Monkey Business

I came across a link to an interesting post about Donkey Kong Jr. today, and thought I should share it with you as well. The article mentions the confusion over the different Donkey Kongs that was introduced once Rare started making the Donkey Kong Country series. It's not totally clear whether the DK in those games is the same as the original one Mario fought way back in the arcade era, or whether that DK became Cranky Kong and the new DK is either his son (which would make him DK Jr.) or grandson (effectively making him Donkey Kong III). But then, why would DK have aged so much, when Mario didn't? Well, the Donkey Kongs are presumably gorillas (although not all members of the Kong clan are; Diddy is clearly a monkey, for instance), and they mature at around eleven years old, so maybe Cranky's advanced age makes actual biological sense. Or maybe Mario has gotten a lot of plastic surgery, or made use of the Fountain of Youth. (Hey, it DID appear in a Super Show episode!) And if Cranky really is the original DK, then he's married to Wrinkly Kong, right? What did she think of his attempted liaison with a human woman? I guess apes don't generally mate for life, though.

The article also mentions something I didn't know: that there's a pink ape who looks like Junior in Donkey Kong Jr. Math. It posits that they're twins, but maybe he's actually to Junior as Wario and Waluigi are to Mario and Luigi? We never really do find out all that much about those guys. I'm not even sure it's been specifically stated that they're brothers. I believe the Super Mario Land 2 instruction book indicates that Mario and Wario knew each other as kids, and the Super Show cartoon "Plummers' Academy" has two guys who kind of look like Wario and Waluigi learning plumbing alongside the famous brothers. The cartoon has it that the Marios come from Brooklyn (an idea that I believe the game designers themselves were willing to accept, although it's been more or less contradicted by the games featuring Baby Mario), and if I remember Wario's voice in Mario Kart: Double Dash, he sounds like a New Yorker as well. Waluigi, however, can't even form properly grammatical sentences. Maybe he's mentally challenged, which would explain why Wario never takes him along on his own adventures. Well, that, and the fact that Wario doesn't want to share any of the money he finds. So, while the two villains look like animated caricatures or fun house mirror reflections of the Marios, they're presumably just long-time rivals of the brothers. Or maybe Wario and Waluigi cousins of the famous plumbers. It's really not clear.