Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone, Issue 3 (Patreon)

Welcome, everyone, to the third issue of Supper Mario Broth: Special  Zone! For information on what this column is, please take a look at the announcement of the restructuring of Supper Mario Broth Patreon tiers and rewards.  

Today, we are going to take a look at what happens if the player is given full control inside the shops in Donkey Kong 64, which allows the camera to be moved and details of the environment to be examined closely.

Come on, Supper Mario Broth! Take it to the fridge!

Shopping on Kong Isle

In Donkey Kong 64, several of the series' recurring characters return as shopkeepers, selling the five playable Kongs various items and abilities. Cranky Kong, Candy Kong and Funky Kong each have their own stores, along with a new character, Snide, who is a defector from K. Rool's army and exchanges blueprints for Golden Bananas. These places have one thing in common: the entirety of the interaction within happens as a cutscene, with no way to move either the player character or the camera freely.

In the game's code, there is a variable that determines what room the next exit will send the player character to. Usually is it determined by the exit itself; however, my modifying the code at runtime, we can overwrite it with the values representing rooms that the exit in question should not lead to.

Usually, this would not result in anything particularly interesting; however, the variable determines only what room the player character will emerge in, not whether a cutscene should start. Thus, overriding a normal exit from one room to another non-cutscene room with the address of a shop will cause the player character to emerge in the shop without a cutscene starting, allowing free roaming around the room.

Let us start with Funky's Armory. One thing that makes exploration of all the stores slightly more difficult than necessary is that the designers were very keen on providing as much dynamic lighting for these locations as possible, resulting in many of them being extremely dark and the light cones in them to wildly rotate about the room. This looks acceptable during cutscenes, but when the area is traveled on foot, the limitations of the lighting become apparent.

Funky's shop is the only one that has windows through which the outside is seen. There is a blue sky outside regardless of what level the shop is entered in, however, the camera never shows the wall with the windows outside of the first time the shop is entered in the save file, which would normally be Jungle Japes, a level with a blue sky. Thus, the windows are made to appear fitting for one specific scenario.

This shelf contains unique drawings of supplies and some fruit.

Behind Funky, there is a machine gun. Looking at the barrels, the front texture does not seem to match up with the layout of the barrels according to the side textures and looks cut off as a result. Of course, none of this is supposed to be seen this up close during gameplay, so this was likely a very low priority for the designers.

Hidden in the shadowy part of the store is this green missile reading "Funky".

There is also this warhead suspended by a chain reading "DKAF2" on one side and "TO K.ROOL" on the other. I can only speculate on what "DKAF" could mean, but I would assume "Donkey Kong Air Force" given that this seems like the type of bomb that would be dropped from a plane.

Next is Cranky's Lab. There is a unique book of potions lying on a table, and the texture does appear to have actual words written on it instead of random characters, but it is nearly impossible to make out anything except for "this potion is..." in the begining of the first page and "Monkey" on the second page above the peanut drawing.

A skeleton of a fish is hanging from the ceiling. This is likely a reference to Enguarde the Swordfish, who also appears in the game, however, neither Enguarde nor actual real-world swordfish have barbs coming out of the "sword" part of their skeletal structure. This could be intended to be some prehistoric ancestor to swordfish.

The coves of the books all read "Monkey Book of Science, by M. Nuts". Unfortunately, the lighting in the room is so low this is nearly impossible to tell. However, more books, encountered in the Crystal Caves cabins, have the same texture, which allows us to say with confidence what the text is.

On a high shelf, there is a brain with electrodes sticking out of it attached to a measuring device. This is not seen at all during the normal visits to the lab and can only be seen briefly the first time the lab is entered near the beginning of the game.

A close-up of the framed picture of Kong Isle seen in Snide's HQ. (Note that the name Kong Isle is used in this game only; the same location is now known as Donkey Kong Island.) The picture is missing some of the minor surrounding islands that would otherwise be visible, als well as gives the two visible palm trees much thicker trunks than they have in-game.

In addition to being able to see the environment freely, we can also take a look at the shopkeepers, who in this scenario will just stand in their usual place playing their idle animations. As they are not intended to be encountered in anything but cutscenes, they are intangible and cannot be otherwise interacted with.

Looking at Snide from this angle not offered by the cutscenes shows that his welding mask is actually floating above his ears and is not attached to his head.

A closer look at the hand prop used in one of Snide's Rube Goldberg machines. The hand is ambiguous; it could be a stylized Kong hand or a human hand. Note that Kongs are usually depicted without fingernails on their hands.

Candy's Music Shop has the highest amount of detail that is not able to be properly observed during the cutscenes. On the ceiling, there is this disco ball with a star pattern.

The room contains a variety of instruments. Interestingly, several of them are shown to be in a state of disrepair. The big drum in the drum kit has a texture that appears to be stitches applied to the front.

Diddy's guitar and Tiny's saxophone, or at least similar instruments, are present, as well as Lanky's trombone and DK's bongos. The only Kong instrument missing is Chunky's triangle.

The violin in the previous pictures leads us to this: a reference to another game by the same developer, Rare (then known as Rareware). Together with the xylophone, the Rareware logo banjo, and the silver kazoo, these are references to the intruments played by Banjo, Kazooie and Mumbo Jumbo in the intro to Banjo-Kazooie:

On the note stands are these music sheets:

Unfortunately, I am unable to read music, but as far as I can tell, the sheet in the bottom right contains the full version of the texture. If you can read it and it, when played, appears to be a musical reference to something within the game, please let me know and I will edit this article with the information.

Finally, in two places in the store, the same picture of Donkey Kong can be found, likely representing Candy Kong's affection for him.

This concludes the tour of the stores in Donkey Kong 64. Until tomorrow!

Thank you very much for reading.