Top 5 Video Game Bananas

Top 5 Video Game Bananas

A few times I've been around that track
So I'm not just gonna slip off-course like that
Because I ain't no Mario Kart girl
I ain't no Mario Kart girl
This ish is bananas! B! A, N, A, N, A, S!

According to Wikipedia, people have been slipping on banana peels since 1910. Science-reality show MythBusters insists it's nigh-impossible to slip and fall on a banana peel; meanwhile, a woman in California claims she most certainly can, and did.

If video games are taken as fact, overripe bananas are enough either to disable a character or to power him all the way through next Sunday. And so, with no further ado (or Gwen Stefani lyrics), here are the Top 5 Video Game Bananas.

Note: Why, yes, Jenn Frank did recently write a top ten list about video game food, but that piece scrupulously omitted bananas. Enjoy!

#5 Super Mario Kart

Super Nintendo: 1992

The Mario Kart series is, at its heart, all about bananas. Banana peels are the most salient hazard an opponent will throw down onto the track, and man, nothing smarts like careening into one.

Adding insult to injury, it hardly helps that the banana peel has a face. Uh, I can lose this entire game without your intervention, friendly little Banana Peel. So thanks. Thanks a lot.

#4 Donkey Kong Country

Super Nintendo: 1994

If Mario Kart is all about bananas, why, Donkey Kong Country is all about the banana hoard. (For the horde!)

Yep, this is, in fact, an entire game about replenishing your once-endless supply of bananas. Pretty weird. (Furthermore, recovering a hundred bananas yields an extra life. Aha! Now we're talkin'.)

#3 Ms. Pac-Man

Arcade: 1982

Ms. Pac-Man is chock-full of food: six types of fruit and one pretzel, to be precise. Of these, it is the banana that is the holiest of grails, where chasing it down means banking 5000 points. It is, in short, the most important fruit in the entirety of Pac-Man canon.

#2 Worms

Amiga: 1995

Every iteration of the Worms series includes a weapon called the "banana bomb." It's a bunch of bananas that explodes into separate bananas, whereupon each banana explodes individually. Disorienting indeed, that nature's cutest fruit could exact such devastating damage.

#1 Banana

Famicom: 1986

In Banana you play as the hero, Mr. Mole. Mole burrows underground for different foodstuffs—which include, of course, the eponymous banana.

Granted, the game could've easily been titled "Beet" or "Radish" or "Please please oh God how do I get to the door," but the game is called Banana anyway. Yeah, I don't get it either.