The oldest mortal video game character is still one of the coolest bastards around. His hobbies include sleeping, complaining about stuff and clomping people over the head with a big stick. Plus, he has a massive beard because he just don't give a shit.
The gorilla who truly started the Kong legacy (but not the DKU, mind), Cranky grew up an inner-city simian, in Big Ape City. He was then known as Donkey Kong, but for the purposes of this bio we'll just keep calling him Cranky because it's simpler and I get confused easily. Upon meeting "Wrinkly" Kong, Cranky moved out toward the jungle. At that time, the island was ruled by his parents, but when they kicked the can (by which I mean they died), Cranky inherited it. It's unknown whether the naming of the island after himself—Donkey Kong Island—was his idea or not, but it probably was. He was a bit of an egomaniac, really, but nobody really cared at the time.
A generation-or-so later, Cranky and Wrinkly had tied the knot (by which I mean they married each other... hmm, maybe explaining idioms immediately after saying them defeats the entire point... hmm) and somewhere along the line found themselves with grandchildren: Donkey Kong Jr. (who had a penchent for novelty vests) and Swanky Kong (who had a penchant for '70s disco).
What became of these young gorillas' actual parents—i.e. the missing generation, the absentee Kong(s) who apparently vanished leaving Donkey Jr. and Swanky to be raised instead by their grandparents—is an ever-pervasive mystery; nobody ever talks about it. In any case, Cranky started calling himself Donkey Kong Sr. to stop anyone getting confused.
"So, what you're saying is that Cranky Kong is simultaneously both Donkey Kong's grandfather and de facto father?"
Yes, Quotation Marks Person, that's exactly what I'm saying, thanks for asking!
"Oh, hey, no problem, man."
Well, anyway, around 1970, when Cranky/Donkey Sr. was in his late 40s, a cruise liner crashed on the shores of DK Island. To make matters worse, the humans on board set about mindlessly polluting the beach, killing the surrounding vegetation as they did so. Cranky didn't take kindly to this sort of mucking about and noticed that a particular pair of humans were doing most of the damage: a young couple, Pauline and Mario. Cranky did the only thing he could think of, which was to kidnap Pauline. Annoyingly, Mario succeeded over Cranky in Big Ape City; he was captured and put on display. Donkey Kong Jr. came to his rescue, though, and freed good 'ol (gran)dad. The humans got away, but their weird behaviour wouldn't be forgotten.
In fact, at some point in the '80s Cranky even knocked together an arcade machine representation of these events, which to this day he maintains is definitely the greatest game of all time (Donkey Kong 64).
During the next decade, Donkey Jr. grew bigger and stronger while Cranky and "Wrinkly" grew older and more senile. By the mid-'90s, Cranky had become noticeably more crotchety and disillusioned with the world in general; a veritable sarcastic bastard. It was at about this time he grew his ludicrous beard and inevitably got his "Cranky Kong" name; Donkey Kong Jr. soon took this opportunity to slap off the "Jr." from his own name. At the same time, Cranky's wife began to obsess over her wrinkles, so the younger Kongs jokingly called her "Wrinkly". Her real name is unknown but I reckon it was "Sheila".
In November of 1994, Donkey Kong's banana hoard was stolen by K. Rool, the leader of the Kremlings. Cranky gave helpful "advice" from his trusty jungle cabin while Donkey and his young monkey pal Diddy Kong set about retrieving it. And by "advice" I mostly just mean sardonic put-downs and repeated head-beatings. But it still counts!
DK and Diddy did manage eventually to re-take the hoard and return it to its rightful cave (Donkey Kong Country); naturally, Cranky became slightly jealous of all the attention the two younger primates were getting. He decided to make "arrangements" for K. Rool and his minions, ensuring they went for the banana hoard again (and they did), but much to Cranky's chagrin, DK and Diddy proved able to restore the bananas in a four-bit game, too (Donkey Kong Land). Cranky was furious.
A few months passed with hardly a peep from the Kremlings. Then one day, DK went missing; captured, as it turned out, by K. Rool. Diddy and his girlfriend Dixie Kong set off to Crocodile Isle—the Kremling homeland—to rescue him, and Cranky decided to go with them if not for any other reason than to visit Wrinkly, who was teaching on the Isle at the time. He ended up finding the cryogenically frozen body of Winky the frog, and so decided to build a museum on the isle with Winky as its main attraction (note for WINKY FANS: he thawed out eventually (Donkey Kong Country 2 (Game Boy Advance))). Once again, Cranky would help the two Kongs, but this time it would cost them banana coins. He also hid special "Hero Coins" throughout the island, which Diddy and Dixie invariably collected. Cranky put an inordinate amount of effort into three large animatronics based on people from different universes he'd heard of—Mario, Yoshi, and Link—and then constructed a special scaffold with first, second, and third place steps, hoping to thereby challenge Diddy's adventuring skills (with hero coin scores assigned to each of the animatronics). Diddy collected all the coins, though, thus forcing the robots to move down a step each, as Diddy stepped up onto the first-place pedestal. Cranky was simultaneously impressed, and slightly annoyed (Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest).
When Crocodile Isle sank for good (Donkey Kong Land 2), Cranky and Wrinkly moved back to DK Island. Cranky started spending more time with his youngest grandson, Swanky. A year later, Swanky opened up a throwing booth and toured it around the Northern Kremisphere with Cranky as the game's "in-house" opponent to players. Unfortunately, he wasn't very good and lost loads of his money, despite Wrinkly's scoldings (Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!).
By 1999, Cranky had developed a slight fixation with advanced biochemistry (though, if he's honest, he only got into it because he'd always fancied himself in a sciencey labcoat surrounded by coloured liquids of questionable content). He became remarkably proficient in a short space of time, which was fortunate since his new-found skills coincided neatly with K. Rool's attempt to blow up DK Island completely. Cranky was fairly sure the younger generation of Kongs would be able to take care of the threat, but even so offered to assist them with his various concotions. Ultimately K. Rool was thwarted again and Cranky likes to take most of the credit for this (Donkey Kong 64).
Now, Wrinkly was gone by this time; did we mention that bit? She died some time in late '99, which was a real emotional slam to the old ape, even if he was too stubborn to let anyone notice. Who was he going to complain to? Who was going to complain to him about the ludicrous and frankly embarrassing length of his beard? Who was going to nag him for spending all his cash on stupid mini-games? Ahh, Wrinkly. It was damned inconvenient, that's what it was!
Though, once you get to a certain age, as you might expect, you start to realise certain things about the world. Such as, "life is fleeting, and ridiculously complicated" and "these kids don't appreciate half of what they've got these days"... oh, and "I've spent my entire life living in a video game".
Cranky was, after all, the first (and, apparently, only) of the Kongs to realise this strange yet very fundamental truth about his existence. Actually he'd known since about 1994 when the graphics suddenly got better and is in a constant state of bafflement that nobody else can see it. But by the early 2000s he'd become tired of trying to convince anybody of anything and decided to just get on with it. Hell, if he really was a video game character, by god he was going to be better than all of those other stupid characters that pass for protagonists these days! He immediately signed up for Diddy Kong's pilot-racing tournament, but that was cancelled. This sort of thing had started happening a lot, he thought.
The years rolled by. He oversaw his son's adventures on the stupidly-named Sun Sun Island (during which his ape offspring's stupidity almost enabled the out-of-retirement K. Rool to take over the entire universe, the wazzock) (DK: Jungle Climber) which occurred not long after a suspiciously similar outing during the traditional DK Isles Jungle Jam Tournament (which he'd never heard of, but fair enough) (DK: King of Swing). In any case, on both occasions he'd reel off advice and teach "moves", all the while secretly hoping something more interesting would happen.
Cranky got older and more and more bored. He eventually decided, what the hell, he'd sign up for that weird-ass Jet Race competition the other Kongs were organising. Even the (apparently equally bored) Kremlings were in on the action, so why not? He can no longer remember how well he did, of course, but he's damn certain he was the best character in the thing (Donkey Kong Barrel Blast).
Maybe Cranky's career was winding down. Maybe there was no place in these fancy modern games for a sarcastic bearded bastard repeatedly beating the other characters with a big stick.
No! He wouldn't have it! But before he could draw up his plans for "Cranky Kong Country", the entire top portion of DK Island exploded, spoiling what was otherwise looking to be a perfectly decent afternoon's bickering.
Some ancient weirdoes emerged from the ash: the Tiki Tak Tribe. Invaders from deep within the island. Hellbent on one thing, "no let me guess" thought Cranky. "They've come to steal the banana hoard and hide its remnants in variously clichéd locations across the island, thereby forcing my lazy idiot son to go gallivanting off on another one of those adventurey things he likes to do?" Cranky's thoughts were almost entirely correct (Donkey Kong Country Returns).
"Well, I'd better go and open up a shop, then."
Biography by Matt & Hyle
