Grant Kirkhope is known as the composer behind some of the most iconic tracks in games like GoldenEye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie, but there's another type of sound he created that might be burned into your memory: he's the guy who said "oh banana" in Donkey Kong 64. As it turns out, he only did it because he was tired of asking everyone else to do the voice acting.
"I asked people at Rare – does anybody want to voice a character? – and no one wanted to do it," as Kirkhope tells industry newsletter Push to Talk, "and I got so sick of asking, I said, I'll just do it myself, and bollocks to it."
Kirkhope ultimately recorded several other small voice samples for the game – "OK" is the one I remember best, outside of the banana line – and many of them would be used by Nintendo for future games.
At the time, "Nintendo owned half of Rare," Kirkhope explains. "So when they asked for the samples, of course I sent them. But I never thought they’d really use it."
"Oh banana" in particular has taken on a whole new life thanks to its inclusion in Donkey Kong Bananza. Since it plays every time you get a banana in that game, you'll hear it hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of times if you're thorough, and as if DK64 hadn't already burned the line into my brain, by now I can't even look at a real-life banana without murmuring DK's drooling voice to myself.
It's unclear if Donkey Kong Bananza is still using Kirkhope's old recording – if it is, the sound is heavily modulated – but the spirit is certainly there. The same is true of the DK Rap, but it seems Nintendo isn't terribly concerned about making sure Kirkhope is still credited for his contributions to the series.
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