Banana

Overview

Bananas are a fruit that come from the genus Musa. In many tropical countries, they are a staple food because when unripe, they are very similar to potatoes in their cooking uses and nutritional value. However, in the West and Far East, they are eaten almost exclusively when ripe. Contrary to some beliefs, wild bananas are in fact full of large, hard seeds; it is only the domesticated banana, through many years of domestication and selective pollination, that is seedless.

Appearance in Games

Bananas take on many roles in video games. Most notably, the banana appears in the Donkey Kong franchise as both a currency and a collectible item. They are commonly used in games that feature apes and/or monkeys as main characters, where they can serve as part of the gameplay ( Super Monkey Ball, Donkey Kong) or simply as background art ( Monkey Island). They also make appearances as healing items ( SiN). They are frequently featured in cooking games, as well( Cooking Mama, Order Up). There are a few games where bananas are used as weapons, like No One Lives Forever 2 or Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where slipping on a banana peel will slightly immobilize an enemy. However, they are sometimes used as more of an actual weapon, like in the Worms franchise, which uses them as the banana bomb (a destructive grenade with awkward physics). In the Mario Kart series a banana peel can be tossed out onto the track spinning out any unsuspecting players who drive into it.