The Slot That Wasn’t: DK64 Fans Notice Cranky’s Absence
Donkey Kong Bananza arrives loaded with nostalgia bait – a vibrant cast of Kong characters, cooperative mechanics, and deep callbacks to the franchise’s history. But for a dedicated pocket of fans who grew up with Donkey Kong 64, one slot on the playable roster feels conspicuously empty. Cranky Kong, the crotchety patriarch who served as a fully playable character in DK64 complete with his own unique moveset and coconut shooter, does not appear as a playable option in Bananza. He shows up. He just doesn’t play.
That distinction is doing a lot of damage in certain corners of the fanbase right now.
Cranky has appeared in Donkey Kong Bananza in an advisory role, which is consistent with his characterization across most of the franchise. In DKC Returns and Tropical Freeze, he ran the shop. In DK64, though, he was different – a fighter, a participant, someone you controlled through levels with a cane-assisted jump and a peanut popgun variant. That version of Cranky left an impression. And the fans who remember it are making their feelings known across Reddit threads, Discord servers, and social media comment sections with the particular intensity that only a 25-year-old Nintendo memory can generate.
Why DK64 Players Feel the Cut More Deeply
Donkey Kong 64 was a milestone in the franchise not just for its scale, but for establishing that every Kong could bring something mechanically distinct to the table. Tiny Kong had her helicopter twirl. Lanky Kong had his cartoonish arm stretches. Chunky Kong could become enormous. Cranky Kong, as the oldest and most physically limited character in the lore, arguably had the most personality baked into his playstyle – the idea that this ancient, complaining monkey could still hang with the others was part of the joke and part of the charm. Giving him back that agency in Bananza, even in a small capacity, would have resonated as a knowing wink at the audience that remembers.
The frustration isn’t simply about wanting more content. It’s about a specific kind of recognition. DK64 fans have operated for decades as a somewhat underserved subset of the broader Donkey Kong audience. The game never received a Virtual Console re-release on most Nintendo platforms due to the Jetpac licensing situation, which kept it inaccessible for years. Its reputation has been complicated by revisionist takes that criticized its collectathon design, even as many fans maintain genuine affection for it. Every time a new DK title launches without acknowledging DK64’s specific contributions, the reaction carries that accumulated weight. Cranky’s absence in Bananza is landing as one more entry on that list – and for readers who’ve been tracking how Wrinkly Kong’s absence has already frustrated DK64 fans, this particular wound will feel familiar.
What makes the conversation more complicated is that Bananza does include multiple playable Kongs. The game clearly had the design bandwidth to bring in characters beyond DK himself. The question fans keep returning to is why Cranky specifically landed on the wrong side of that selection, given that he’s arguably the most recognizable face in the franchise outside of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong.
The Divide Is Real – and It’s Not Uniform
Not every DK64 fan is upset. A notable portion of the conversation includes players who actually appreciate that Bananza doesn’t try to replicate DK64’s multi-Kong structure, arguing that having one focused protagonist with a tight moveset is a cleaner design choice. These players point out that Cranky as an advisor figure can be genuinely funny and effective without needing to be playable, and that retrofitting him into a combat role just to satisfy nostalgia could feel forced. There’s a legitimate case that the character works better as a comedic counterpoint than as a participant.
The divide also breaks down along lines of what players actually want from the franchise going forward. Fans who see Bananza as a fresh creative direction tend to be more forgiving of roster omissions, treating them as conscious choices rather than oversights. Fans who approach each new DK game through the lens of what DK64 established feel those omissions more acutely, because for them DK64 wasn’t a one-off experiment – it was the template for what an ambitious Donkey Kong game should look like. That’s not an irrational position. It’s a matter of which version of the franchise you consider definitive.
Nintendo hasn’t commented on specific roster decisions for Bananza, which is standard practice. The character selection process for games like this rarely gets a public explanation, leaving fans to fill the silence with their own theories – licensing complications, narrative focus, scope limitations, or simply a design philosophy that prioritized a different vision for the game.
What the Cranky debate ultimately surfaces is an unresolved tension inside the DK fanbase itself: a game that captures enough of the franchise’s spirit to generate genuine excitement, while still leaving enough gaps that the players most invested in a specific era of the series can’t fully settle into it. Cranky sits in his advisory chair in Bananza, dispensing wisdom, and for a certain kind of fan, watching him not pick up a weapon and jump into a level is the most Cranky Kong thing he’s ever done – and not in the way they wanted.
