Image: Nintendo/Rare

Like the films of Stanley Kubrick and books of James Joyce, a good video game can continue to reveal new secrets years after its initial release. Such is the case with Donkey Kong 64, which was released in 1999 and has since become a favorite of dedicated speed-runners. Those speed-runners just saw their runs invalidated by the discovery of a new coin, upping the game’s total coin tally from 976 to 977.


See, the game tasks you with collecting banana coins to unlock upgrades. One such coin is the rare rainbow coin, which grants each character five extra banana coins. There’s typically one per level, but speed-runner Isotarge, nearly 20 years after the game’s release, just discovered a new one tucked in the tall grass of Fungi Forest.

Of course, this isn’t the kind of thing casual players can just stumble upon. Speed-runners, after all, scour the game’s code and exploit glitches in pursuit of “impossible coins,” which is exactly what Isotarge did. His discovery came after noticing incomplete data in the level’s save data.


Isotarge rather cheekily announced his discovery on Twitter:


Looks like the completionists out there have work to do. For their runs to count, they’ll need to go back and do it all again, this time nabbing the 977th coin.

“Many runs were invalidated because of this discovery,” Isotarge said. “It’s one way to keep the community active. I’m looking forward to seeing speed-runners claim back those records.”


Yeah, we’re sure they are, too.

[via Kotaku]