The iconic ape in a tie is celebrating a twenty-year anniversary this year and the developers ofDonkey Kong 64are reflecting on some of the ups and downs of the game. Between accessing the whole Kong family and singing along to the DK Rap at the beginning of the game,DK64was a fun, light-hearted game. The originalDonkey Kongwas a fan favorite by many,including Nintendo’s president Doug Bowser,but the whimsical N64 3D action-adventure may have looked incredibly different as the original design had DK wielding a very realistic shotgun.
George Andreas, one of Rare’s lead developers, recalls the meeting with a mix of horror and fascination. The development team was in charge of showing the game’s progress to Nintendo’s big wigs, includingShigeru Miyamoto who is known for his skepticism of gun violence in video games. Andreas was demonstrating the game to the smiling executives, showcasing the rap, Donkey Kong swinging from vine to vine, and collecting all the bananas.
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“And then I pressed the button to pull out the gun.” Andreas recalls, “It wasn’t a textured gun that you might expect but a realistic shotgun with bullets flying out and with horrifying sound effects.”
The team had been working on theDonkey Kong 64for so long they had forgotten that the gun was meant to be a placeholder and not the very realistic gun that Miyamoto was now starring at in abject horror. “I completely forgot that it was in there,” Andreas says. It was clear that this shotgun was not fitting tonally with what wouldsoon become an inspiration for people like Kojima. After a moment of watching the game, Miyamoto composed himself, smiled, and started drawing on a piece of paper.
After a tense silence, Miyamoto had drawn the base design for the coconut gun with leaves on it to make it look less scary. Miyamoto’s simple yet measured design would then become the gun that Donkey Kong would wield throughout the game, just one step towardsearning Shigeru Miyamoto the highest honor in Japan. “I looked at it,” Andreas remembers, “and said ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool, we’ll put that in’ and the coconut gun was put in after that.”
From there all of the Kong-family had coconut inspired projectiles and the game would go on to be a massive hit. Andreas even recalls going to a toy store after the launch of the game and watching as hundreds of kids and parents clapped and sang along to the DK Rap. “I didn’t care what happened after that point as it’d brought joy to those families,” Andreas told GamesRadar. And the joy continued for two decades following as many are still wondering whether or not a remake will be made for theNintendo Switch after Reggie Fils-Amie teased its launch in 2017.
Donkey Kong 64can only be played on Nintendo 64, without a shotgun.
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