting of bananas that much more imcomprehensible as he doesn't eat them, he doesn't spend them, and yet he needs them to fulfill some kind of mental compulsion.
Wow, it really put DK in a new light when you think about it like that.
One, while a gorilla eating bananas is fine, and I have no problem with the concept of it as way for him to gain lives (eat food, get health, get lives), the bananas are only there for lives. DK doesn't have a health meter, so it's not as if the bannas would help him there (in fact, if he did have a health meter, it would be a completely different kind of game). And, as we see at the end of the game, he doesn't actually eat the bananas, he just leaves them in his banana cave to sit and rot.
In fact, after the first game in the series, the bananas serve even less of a purpose because it's not as if DK is collecting them to go back in his horde (as was the plot of the first game), but instead they are there only to help the characters earn lives.
Secondly, the collecting of bananas works as well as Mario collecting coins. Neither DK nor Mario actually spend their collection item. In fact, when they decided to have Dinkey Kong spend money, they invented a different currency for him: Kremling Coins (Bear Coins too, at one point). It makes the collecting of bananas that much more imcomprehensible as he doesn't eat them, he doesn't spend them, and yet he needs them to fulfill some kind of mental compulsion.
Wow, it really put DK in a new light when you think about it like that.
When evil spreads across the land, and darkness rises and the monsters roam. When the creatures of the night make beautiful music, and the things that go bump in the night go bump with greater enthusiasm. When the world is in peril and is in need of a hero...
These guys are, sadly, the best the world can hope for. These are the adventures of the heroes of CVRPG. They mean well, they try hard, and occasionally they do the impossible...
They actually do something heroic.
