Second banana no more! Donkey Kong escapes from the shadow of Mario once and for all in Nintendo's stunning new Bananza. And he's not monkeying around, says PETER HOSKIN
Verdict: Kong is king
Rating:
Donkey Kong has always played — ahem — second banana to Mario at Nintendo. In the very beginning, of course, this overgrown ape merely chucked barrels at our heroic Italian plumber.
Then, when he started getting his own games, they were often platformers in the vein of the Mario series. Just not quite as good.
Until now.
Donkey Kong Bananza is the second major Nintendo release for the Switch 2, after Mario Kart World — and the second all-timer masterpiece.
It's a crazy and colourful 3D platformer in, I guess you could say, the vein of the great Super Mario Odyssey (2017)...except, this time, Donkey Kong has his own groundbreaking new powers. He's his own monkey now.
And 'groundbreaking' really is the word. This Kong doesn't just look big and strong; he IS big and strong. He can punch chunks out of the scenery, bash tunnels between different areas, and hurl rocks at distant enemies.
It makes every level an exercise in creative destruction. Nintendo's designers are encouraging you to smash up their beautiful inventions. And 'beautiful' is the word, too.
Bananza has you — that is, Donkey Kong, with his sing-song-y, shoulder-bound companion Pauline — plunging down through layers of a planet to reach its core. There's an icy layer, a dusty one, tropical, more. All look stunning on the powered-up Switch 2.
At times, there's so much going on — with the gameplay, with the visuals — that it's almost overwhelming.
Even the two-player mode — where one player takes control of Donkey Kong, the other Pauline — feels like an entirely different game. More! More! More!
But rather than see that as a problem, I came to see it as Nintendo's collective imagination in overdrive.
They've served up an unbelievably sweet and delicious banana split here. If it gets too much? Pause. Settle yourself. Then dive back in for more.
Long live the Kong.
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The Guardian
29 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Coupledom is very oppressing': Swedish author Gun-Britt Sundström on the revival of her cult anti-marriage novel
At a glance, Engagement, Gun-Britt Sundström's classic novel of the 1970s, looks like a conventional story of young student love floundering in the face of ambivalence. The 79-year-old author, who is speaking via video call while cat-sitting for her son at his house outside Stockholm, has been taken aback by the novel's return to favour. For a long time, Sundström tried to distance herself from Engagement, as writers will of their most famous book. But readers wouldn't let her forget, and now, with publication of the first English translation, the million-plus-selling novelist and translator is enjoying a resurgence. Recently, says Sundström, 'a young woman – in her 50s, which is young to me nowadays! – told me she had been given the book as a present from her father at 16 and it had changed her life. It had made her feel seen.' Sundström shrugs as if to say: this is nuts, but what can you do? Engagement is not, after all, a traditional love story, but a study of a young woman's fierce resistance to what she feels is the oppressive effect of being loved by a man. Martina and Gustav meet at college. Gustav wants their relationship to progress along traditional lines, an ambition that, Martina feels, risks leading her like a sleepwalker into a tedious, conventional life. At the casual level the pair's relationship is loving and stable, but, observes Martina caustically, 'Gustav is building so many structures on top of it that it's shaking underneath them'. She wants to be loved but she also wants to be alone. She wants Gustav to stop repeating himself. When he asks her what's wrong, she muses, 'you can't answer something like that. You can't tell someone who wants to be with you always that he should be reasonable and ration himself out a little – if I saw you half as often, I would like you four times as much – no, you can't say that.' The novel is often described as a 'feminist classic', which Sundström resists – the implication being that any political objective undermines its integrity as a novel. 'Feminist books ordinarily end with a happy divorce. And this doesn't.' Instead, Engagement is a dense, thoughtful book that takes on questions of sex, boredom, self-esteem and what Sundström calls, 'the moral issue; the question of can you treat another person this way, the way Martina [treats Gustav]? At the end, she herself comes to the conclusion that you can't, it isn't right. She can't go on exploiting him, because he's helplessly in love with her.' The book is less about the experience of loving someone than about being the object of love, and given current discussions around young women 'decentring men' and 'heteropessimism', it is a startlingly modern novel. It is also a dark comedy, something Sundström says tends to be overlooked. 'It is a funny book! I often regretted that reviewers failed to mention that aspect.' How could it not be? Sundström herself is full of merriment. She turns 80 this summer and says, 'I can't believe it myself. Most of my friends are more or less the same age, and none of us can believe it. We are the young ones, aren't we?' With her pageboy hairstyle and unlined face, she could be comfortably 20 years younger. ('Genes,' she says, flatly.) At the beginning of our conversation, Sundström mentions she is going through old diaries wondering what to keep and what to burn. 'I'm cleaning up with the perspective of soon dying,' she says, matter of factly, and although the gentle art of Swedish death cleaning is a well-known phenomenon, it strikes me that even for a Swede, Sundström is thrillingly, inspiringly brisk. Like her protagonist, she is also immune from groupthink to the point of awkwardness. In the novel, Martina wonders: 'How can it be that most people lack self-confidence? And how can it be that I have enough self-confidence for an entire army? Of course I am beautiful and intelligent, at least intelligent enough to consider myself pretty enough – but that doesn't usually help, does it?' It is still mildly confronting to read a young woman calmly assessing herself in this way, and Martina's confidence is Sundström's, the development of which goes all the way back to two key influences in her childhood. She was a great reader and identified most with swashbuckling heroes – the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Three Musketeers. And, along with her family, she attended a progressive Swedish church. 'I grew up imagining that, to God, we are all equal and that my relationship to God, if I had one, was just as important as any man's.' Sundström's political development as a feminist, meanwhile, was influenced by the cautionary tale of her mother's life. Sundström's father was a journalist, while her mother gave up work to raise Sundström and her sister in what, looking back, the novelist calls 'a kind of tragedy'. Although she was never bitter, Sundström recognises that she was, 'in a way, disappointed'. The hardship of her mother's generation makes Sundström sceptical of some aspects of the modern feminist movement, which she thinks has failed to acknowledge just how much has been gained. 'We've had a backlash. Unfortunately, we were freer in my generation than in my children's. My daughter told me she's envious of my youth in that respect. They are much more concerned about their looks than we had to be back then. So many young people don't have self-confidence nowadays.' Sundström started writing as a child, in journals and diaries, and at some point in late adolescence started to feel that it was inevitable she would write a book. In 1966, she published Student-64, a novel of rebellious youth, and 10 years later came Engagement, her third novel and a huge and instant hit. Since then, she has written 14 further books, six of them for children, and in a tone of dismay wonders if becoming a novelist was perhaps a mistake. She is also a translator and found working alongside Kathy Saranpa, the English translator for the new edition of Engagement, an interesting exercise in learning to let go. (After the interview, Sundström emails to correct several English words she used and for which she has thought of more precise translations.) 'I'm very good at Swedish language, and I regret a bit that I didn't devote my life to linguistics instead of literature,' she says. 'It's awful to say, but I don't think literature is all that interesting. There are more interesting things in life. Language; etymologies; the developing of different languages.' In Swedish, the novel is called Maken (The Husband) and she wonders if 'Mate' would've been a better title in English. 'I learned that 'mate' was originally written with a 'k'. So it is 'make', originally.' There is a puzzled silence. 'But that doesn't help.' Or, she wonders, ''Uncoupling': I think that would've been pretty adequate. Both as a criticism of the idea of coupledom, and also the problems of divorcing.' Sundström herself has been divorced for 30 years and for the past few decades has had a romantic partner with whom she doesn't live. 'To me,' she says, 'it's the ideal; to be a couple, and to see each other when we wish, and still have our own lives. And not least because each of us has children with different parents. I never wanted to be a stepmother, and I didn't want him to be a stepfather to my children because they had their own father.' Although, she adds, 'I'm very thankful for the years I was in a family in the traditional way.' She recalls driving with her husband at the wheel and two children in the back thinking how lucky she was. 'An ideal! And it's me!' This is a classic example of Sundström's resistance to any one hard and fast position. She gravitates naturally away from political orthodoxy and believes – the translator's curse, perhaps – there is always more than one way to see things. 'By nature, I'm allergic to everything that is the truth of the day,' she says. 'You know, everybody writes the same things in the papers. For example, the #MeToo movement; it wasn't possible to make any objections in that discussion. I would never have said anything publicly then, but I didn't feel quite happy about it; these demonstrations against the Swedish Academy [which awards the Nobel prize in literature], organised as a kind of feminist action. I felt very strange [about] all that; it seemed simplifying. All conflicts can't be seen in that context.' These are the ambiguities Sundström tackles so well in her fiction, where she can allow all the nuances absent in the headlines to play out. She created Engagement's Martina as neither heroine nor cautionary tale, which is why she continues to be surprised at the fervour with which some young women take her up as a role model. A few years ago, she says, 'I met a young girl who showed me her copy of Maken, and it was full of Post-its. And she said, 'When I'm in trouble, or unsure of something, I think: what would Martina say?'' Sundström looks astonished. 'I don't know if I am supposed to be happy about that. Not for a moment was it my intention to propagate anything at all.' Instead, she conceived of the book while going through a period of being single, wondering about the long-term prospects of any relationship, and thinking that, as the culture war around marriage and divorce in the 1970s took hold, it might be good grist for a novel. 'In 1976 the Swedish king got married, and all of us radicals, of course, were republicans – I have been a member of the republican association for as long as I can remember. And although [regard for the monarchy] wasn't as mad as it is in Britain, I really was depressed about people engaging with that bloody wedding. And me walking around feeling single.' She laughs. 'This idea of coupledom is even more oppressing to young people today than it was in my day. That means it is very oppressing.' We return to the subject of death. Sundström's parents were unhistrionic about it too, she says. 'My mother was a widow for five years, and when she was in hospital, I asked her: 'Are you afraid of dying?' And she seemed surprised at the question. 'No! Why should I be?'' They didn't talk about her being reunited with Sundström's father, which is something, she notes disapprovingly, that people extend to their cats and dogs these days. 'Imagine... what a crowd.' As it was, her parents, 'were both so very calm, because they had lived in the conviction that this world isn't the only one'. This is not what Sundström believes. And yet, thanks to those admirable, religious people in her background, she sees the world much as they did, in terms of social engagement. If she was young now, she says, 'I'd be a Greta Thunberg'. For Sundström, to look at the world and see potential for something better puts the novelist and the activist in a single category: those with the ability 'to imagine something else than this world'. Engagement by Gun-Britt Sundström, translated by Kathy Saranpa, is published by Penguin Modern Classics (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Sun
29 minutes ago
- The Sun
Danny Dyer spills the beans on very raunchy opening scene in new show which will make even Rivals fans blush
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But it's important to the show, it's a vital scene. You go, 'He's back'. It's the way of showing the alpha is back.' It is all quite different to Danny's more romantic scenes in Disney+ bonkbuster Rivals. And he reckons playing the two roles in tandem has finally proven his clout as an actor. Danny mused: 'No one really saw me in that rom-com light. I'm really appreciative that Rivals went, 'No, this is what you're going to do, something completely different'. 'These two jobs came to me back-to-back, two very different roles. I did Rivals first. I came straight out of Rivals, shaved my tache off, and went into Mr Bigstuff. 9 Danny Dyer's TV comedy debut in new all-star series just days away as launch date is confirmed 'I picked up the script and went, 'No, this isn't Freddie, I'm not picking up where I left off'.' In the past, Danny has firmly planted himself in his comfort zone as a Cockney hardman. He said: 'I do feel when I did that show called Heat, on Channel 5, just after I left EastEnders after nine years . . . I was playing [EastEnders character] Mick, really. I'd played him for so long, you pick up habits.' I'm sure Danny's fans won't mind if he makes nudity a habit. Tongues wagging in villa 9 9 9 9 Love Island 's most brutal love triangle in years ended in explosions in Friday's episode, when Lauren Wood was booted out in a vote. Some 24 hours later her man Harrison Solomon decided to follow, to the relief of the other woman in the love mess, Toni Laites. It should have left peace to reign the ITV2 dating villa. But we all know Love Island bosses don't quite subscribe to that old adage 'make love, not war'. Instead, they ramped up the drama with a savage kissing game. Emma received a text, which read: 'Islanders, pucker up and prepare to bring the passion. "It's time to find out who's the ultimate snogger in today's kissing competition.' The boys didn't hold back in their feedback, with Dejon slating Yasmin: 'That kiss was two words . . . no good. Zero out of ten.' There's more romance on EastEnders than Love Island these days. Painted in prime colours 9 9 Fake Or Fortune is back for a 13th series and it could prove lucky for one amateur art collector, who believes he has a piece painted by Sir Winston Churchill. In tonight's opener on BBC One, Barry is hopeful the painting he bought for £140 at a Sussex fair could be a winner because hidden writing on the back notes it was painted in June 1916 by the wartime PM. If the team of experts prove it's genuine, it could be worth half a million pounds. Co-host Fiona Bruce said: 'As always, our investigations in this series have been full of twists. 'From an unloved picture hidden in a cupboard to one picked up by chance as part of a job lot at auction, the series continues to uncover hidden treasures.' Nick Viall, who found fame on The Bachelor, and his wife Natalie Joy, who is 18 years younger, will host a new dating series on Netflix called Age Of Attraction. It will see singles from 22 to 59 explore 'ageless' dating where they don't reveal their vintage. It airs later this year. Trinny casts regrets 9 Trinny Woodall has built a multi-million-pound beauty business, but says she won't forget the ruin she faced after leaving BBC hit What Not To Wear for ITV version Trinny & Susannah Undress. The show with Susannah Constantine only managed two series. It meant she had to take on work abroad and leave her young daughter Lyla. Trinny today tells Fearne Cotton's Happy Place podcast: 'The biggest challenge for me was when Lyla was four and I stopped working in England. 'For a lot of the year, I left London on a Sunday and came back on a Friday. 'I now think what did Lyla lose by my not changing job to stay in the UK. I could have said, 'We'll downsize'.' CBB star Angellica Bell has teamed up with Girlguiding as their newest ambassador. She will unveil new badges for girls aged 4-18 across Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers. The badge activities including interior design, creating calm spaces and discovering courage. Martin's Nott a pain now Line Of Duty star Martin Compston has revealed how his character went from 'pain in the arse' to hero, thanks to DI Steve Arnott being thrown down stairs by a villain. After being in a wheelchair, Martin returned as a gun-toting saviour. Talking on Westlife star Nicky Byrne 's HQ podcast, he said: 'My character is a pain in the arse; the dick wears a waistcoat and that annoying accent I do. "They [the writers] said from that moment his relationship with the audience will change, they'll realise that if he was dead, what they'd lose. 'They were right. He was the hero of the show. Coming back – having been a wheelchair – with a gun felt like a moment. 'It took six years to get there.'
The Sun
29 minutes ago
- The Sun
Handsome soap star signs up to celebrity dating app Raya and returns to UK to find love
RICKY WHITTLE has come back to London to look for love. The ex-Hollyoaks actor, who moved to Los Angeles to work in Hollywood, has signed up to celebrity dating app Raya. 11 11 One of my pals spotted his profile on the app, with one picture showing him cuddling a quokka and another of him running shirtless through a street. 'It's like he's saying I'm cuddly, hot and very available,' my mate said. 'His profile popped up a couple of weeks ago. It says he's an actor who lives in LA but was visiting London. 'Given how good he looks, I bet he had loads of people swiping on his profile.' And judging by how well Raya is working for some in the capital, I'm not surprised Ricky is trying his luck back on home ground. Last month I revealed Lily Allen and James Norton had started hooking up, and they're both big fans of the app. Ricky is best known over here for playing Calvin Valentine on Hollyoaks. After his character was killed off in 2010, Ricky moved abroad and has starred in shows including The 100 and American Gods. He previously thanked Hollyoaks for giving him the best start in acting, saying: 'It's an education. "My character went from being the good guy, to the bad guy to the club owner, to the policeman, to your sister's on drugs, to you'd killed someone and then he's back to life.' I hope Ricky's experience on Raya is less of a rollercoaster than his on-screen Hollyoaks life. 11 REUNION FOR JACKSON THREE 11 THERE was an impromptu reunion for one of the most famous musical families of all time when Janet Jackson joined The Jacksons on stage on Saturday. The group, now touring as brothers Jackie and Marlon, briefly introduced their chart-topping sister to the stage at their Heritage Live Festivals show at Englefield Estate near Reading. All For You singer Janet, who lives in London, hasn't been on stage in the UK since her critically acclaimed tour here last autumn. But with The Jacksons still going – they have another show in Audley End in Essex on July 31 – I'm hoping they can persuade her to entertain us again soon. DO NOT BELIEVE ALL YOU SIA SIA has seemingly wasted no time moving from her husband Daniel Bernad after filing for divorce in March. The singer was snapped hand in hand with fellow Aussie Harry Jowsey, a reality star two decades her junior, who found fame on Netflix dating show Too Hot To Handle. I use the word 'seemingly' because they are both notorious jokers, and this cosy snap of them heading out to dinner in LA looks like a hoax to me. It certainly isn't a 'romance' I saw coming. RACY J-LO SHOW IS A GIFT 11 11 JENNIFER LOPEZ turns 56 on Thursday but you wouldn't know it by the racy moves she has been pulling on stage. Currently on a tour of some of the most random locations around Europe, she played Tenerife at the weekend, where it looked like she was recreating positions from The Joy Of Sex. The Jenny From The Block singer got on all fours and was thrown about by hunky dancers during a particularly steamy routine. I can only hope I'm still that flexible when I'm in my fifties – and I'm sure my fella does too. As well as the tour, J-Lo is giving fans a gift for her own big day by announcing a single called Birthday. Encouraging fans to pre-save it online, she wrote: 'It's my birthday and you're all invited. Party details on Thursday.' Something tells me she won't be gorging on mountains of cake like the rest of us. RICK: I'M GUNNA TEAM UP 11 11 RICK ASTLEY wants to work with Blossoms on original music after playing a handful of shows where they covered songs by The Smiths. The gigs with the indie band went down a storm and now the Never Gonna Give You Up singer has admitted he doesn't want to, er, give them up. In an exclusive chat with Bizarre, he said: 'Obviously Blossoms are amazing players, great musicians, and great writers. And I kind of think, yeah, it would be great to do something. 'We have talked occasionally about doing something, but I don't know what that would be. 'I'm always a bit nervous of it, because one of the weird things is, I want to keep my friends as friends, and I don't want to go through a recording process and fall out with them.' But fans have a wait on their hands for a follow-up to 2023's Are We There Yet?. Asked if he'd begun work on his tenth album, Rick said: 'No, we're having a quiet one this year, but I was in my studio this morning. I like tinkering. Who knows, we'll see. 'I don't think I'll ever stop making music, I just don't know whether anyone's going to listen to it.' BILLIE EILISH has teased she is working on 'something very special' with Titanic director James Cameron. During the first of her four Hit Me Hard And Soft tour dates at Manchester's Co-op Live on Saturday, the singer said the performance would form the basis of their new project, which fans have assumed will be a state-of-the-art live film. She told the crowd: 'I can't say much about it but I'm working on something very, very special with James Cameron and it's going to be in 3D. 'These four shows here in Manchester, you and me are part of a thing that I am making with him. He's in this audience somewhere, just saying.' YOU couldn't blame Liam Gallagher for wanting to put his feet up in front of the telly during rare nights off from the Oasis tour. But the frontman, known for his wild nights out, has been enjoying high-brow evenings – at the theatre. One of my mates spotted him in the audience at Sadler's Wells in London this week watching a ballet of Quadrophenia. Somehow, I doubt Liam will be pulling on a tutu any time soon. LEIGH-ANNE has hinted she almost packed in her solo career amid her split from Warner Records. I told in May how the former Little Mix star had parted ways with the label and she's just released her new single Been A Minute as an independent artist. She said in her newsletter: 'So much has changed this past year – new chapter, new energy, new team . . . There were moments I wasn't sure this would even happen . . . I had to back myself again.' THE WEEK IN BIZNESS TUESDAY: Christina Aguilera and Cher are tipped to attend the gala night performance of the new musical remake of their movie Burlesque, at London's Savoy Theatre, starring breakout performer Jess Folley. THURS: Latitude Festival gets underway in Suffolk with Sting, Snow Patrol, Fatboy Slim, Alison Moyet, MIKA and Clean Bandit among acts on the line-up. FRIDAY: Adam Sandler digs out his golf clubs to star in Happy Gilmore 2, which will hit Netflix 29 years after he originally played the frustrated sportsman. SATURDAY: Coronation Street's Jack P Shepherd, better known on the cobbles as David Platt, ties the knot to his partner Hanni Treweek in a ceremony in Manchester.
