I owe the data analysts at Nintendo an apology. My first 20 minutes of Donkey Kong Bananza were spent in the tutorial room with the “Press Y to punch” message persistently, or desperately, reminding me to follow instructions and proceed with the game. Please understand, Nintendo. The tutorial was clear and effective, and I wasn’t stuck. I was systematically demolishing everything in sight and hoarding as much gold as possible.
This behavior is new for me. Normally, I’m so bored with standard collectibles in Super Mario games that I never even bother with them. Although in my defense, Nintendo doesn’t do much to make collecting those gold coins particularly enticing.
A gold coin is the door prize for remembering how to jump, the filler for empty space between platforms, a reminder of what direction to go in. The real coins that matter, the red ones, are harder to find and have challenges tied up with them that make them worth your time. The rest? Well, you can have an extra life you don’t need if you get 100 gold coins or whatever.
Nintendo reached peak coinslop with New Super Mario Bros. 2. You can barely move without running into cash — coins from heaven, enemies made of coins, boxes projectile-barfing coins at your face. I imagine Mario getting delirious at the prospect of hanging up his plunger for good, envisioning a future where 10 generations of the Mario Mario family become Mustaches of Leisure, join the Mushroom Kingdom aristocracy, and leave working-class life behind.
Except they wouldn’t because none of this matters. All those millions of coins mean nothing. Granted, collecting gold doesn’t really have any significance in Donkey Kong Bananza, either. I had 20,000 gold by the time I exited Sublayer 100, and I was no better off than if I’d dropped onto the Hilltop Layer with a tiny fraction of that. You need a bit of gold for the Hilltop Chip Exchange’s Banandium Gems, sure, and it costs a small amount to clear certain obstacles — but you get it back almost immediately after splashing out, at least in the game’s early layers.
And yet, here I am, going out of my way to dig 50-foot tunnels just to watch shining chunks erupt from the ceiling, popping stone zits and bathing in their fountains of golden pus, tearing gold from the walls, beating it out of the ground, then clapping my little monkey hands and scooping it all up in one hedonistic rush. Turns out all Nintendo needed to make the little things more fun was a lot more chaos. Donkey Kong Bananza awakened something primal in me (no, not that way) and I’m only too happy to embrace it.