Great Game Stories, No. 6: The Wager of Cranky Kong (Donkey Kong Land)

The Characters

At the heart of this story swing two heroes. There is Donkey Kong, the broad-shouldered ape with the red necktie and a bottomless appetite for bananas, and there is Diddy Kong, his small, quick, cap-and-shirt-wearing nephew, forever cartwheeling one step ahead. Together they are unstoppable, or at least they very much like to think so.

Donkey and Diddy set out to save their bananas and, more importantly, their pride.

Then there is the true engine of the whole tale: Cranky Kong, the grouchy old-timer of the family, who has seen every fashion come and go and approves of almost none of them. And lurking on the other side of the board sits King K. Rool, the enormous, crown-wearing crocodile king, and his scaly army of Kremlings, who never met a banana hoard they did not want to steal.

The World

This is a Game Boy tale, and it wears that fact like a badge of honour. Everything unfolds in crisp shades of grey on a little screen, and yet the world feels vast. Our heroes travel through four great realms on their journey. They creep through the creaking timbers of a mysterious pirate ship, shiver across frozen peaks buried in snow, dive into the flooded halls of an eerie underwater temple, and finally clamber high into the clouds for a wild adventure in the sky.

Cranky Kong: proof that every family has one relative who thinks nothing was ever good enough.

Between these wonders lie the tangled jungles and rickety mine-paths that any Kong knows by heart. And scattered throughout are their old animal friends, chief among them Rambi the rhinoceros, ever ready to lower his horn and charge through anything foolish enough to stand in the way.

The Adventure

The whole quest begins, wonderfully, with an argument. Donkey Kong Country had just dazzled the world with its glittering pictures, and Cranky Kong was thoroughly unimpressed. All that success, he grumbled, was nothing but fancy graphics and trickery. Donkey and Diddy insisted the game was loved because it was simply fun to play. So Cranky, in his infinite crankiness, set them a wager: prove it on the humble little Game Boy, with none of the mighty machinery of the big consoles to help you.

To make the bet sporting, the crafty old ape secretly hired King K. Rool to steal the precious banana hoard all over again. And so the Kremlings marched off with the loot, and the two heroes set out in furious pursuit, not only to win back every last banana, but to prove their stubborn old relative wrong once and for all.

Japanese Donkey Kong Guide Book

Across ship and snow, temple and sky, Donkey and Diddy make the perfect team. They tag in and out for one another, roll and cartwheel through crowds of enemies, bounce off tumbling foes and hurl barrels at anything that snarls. They ride Rambi through walls of trouble, they leap between swinging ropes and vanishing platforms, and at the close of each realm a hulking Kremlin boss bars the path, demanding to be outwitted before the chase can continue.

Spoiler Alert: How It Ends

At the end of the long road waits the greedy crocodile king himself. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong corner King K. Rool for the final showdown, dodge his heavy charges, and pelt him until his crown very nearly rattles off. Beaten and grumbling, the reptile king finally surrenders, and the great banana hoard is recovered at last, every golden bunch back where it belongs.

But the sweetest prize is not the fruit. It is the look on Cranky Kong’s face. The two heroes have crossed a whole monochrome world and triumphed on the smallest screen of all, proving that the magic was never in the fancy pictures but in the joy of the adventure itself. The old ape, for once, has nothing clever to say. And that, for Donkey and Diddy, is a victory sweeter than any banana.

Fancy tracking down this little grey-scale epic in the wild? Visit the Game Boy Museum and explore our full catalogue of Game Boy cartridges, complete with the stories behind them.