Donkey Kong in the Simpsons

Donkey Kong is a very popular character, and I sometimes forget that. Here is, chronologically-ish, a list of all the times Donkey Kong was referenced in The Simpsons, because that show is my current hyperfixation and I cannot be stopped. If I forgot any, please forgive me.

Special thanks to the site Frinkiac, which is a very comprehensive Simpsons screenshot/quote compendium. It has to be seen to be believed. Also special thanks to the Simpsons Wiki!

Episode: The Springfield Files

 
In this classic episode, Donkey Kong appears, casually having a smoke while someone comments he's not a draw anymore. This dates the episode as being made or written before 1994, which is a little daunting to think about. It's been around BDKC.... Before Donkey Kong Country. And measuring time in units of Donkey Kong is where I excel at, baby! Shows how long this cartoon's been around.

Though the episode debuted in 1996, episodes probably took way longer to make back then and they probably didn't anticipate Donkey Kong Country being made. Or it's irony. Still, the joke's funny.

Fun fact: according to TVtropes, the French dub messes up and insists Donkey Kong is not a drawing anymore. I mean, technically true, considering the Donkey Kong Country games were praised for their use of pre-rendered CGI. In TVtropes lingo we call that Accidentally Correct Terminology.... I think.

 Episode: Marge Be Not Proud

Along with expies of Sonic and Mario, Donkey Kong is oddly on-model, based on the Country design (though lacking a tie) and convinces Bart to steal a video game. You wouldn't download a car... Donkey Kong disagrees, obviously. He is allegedly voiced by Hank Azaria here, who regularly voices Moe Szyslak and Chief Wiggum, among others. 

Episode: Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass

 
Our friend Mario shows up in a tour bus full of Italians (of course) and wants his picture taken with Homer. Homer, however, is having none of it, and goes full Donkey Kong on Mario's butt. What else can I say? This made me crack up when I first saw it because the animation was done in such a funny manner.

Episode: Gorgeous Grandpa

Burnsy Kong. He assumes the pose while naming various villains. This shows just about who writes the show, considering DK hasn't been a true villain since the 80s and early 90s (barring the Mario vs Donkey Kong games.) I guess K. Rool is too obscure. Doesn't keep him from showing up in an episode of the show Inside Job, apparently... but, sadly, that is a show I do not really care about, so look it up yourself.

The Simpsons comics

The Simpsons had a long-running comic series, which, while ostensibly aimed at a slightly younger audience, is very fun and I feel captures the feel of the characters more than the show sometimes. One such comic, issue 161, had a Donkey Kong-inspired cover. It's adorable, featuring Homer as DK, Bart as Mario (I'm going to call him "Don't-have-a-jump, Man". Come on, it's funny) and an unenthused Lisa as Pauline. The barrels are replaced with nuclear waste barrels to refer to Homer's job at the Power Plant. 

A different comic also has a panel where somebody dressed up as Donkey Kong appears, joined by a lookalike for Skips from the Cartoon Network show Regular Show, and King Kong carrying a little damsel of his own.

Issue 110 has various video game references, one of which being the classic Homer as Donkey Kong. (I think Marge as Lara Croft is being a bit too generous...)

Also, whatever this is. Issue 110 as well. Don Kong... admittedly, that's a pretty funny one.

 (Also note Barney in the first panel. No reason, I just think he's cute and want everybody to look at him.)

Pins?

To paraphrase the old meme, "If I had a nickel for every time Donkey Kong and Homer Simpson were fused in enamel pin form, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice."

The second one also had Moe as Diddy Kong. I love both these characters very dearly, but I do not see a single connection between the two, apart from... resembling apes. And liking guns. (Really!)

Bart as Diddy would make more sense, considering his old man gets to be DK.

Obviously, these are not official - but they're fun to see. Bam! Gamer also provided us with a Tiki Tong pin, and where else are you gonna get merchandise of that guy? I'll talk about that in a different post, though. Obscure DK characters that somehow have merchandise. Stay tuned!

...Wait, he gets to appear in the Donkey Kong Country park of Universal Studios before K. Rool?

More Bootlegs, I guess (Part 2)

 Do people still write blogs?

A lot has changed, for me and in the world in general. Bejungle'd had always been a place to vent my thoughts but things like Twitter forced me to reel it in. As I am now taking a Twitter hiatus I find myself thinking of my first love again - Donkey Kong Country.

Between this and my last post we literally had the announcement of the Mario movie, the release of the Mario movie, and the end of the Mario movie's cinematic run. Hell, I think K. Rool and Banjo-Kazooie in Smash were after my last post. All are very important parts in the greater Rare universe I want to cover at some point, when writing isn't as hard anymore.

I've been between colleges and struggling with home life. And also hyperfixations went all over the place. Currently, it's The Simpsons. If you think about it, there's not a lot of visual difference between General Klump and Barney Gumble... and that explains a lot about my taste in men.

Yeah ok it sounded better in my head. Sad fat guys who are surprisingly good at music and have wonky teeth?

Anyway. Vinny of Vinesauce fame was going over the DKC TV show's music, and I felt compelled to barf my DK-adjecent thoughts out on my designated DK-thought-spot.

I came to think of bootlegs. Swing on a vine with me and I'll see you after the break!

Ridiculous Mario and DK Bootlegs pt. 1

The year is 2020.

Life is crap. I'm sure that needs no explanation. Things have changed considerably, but I still find a lot of solace in video games. If anything, my urge to think about these games and the media that spun from them encourages me to post new things. Now, blogging is... kind of old-fashioned. If I had any self-confidence I would have made video essays but I'm shy. Without further ado, here is a post I was writing on a year or so ago...

~

It's been a while, huh? Well, I want to move the focus from exclusively Donkey Kong and Rare games to also engrossing Mario from time to time. Though I still consider Mario as a whole to be absolutely distinct from DK, I insist Mario is a Donkey Kong character. Remember the first game he appeared in? Exactly.

On to the topic; bootlegs! I absolutely love bootlegs in a somewhat schadenfreude kind of way. Sometimes they're also the only way to get a character in toy form. It seems bootleggers know this... even in recent times, games such as Five Nights at Freddy's and Undertale have received baffling amounts of bootleg merchandise. The former has a ton of official stuff available while the latter does not, so it doesn't seem to influence the volume of bootleg merchandise created as long as something is popular enough.

I decided to make a list of bootleg merchandise I find super interesting, funny, or just cool. In the end, you're best off supporting the official creators, but when there's characters that don't get any official merch, it is a nice alternative in a pinch...

1. The Baby Waluigi plush

Nintendo's Mario department is known for spamming babies, in a manner akin to a queen ant who continously produces offspring. As with ants, whether they're cool or not is up for debate. It is however odd when something appears that literally has no base in canon.

Baby Waluigi being one of these. Despite the main amount of Nintendo characters having baby versions of themselves, no matter if it is awkward in terms of canon (looking at you, baby Rosalina --  baby DK as well, but he is forgiven on the grounds that he's, well, DK) because the target audience loves small cute things. Wario did get a baby version of himself in Yoshi's Island DS, but has faded into obscurity. (2020 update: Baby Wario has made a triumphant return in the mobile Dr. Mario game. Yay?)

The mere notion that baby Waluigi exists at all might be to blame on fan art, considering he appears alongside the canon babies a lot and people just enjoy the idea of the entire cast having baby equivalents.

Overall, the plush doesn't look too bad, and certainly fits very well among the other, official plushes. It's a neat, but also weird little thing. Nice to know that bootleggers appreciate Waluigi, though.

2. The "San-ei" Dixie Kong plush

Dixie Kong has received a modest amount of plushies in her likeness over the years, most of which based on Donkey Kong Country 2; Diddy's Kong Quest and the animated series. However, she seemed woefully absent in the otherwise very good line of San-ei Mario plush toys.

Leave it to bootleggers! This plush isn't very bad at all, although she has a bad case of felt lips. It kind of ruins the overall plush for me. Her shirt is made of a flimsy material and the tongue looks glued on. I know this because I've seen this exact toy once at Comic Con. Apart from that, this is probably the only plush of Dixie in her modern design (note the bigger earrings and lack of kneepads, a post-Rare-buyout design choice.)

Now that Dixie received a starring role in Donkey Kong Country; Tropical Freeze, we have thus seen one official figure in the World of Nintendo line, along with various DK, Diddys, and a Cranky. I was hoping for at least one Snowmad and a Funky Kong, but the brand seems to be more interested in pumping out repaints of existing molds... and shipping out weed to hapless customers.Yeah.

The Dutch Donkey Kong Country dub, or On Voice Acting

For the longest time I have been obsessed with voice actors and their work. As my boyfriend shares the passion, perhaps even more than I do, the passion has been re-ignited. He focuses on the English ones, I on the Dutch ones. Of course, the Donkey Kong Country show, being an object of a very long obsession for me, is a main object of research.

Voices can make or break a movie. Notable are the various versions of Disney films - as far as I know, Disney films sound great in any language. Dutch dubs are a lot better than most people give them credit for. Even if there are obvious budget cuts in certain placed (Cartoon Network kind of seems to cheap out, not translating or even dubbing songs, changing actors out every few episodes, randomly changing character names after a season, etc... though that might just be a certain few shows.) The acting itself, however, is usually of high quality, or at least good quality.

Donkey Kong Country in Dutch is a mixed bag. Sometimes it's good, other times it's bad. But the voice actors definitely put in a good amount of effort. But since the VHS tapes are very, ridiculously hard to get ahold of... it's hard to determine it fully. I will be talking about some characters whose English and Dutch voices are both known to me.

Above; all the Dutch-released Donkey Kong Country TV show material I have thus managed to find. This picture is gonna be used in internet memes... I just feel it.

The ones that stand out are Donkey Kong (Bart Bosch) and King K. Rool/Koning Wreed (Jan Nonhof). These two actors appear quite regularly in animation, especially in the late 90's and early 00's. (The former is also a singer - which isn't too weird when you consider Donkey Kong sings a lot) and the latter had roles in a lot of cartoons I watched in my youth. But more on him later! Join me after the jump to learn more of this vaguely interesting subject...

Piñatas; a dedicated essay on sentient paper animals

A SMALL NOTE;
Bejungled will go through a major revamp soon. The header and background, and possibly the colours, will change. On top of that, I'll be adding ads for some extra moolah. It'll be worth it! As I'm officially a game art student now, it means my posts will improve too. Now, on to the article...

Having been playing and watching all material available of Viva Piñata recently, I thought it would be interesting to elaborate on the sentient piñatas that inhabit Rare's extended universe. This article spans both the cartoon and the games.

1. Anatomy

Piñatas, by definition, are hollow forms of paper-maché, dusted with crepe paper, usually in an attractive shape. They are a popular party game, notoriously in the Americas.
The piñatas in Viva Piñata seem something unique altogether. All species are similar to earth species of animals in some kind of manner, fictional or otherwise, but follow the standard piñata model closely. They have nubby limbs, and only rarely do they possess digits. Yet, they can sort of curve their "hands" so they can hold stuff or make sassy gestures. (In one episode of the cartoon, Langston miraculously grew a single thumb to give a thumbs-up... I'm not sure what that was all about.) Their limbs are stretchy to make up for the short length.
As implied by some episodes of the cartoon, and by sick piñatas in the game after ingesting a certain weed, they possess inner workings of some sort. They sneeze, bleed, and defecate candy.
In one episode of the cartoon where the cast is shrunk to go inside Hudson Horstachio's body, it is shown first-hand how ingested fruit turns into candy as soon as it reaches the stomach. It can be argued that ingested food has effect on the candy's flavour.

For whatever reason, they're waterproof. All species can withstand the rain just fine in both media and there are some (semi-)aquatic piñatas. It's unclear what this is all about.

They can lose limbs, heads, and whatnot and not experience any negative effects, still having full control of all parts. However, some parts of their body still have a mind of their own and might cause all sorts of ruckus, as one does. (Hudson's body, for one, is stubborn and fond of baking. Fergy's gravitates towards thistles and away from Piñata Central.)
In the game, every piñata has a Life Candy within them. The description for any and all of it is beyond amusing. ("Sorry if you already knew this, but piñatas have candy in them.") If a piñata is smacked within the garden or preyed upon, they burst and leave candy, including their life candy, which is only eaten by predators of the species that had it. I initially figured the life candy substituted the brain and the heart, and went along with playing with their location in the actual piñata, sort of playing with a Steven Universe-inspired idea that it hints at their personality and contains their life essence. However, piñatas in the show are depicted with actual brains much like humans, but this might be exaggerated for comedic effect. Hearts are never depicted, so life candy might still be canon to the show. I personally think fatalities during parties can occur but is mostly prevented for the life candy is hidden very well within the papery body.

Five characters who did nothing wrong

Some characters in Rare's games and the extended media aren't exactly bad guys, but they do get punished severely for something they can't help... or didn't even do. I decided to focus on some of those poor saps in this particular issue.

5. Roysten the goldfish

We owe a lot to Roysten. His fishy self merely appearing somewhere manages to make works take place in the same universe, and his rhythmic knocking against his bowl is music to my ears. But he performs a thankless job and always ends up on the barbeque.

In Banjo-Tooie, you graciously save him from death by suffocation by dropping him off in Spiral Mountain's moat. He even teaches you how to swim faster and gives you extra air to make swimming easier. But in the end? He just ends up on Bottles' plate, burned, alongside his chips. Yeesh.

Oh yes it is.

4. Eddie the Mean Ol' Yeti

I mean, c'mon. He's obviously just a guy who has anger issues and likes his peace and quiet. Even when he keeps everyone awake by banging against the walls, he's not doing it to bother anyone. He's just being cranky.

In one episode while trying to woo Candy Clone by singing a song, sublime in its simplicity, about how he likes snow and ice and wishes to fornicate with the robotic ape lady. But in the same song, he reveals he isn't even old, nor is he really that mean.
This is proven that he only gets mad when some apes from the jungle come to steal the barrel that rained down on him. Even when they propose to trade, he burns his hand on a match. Eventually he gets pumelled by a bunch of Kritters as well.

Even worse is when you consider that in a world without Donkey Kong as shown in the subtly-titled It's a Wonderful Life, he's a friendly Guardian Angel Yeti. This means that somehow, DK made him how he is. It's not explained, but the implications are concerning.

I feel the same way when I see that old Fox Kids logo. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

5 wonderful, little hidden details you probably didn't notice

There's a lot of stuff hidden in these games, but some of them aren't as regularly pointed out as others. Yeah, we all know Conker started out kid-friendly and that Stop 'n' Swop isn't as real as we hoped it would be. But there's some other stuff I noticed that make these games a little more than just games...

5. David "Bon Jovi" Wise

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is a wonderful game, and the soundtrack only makes it even better. David Wise's work goes from atmospheric to melodic to hardrock. Yes.
One such music pieces, entitled Punch Bowl, plays at the final battle of the second-to-last world. The polar bear boss is a threatening guy, but that's only because DK made him drop his popsicle.
The music sounds like something from Bon Jovi, might I add. David Wise has a tendency to subtly reference existing songs, and it's pretty rad, but this is the first time it's another band I really like from the get-go. The polar bear's name is Bashmaster the Unbreakable, and it just so happens that Bon Jovi has a song entitled Unbreakable.

Coincidence? Probably. But the last time we had a polar bear in the extended Rareniverse, he was named Boggy.

"Kids crying? Nah, I'm gonna sled. Priorities, man."

4. Kazooie! Meinem Schwester ist Verschwunden!

Banjo-Kazooie is notorious in having bad translations. The humour is so incredibly British, that any attempts to translate it to anything else fall flat. Since I'm almost trilingual, I can afford to play the games in English, Dutch, and German. Which would be kinda rad, if not for the decrease in quality...
In the German translation of Banjo-Kazooie, the jokes are mostly absent. Instead of the all-famous "How's your nuts, bark breath?", Kazooie says the much less suggestive "Warm, oder?" as in, it's warm. Yeah.

The German comics, however, did everything right. Kazooie totally says there that the house reminds her of the house in Psycho. And she makes a really good point, 'cause it does.

And let's not even mention the Dutch version of Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts. Let's skip over the fact that the translator had little to no knowledge of Banjo lore and that Kazooie is a pleemeeuw ("toilet gull") rather than a breegull, but Jolly Roger/Jolly Dodger, our favourite flamboyant frog, is referred to as Piet Piraat. Which translates to Pete the Pirate, but we already have a completely unrelated character with that name, courtesy of Studio 100 from Belgium. ...Oops.