Cliff Notes – Donkey Kong Bananza fan breaks game by painting the cartridge yellow
- A fan attempted to customise their Donkey Kong Bananza cartridge by spray painting it yellow, reminiscent of classic Donkey Kong titles, but ended up damaging it, rendering it stuck in their Nintendo Switch 2.
- Despite initial excitement, the fan’s project drew ridicule online, culminating in a satirical email from Nintendo threatening consequences for the modification.
- Donkey Kong Bananza reportedly had a strong opening week in the UK, potentially setting a franchise record, although sales data remains incomplete.
Donkey Kong Bananza fan breaks game by painting the cartridge yellow
Somehow, we don’t think the warrant covers this (Nintendo)
An overly enthusastic Donkey Kong fan has almost ruined their Nintendo Switch 2 by spray painting one of their game cartridges banana yellow.
Donkey Kong Bananza is a great game and it’s been a very long time since there was another big budget Donkey Kong title, so some fans, with a lot of nostalgia for the franchise, have got a bit carried away with themselves.
One major point of conversation has been the game’s placement in the wider Donkey Kong timeline or rather how it seems to contradict it entirely. We’re not going to get into that again here, but some fans are oddly annoyed by the lack of consistency… even though the series has never had in-depth storylines.
Another even stranger trend has been trying to paint the cartridge the game comes on yellow, like the Donkey Kong 64 one. That’s not a very good idea though, as one fan in particular has discovered.
The fan in question is one gardnerhartung, or merely Gardner, on TikTok who recently shared a video expressing disappointment that the physical game cartridge for Donkey Kong Bananza is the usual red colour, like other Switch 2 cartridges.
His reasoning is that, back in the day, a couple of Donkey Kong games received unique yellow cartridges when they came out, specifically 1995’s Donkey Kong Land for the Game Boy and 1996’s Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64.
It was a fun novelty, but it really was only those two games. Yet Gardner, in his own words, was ‘displeased’ with Bananza not following suit and filmed himself disassembling the cartridge so he can paint it yellow without damaging the game and its connection pins.
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The final result is admittedly authentic looking, but it ultimately proved fruitless since the cartridge would no longer fit into the console, either due to the extra layers of paint making it slightly bigger or it wasn’t put back together properly.
In a follow-up video, Gardner showed he was able to force the cartridge in eventually and, from the sound of things, actually play the game. But the cartridge is now stuck, and he can’t remove it, with one attempt with a pair of metal pliers only breaking part of it off.
While some of the comments do try to offer advice on how to remove the cartridge, there are unsurprisingly a lot of people mocking Gardner for even attempting any of this to begin with.
The videos have gone viral enough to generate at least three separate Reddit threads, where plenty of people either insult Gardner or accuse him of just trying to draw attention.
Whatever the case, Gardner appears to be taking has fame well. In a third video, where it seems he’s about to address the mean comments and media coverage, he reveals he was sent a threatening email from Nintendo.
Signed by ‘John Nintendo himself’, it says unless Gardner gets the cartridge removed by the end of the day, the company will take his house and brick his Switch 2 (admittedly, that second one is something Nintendo can actually do).
He then shows that a second attempt at using the pliers was successful and has presumably left his Switch 2 undamaged, but the cartridge itself is in pieces.
If there’s any lesson to be learned from this, it’s don’t spray paint your games, especially with how expensive they are nowadays, although you’d think most people would know not to do that.
In other Donkey Kong news, although Nintendo hasn’t shared official sales figures yet, data by NielsenIQ and shared by The Game Business says Donkey Kong Bananza enjoyed the biggest opening week in the UK in the franchise’s history… maybe.
As it stands, 2010’s Donkey Kong Country Returns (the original Wii game, not the Switch remaster) officially holds that record, but NielsenIQ admits it currently lacks data for how many copies of Bananza were sold directly from Nintendo’s online store and the eShop.
Even if Bananza has outperformed every other Donkey Kong game in the UK, that doesn’t really mean much as the series has never done tremendously well over here.
Although Donkey Kong Country helped the SNES to beat the Mega Drive (aka Genesis) in the US, during the 90s, it didn’t have quite the same effect here, where it wasn’t until the DS and Wii era when Nintendo really became popular in the UK.
Could Donkey Kong Bananza be the ape’s breakout moment in the UK? (Nintendo)
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