Top Banana

• Title — Top Banana • Platforms — Archimedes, Amiga, CDTV, Atari ST • Released — 1991: Archimedes 1992: Amiga, ST • Composer — Coldcut • Publisher — Hex • Genre — Platform

The planet is threatened by man-made environmental threats - rainforest deforestation, nuclear waste, and climate change. A girl named KT seeks to address the world's environmental issues by spreading love. By stopping threats with love, enemies are transformed into fruit - through these world-saving efforts, KT may gain ultimate wisdom and the title of "Top Banana".

Top Banana is a vertically scrolling platformer with the goal of each level being to reach the top of the level. The player takes the role of KT, and must travel through psychedelic levels while jumping across platforms and throwing hearts to convert planet-damaging enemies into fruit. Enemies include chainsaws, bulldozers, businessmen, and soda cans. The game has a time limit in the form of water that damages the player rising from the bottom of the level over time. Fruit that the player may collect throughout the game awards points, and the player may place in the high score table if enough points are collected. Top Banana has four stages: the Rain Forest, the Metal-City, the Temple, and the Mind-Scape. Some items have negative effects when walked into and are hazards to be avoided - they cause negative effects such as slowed movement, reversing the game's controls, as well as inverting the colors of the level's graphics for several seconds. Upon taking damage, the player phases through the platforms they are on for several seconds, causing the player to lose progress.

Originally released for the Acorn Archimedes, Top Banana was later ported to Amiga, Atari ST, and CDTV. It was released with recycled cardboard packaging. Many of Top Banana's sprites are taken from videos and television for use in the game, much in the same way audio may be sampled in music, and the game features a techno music video as an introduction. Electronic music duo Coldcut, consisting of Matt Black and Jonathan More, produced the game's music. Chaos theory was used to make the music. Regarding sampling and the future of media, Black said in 1993 that it would be like a "big soup bowl, with everyone dipping in and taking whatever they want". Top Banana's developer & publisher Hex is also known as Hardwire, a company specializing in computer graphics work for music videos. Hex spokesman Robert Pepperell stated in an article in a May 1991 issue of The One that Top Banana was developed because Hex believed "a computer game would be an interesting challenge", and because "Most games look rather sterile. We wanted to do something really different and positive. The technique of video sampling has never been used in a game before. Top Banana really looks and sounds completely different to any other computer game yet written." The game's disk has no copy protection and thus the game's sprites may be edited with graphics software. In 1992 the game was included in Hex's release Global Chaos for CDTV on CD-ROM, alongside remixes of Top Banana's soundtrack. A single was released to coincide with the release of Global Chaos, and a music video featuring KT promoting the release aired on MTV. The music video was created by Black on a £200 budget using a camcorder, an Acorn Archimedes, a Macintosh, and an Amiga; the Archimedes ran the "processor-intensive routines" such as the video's realtime fractal zoom, the Amiga was used for the majority of the work, including ray tracing and digitized animations, with the Mac "[tying up] loose ends". Top Banana was playtested in the Netherlands. A demo for Top Banana is featured on Amiga Format issue #32's coverdisk. Playing the Atari ST version on a ST not in the Atari STe model range removes the game's sound, removing music entirely and replacing sound effects with stock sound chip sounds. Top Banana was included in Superior Software's Archimedes game re-release compilation Play It Again Sam 3, with the games included in the compilation being determined by votes by readers in Acorn User magazine.