Bananas Instead Of Bitcoin – How Much Money Could Donkey Kong Have Made During His Adventure?

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Without a doubt, Donkey Kong stands as one of the pivotal figures in Nintendo’s storied past, sharing the spotlight with Mario. Intriguingly, the suit-and-tie-wearing simian graced our screens and games even before the iconic plumber who became famous for squashing turtles made his debut.

Additionally, he holds a significant spot in my heart too, because playing Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was among my earliest gaming adventures (and the chilling Game Over screen left quite an impression during my childhood days).

Monkey Mayhem

Every once in a while, I still can’t resist diving back into the game world, taking hold of the controller to have Donkey and Diddy leap over crocs and armadillos on their hot pursuit of King K. Rool. He’s swiped their most prized possession – their banana stash! Reliving another childhood heartache: that forlorn ape expression when I blundered into the Banana Hoard cave in level one, finding it barren, bereft of those twisted yellow fruits.

It wasn’t until they had conquered six intricate realms, each consisting of 33 challenging stages, and battled six formidable adversaries that the Kritter King emerged as the last barrier for the quirky ape twosome to reach their cherished banana hoard.

In my childhood days, merely surviving and retrieving the bananas on Kong Island was a relief, avoiding the dreadful Game Over screen as much as possible. However, as I reflect now, I ponder: was the entire journey truly beneficial for Donkey Kong? I’m not referring to fame or recognition, but strictly from a monetary standpoint.

How much are the bananas Donkey Kong collected on his adventure actually worth?

Hard-Earned Banana Bread

First, let’s calculate the number of bananas the virtual monkey is able to gather during its voyage.

As a devoted fan, if I were Donkey Kong and managed to snatch every last banana stashed across the jungle in the initial level – yes, even the one hidden in the corner where my banana hoard is kept – that’s approximately 112 juicy yellow treats heading back to my personal stash.

At the second stage, if he uncovers the concealed barrel at the base of the screen, it will propel him into a hidden cave, and there, he can locate another 142.

At depth three, Donkey Kong follows a familiar structure: he’s got to gather all 143 bananas, some easy to spot while others are cunningly concealed within the vast expanse of the cave. However, the following stage takes an aquatic turn in DKC, offering only 101 bananas – a relatively scarce supply compared to what Donkey Kong’s used to.

To compensate for that, the last stage of World 1, known as Barrel Cannon Canyon, provides numerous shortcuts through barrels that propel Donkey Kong past foes and directly into piles of bananas. Here, he can collect a massive number of bananas totaling about 720. Notably, this count excludes the giant banana which our bow-tie wearing ape manages to snatch from the oversized hamster boss, Very Gnawty, at the end of the Kongo Jungle world.

In the given worlds, you’ll typically find a range of 500 to 700 bananas per world. The majority of these worlds usually contain approximately 120 individual fruits. However, there are some exceptional cases that deviate significantly: For instance, in World 4, Level 1 – Snow Barrel Blast, Donkey Kong can gather an impressive 240 bananas. Conversely, World 4, Level 5 – Torchlight Trouble, a dark and challenging level, offers only 23 bananas.

As a devoted fan, I, along with my gaming partner DK, are still in awe over the chilling Game Over screen. Together, we’ve managed to amass an impressive stash of around 3,600 bananas throughout our journey, give or take a few that might have slipped through the cracks. After all, Donkey Kong has a constant craving for those tasty treats! So, let’s call this our approximate total.

But we’re not quite done yet. Fruit is nice and all, but what about the financial side of things?

Multimillionaire Or Just Multivitamin?

In 1994, when Donkey Kong Country came out, a banana in the United States typically cost anywhere from 19 to 25 cents. However, the price could vary due to factors such as location, market conditions, and the size of the banana.

In the United Kingdom, where Donkey Kong Country developer Rare is based, a banana typically cost around 12 to 15 pennies. Conversely, in Japan, Nintendo’s home country, the price ranged from 20 to 30 yen for a similar item.

Back in the day when Donkey Kong Country hit the shelves, if ol’ DK had ventured out to collect every last banana on that island and sold ’em, he’d have pocketed roughly $792 in cold hard U.S. cash, a cool £504 in good old Blighty, or a whopping 90,000 yen over the pond in Japan!

As a gamer, I’d say: Man, check out the prices of bananas today! They’re going for about €0.25, $0.25, and £0.25 each in the EU, US, and UK respectively, while they’re 175 yen in Japan. If I were to collect a haul of these bananas, it would be worth around €900, $900, and £900 or a whopping 630,000 yen!

Given that Donkey Kong Country ranks as the third top-selling SNES game ever, having sold approximately 9.3 million copies, one might wonder: was his journey through the jungle truly a massive triumph? With an impressive global revenue of around $600 million, it seems Donkey Kong could have easily bypassed all those challenges. Maybe if he had owned some banana plantations instead, life would have been less turbulent…

Have you ever attempted to tally up all the bananas and coins you’ve come across in Nintendo video games before? If that’s something you’ve done, let’s engage in a shared discussion, perhaps even therapeutic in nature.

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2025-03-23 16:10