Last month, Donkey Kong 64 turned 20 years old. Since then, the development team behind the game has been doing the press rounds to celebrate the anniversary.
During a recent interview with Games Radar, one of the creative leads George Andreas recalled a horrifying moment when Rare was showing the game to Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata and Howard Lincoln (Nintendo of America's chairman) at its new studio, and Donkey Kong pulled out a realistic-looking weapon:
We switched on the game, they saw the rap, and then I started running around as DK. I swung on some vines, collected bananas, and they were beginning to really smile. And then I pressed the button to pull out the gun. It wasn't a textured gun that you might expect but a realistic shotgun with bullets flying out and with horrifying sound effects.
Andreas said he "completely forgot" it was in there. Miyamoto wasn't impressed and took out some paper and drew the coconut gun:
You get so used to things being in development, even if it is a placeholder, and I completely forgot that it was in there. I'm shooting beavers, turned to my side, and see this look of horror on Miyamoto's face! Then he smiled and, taking some paper and a pencil, drew a coconut gun in front of us. It had leaves on it and he handed it to me. I looked at it and said 'Oh yeah, that's cool, we'll put that in' and the coconut gun was put in after that.
As out of place as the shotgun probably looked, cute and furry animals wielding weapons were standard in Rare's 2001 release, Conker's Bad Fur Day.
So, there you have it – Miyamoto designed the coconut gun in DK64. If you haven't read through it already, be sure to check out the Nintendo Life feature celebrating 20 years of Donkey Kong 64.
[source gamesradar.com]
Comments 37
Gotta love how Miyamoto handled that. He just took a piece of paper and pen and created an iconic weapon for DK. This is a great story that shows that while Rareware were at their creative peak in the mid to late 90s they still had a few goofs during development.
So was the rap changed to mention DK's coconut guns which fire in spurts? Or did the reference to coconut guns in the rap predate the coconut guns' invention?
This whole account cracks me up, but what lunatic thought DK with a real-world gun was a good idea?
DK wasn't playing around back then.
Well, there is that hack of GoldenEye using Mario characters.
Edit: Apparently, plunging a sword into a giant, beastly pig-demon creature is ok, as long as it's not shown, but a mountain gorilla firing a shotgun isn't. No one expects to actually see either of those things in real-life.
It's on like Donkey Kong pulls out shotgun
DK with a side-by-side would be pretty neat.
@Capt_N I can't imagine seeing those two scenarios as the same thing.
Well...you gave it a shot.
DK with a shotgun. Next person to try and steal his banana herd is getting their head blown off.
@thesilverbrick It was a placeholder. Weird placeholder, but yeah.
Why in Sam hill did no one in the room not take a picture?! That's meme gold!
Truly must have been both a funny and embarrassing moment. His reaction must have been priceless XD
DK pulls out a mini nuke launcher
Miyamoto smiles really big
Donkey Kong Fallout survival game is born
Haha, I will have to share this story with nephew. He grew up playing this one and always telling me something about it.
@thesilverbrick He said it was a place holder.
@SeantheDon29 Because camera phones didn't come out for another year or two and memes were just a dream discussed over 56k modems in the nerdiest of online chat rooms. ;D
But I agree. It would have been a great moment to capture.
His actual real gun
can fire in spurts
if he shoots ya
it's gonna hurt.
His sawed-off shotgun,
Will make you cry,
If he shoots ya,
YOU'RE GONNA DIE.
@shinesprite Thanks. I was gonna ask about that.
I don`t like guns. I prefer Kongs to just jump on enemies and throw barrels at them.
@Wexter agree but don’t forget Miyamoto doesn’t speak English so was probably the easiest way for him to explain himself...
@Capt_N The former is a medieval/fantasy setting with your character explicitly referred to as a knight. Using swords to kill demons is expected. The latter is an ape swinging in the jungle and bouncing on animals. A realistic shotgun would look out of place in either, like a brutal early 2000s Newgrouds parody.
On the flipside, Doomguy using a coconut gun would be just as weird, though probably seen as a little joke in an otherwise brutal game.
@Wexter
And that's why Miyamoto is a legend.
His coconut gun -realistic shotgun noises-
DK: Yeeaah!
-BAM- -cha-clack- BAM- -cha-clack- BAM- -cha-clack- can fire in spurts!
If he shoots ya
is gonna kill
HUH!!
Not as bad as when they forgot to remove some of the 8 billion tedious collectables before releasing it.
Used to love this game. Gonna look on eBay UK to see if I can find a boxed USA version with the yellow cart
Miyamoto liked Conker’s Bad Fur Day a lot, there’s pictures of him playing the demo on E3!
An array of sound effects? Every time the bullets hit an enemy tortured screams echoed through the jungle...
@datamonkey yeah Miyamoto only communicates using the language of fresh game ideas.
When the Starbucks guy asked for his order, he drew a picture of a rocket launcher whose rocket pulls the player behind like they're water-skiing.
Haha, what a wonderful Japan Meets The West moment.
Miyamoto isn't upset or stern. He's too polite. He just "isn't impressed" and immediately draws a suggestion for a solution. ^^
@N64-ROX
I thought he'd draw Mario drinking straight from a toilet pipe. Because, you know, Starbucks.
@USWITCH64 Good luck! N64 games have gone up in price as the generation who grew up on them is becoming nostalgic and wanting to revisit games from their past. A boxed copy of DK64 might be a tad expensive.
Cool how Miyamoto out of the blue created the coconut gun. crazy!
@SmaggTheSmug @PcTV
Donkey Kong packing heat
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