KoopaTV Turns Ripe: Five-Year Bananniversary!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The .org really does stand for dot organic?

Welcome to the KoopaTV fifth anniversary article! KoopaTV started our Internet existence on May 12, 2013. It's now five years later, and we're still around!

...Five years and two days. Yeah, we couldn't make the actual anniversary day because the article slipped on a banana and fell. After that, we decided to rewrite this entire article and make it about bananas. You could say that we “went bananas.”

I tripped over the bananas, too, so there's a possibility I'll end up with amnesia.

It's still about our anniversary, of course. You see, much like a banana, KoopaTV has a lot of layers to it. You need to peel a banana to get to its rich goodness, and similarly, you should look below the surface level of what you see on KoopaTV to appreciate this site. At the end of this article, we'll be announcing what exactly turning ripe means for KoopaTV. (Besides a colour change.)

In the meantime, we have some banana-related delicacies to share!

You may remember that for last year's anniversary (number four), we had an event called King Bowser's Cook-Out!!. It was a great event, and people enjoyed their food.

Well, this year we're not actually going to be serving any food, but we'll tell you how to make some great dishes with bananas. That way, you can experience self-reliance.

(We also have budget cuts on our events line item.)

Here is a recipe and directions for making banana bread.

Bananas and Food!

Banana Bread

Banana Bread Recipe

• 2 large ripe bananas (or 3 medium bananas), mashed
• 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup cooking oil
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup granulated white sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

Banana Bread Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 340F
2. Beat eggs in a mixing bowl
3. Add the bananas and oil. Continue to mix until the ingredients are well blended. Set aside.
4. On a separate bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt. Mix well.
5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and fold. Do this until well incorporated. (Really, you shouldn't see white flour lumps.)
6. Mix in the vanilla extract.
7. Grease a loaf pan (preferably with butter) and then pour the mixture on it.
8. Bake for 50 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test. (Note: REALLY do check at 50 minutes with the toothpick test. Ovens are finicky.)
9. Remove from the oven and let it cool down. Refrigerate for 2 hours. (It's better cold, but you can skip the fridge part.)
10. Slice the banana bread  and arrange in a serving plate.
11. Yum.

Roasted Mighty Bananas

Watch the video for directions on how to make Roasted Mighty Bananas.

Koopas and Bananas

Koopa Kingdom doesn't natively grow bananas. It's not the best climate for them. Kamek had imported some bananas to Koopa Kingdom ever since King Bowser was a young baby, based on this philosophy:

Bananas are the upper-echelon of modern-day fruit, because they are not only loved by so many people and used in so many media forms now — such as banana peel slipping or terrible immature jokes — but bananas are also super cheap to buy and consume, making it very easy and accessible to both people who have a surplus of money and those who don't make too much money.

There are even organic options if you're real snooty.

On top of that, bananas have gone through an incredible amount of genetic modification to become what they are today, making them very interesting.

Here is a slowly-ripening banana bunch of five being imported by the Paratroopa express right now.
(The banana brand has been etched out so as to maintain neutrality, per KoopaTV's ethics in fruit journalism policy.)

An old photograph of Yoshi illegally raiding one of Baby Bowser's castles.
Yoshi is trying to steal one of Koopa Kingdom's coveted bananas
that Koopa Kingdom had already paid the Yoshis for.

Despite the Yoshis being unreliable trade partners, Koopa Kingdom is able to continue to import bananas through a trade agreement with Donkey Kong Island. We're basically keeping that banana republic afloat, and we may or may not secretly intervene when Donkey Kong's banana hordes are in danger. Which they often are.

Madame Loins returns from last year's Cook-Out!! with a banana-related sex comedy, featuring the banana alien Xananab. Creepy banana aliens threaten the perception of bananas everywhere as well as banana trade, so whatever Madame Loins is doing to him, he deserves it.

Anyway.

A Hammer Brother visiting Donkey Kong Island to load the bananas on the Cargo so it can be imported to Koopa Kingdom.

We just have one rule for how to handle bananas in Koopa Kingdom, which Kamek alluded to: Do not litter their peels.

And ESPECIALLY do NOT litter banana peels right in front of King Bowser Koopa, in his own castle!

What Turning Ripe Means for KoopaTV

Announcement time.

KoopaTV is rebranding itself from a “videogame commentary website” into a “videogame commentary story”. ...Obviously, KoopaTV is still going to be a website, but this will emphasise KoopaTV's value proposition stronger than what we were doing before.

KoopaTV is finally turning ripe now, because it took us five years to come up with a brand identity that makes sense and conveys what we do here. Some guy recently was trying to compare us to Kotaku recently. That's totally not in the same industry vertical as KoopaTV.

We need to make that more obvious, and it starts from our branding.

News websites like Kotaku, and even sites that are much more commentary oriented, are meant to be read because you found a link on social media or a search engine and you just read what is there and that's the end of your relationship. That's not how to enjoy KoopaTV. Referring to KoopaTV as a story conveys what we say in all of our monthly newsletters — every article is worth reading. Not only that, but they build a greater narrative day by day. It demands greater engagement from you, and you'll get a greater return.

And, of course, you can contribute to the KoopaTV story as well. We have a number of avenues for doing that. That's why we've established guest posts from the site's very beginning. (Exactly five years ago  to the day.) It's why we now showcase your comments in our newsletters.

Thank you for your continued participation in the story. Since you got this far, do you want a banana? ...Too bad, I told you already, we're not serving any. Tora of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is, though:

KoopaTV will also have a slightly more yellow colour to its greens, because that's what turning ripe does. An unripe banana is green. An organic unripe banana stays that colour for a long time. We're now ripe. Yellow we go! 


Ludwig continues to hate the very concept of an anniversary, so this is what you get. The videos were contributed by Rawk (even the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild video, despite Vortex's disturbing playtime on it); the recipe and directions were contributed by Wendy. The “bananas are the upper echelon” quoteblock is from Kamek.


Vortex's non-contribution makes more sense in the context of this.
The contributions from the staff made this article voted the Best KoopaTV Article of 2018!
Come celebrate KoopaTV's anniversary a year later!