Tetris 99 - Donkey Kong Bananza Cup

This is 48th, Maximus Cup is the first Maximus Cup after the release of the Switch 2, and it’s themed around the second major first-party release on the system, Donkey Kong Bananza. The first original Donkey Kong game in a while (was Tropical Freeze on the Wii U the last such one?), Pauline joins Donkey Kong as he burrows his way increasingly deeper into the planet to find the Bananium Core, which will grant any wish—but has to race the Void Company, an unethical mining company, to get there, and its CEO, Void Kong, will try to stop him every step of the way.

Having not played this game, my knowledge is limited on the references, just that I feel there’s a lot of them. Your playfield, as well as that of your opponent’s, uses an aquamarine-and-fuchsia color scheme I find pretty visually appealing, but I’m not sure what that might refer to. All of your Minos have eyes suggesting they are square Fractones. Badges are Bananium Gems (I initially thought they were rubber duckies; maybe you’d use them to allow Donkey Kong to stay on the water’s surface), while the reticule resembles a Bananium Chip. The “Watch Out!” sign takes the appearance of a sign on ruins. Opponents you’ve KOed personally will have a red Fractone silhouette, while the others will have black Fractone silhouettes. Garbage blocks are gray and lack eyes, meaning they’re likely the terrain Donkey Kong cannot dig up.

A key part of this game is Pauline singing, which activates Bananza transformations giving Donkey Kong extra abilities for a brief time. When a match begins, when 50 players remain, and when 10 players remain, you will hear Pauline calling out to DK when they begin. The music itself consists of the Bananza transformation themes. We begin with the Kong Bananza theme. When 50 players remain, we hear the Zebra Bananza theme. (Early into the theme, you can hear actual zebra sounds. They don’t neigh, they yip.) At 10 players left, it is the Ostrich Bananza theme. Each theme is sung in that animal’s language, though with bits of English, making it the second Tetris 99 skin to have spoken English in the audio, after the one for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, and the third one to have vocal lyrics, the first being Kirby and the Forgotten Land. All line clear sound effects are of smashing crystals, though I’m not good enough to tell them apart just by hearing them. Placing 2nd or below plays a quick loop of the DK Rap; I don’t know where in the game it turns up. Placing 1st get you a more tiumphant version of the DK Rap; I think this comes up after you defeat a major boss.

00:08 Match #1
Skin: Special Theme 39 (Donkey Kong Bananza)
Mode: Normal
I’ve been told that this Maximus Cup is a particularly tough one, with a lot of extremely good players out. I know someone who’s a much better Tetris player than me, who said that they got many 2nd place and 3rd place finishes but never 1st. Here’s the one that unlocked Special Theme 39 for me, but I didn’t even make it into the top 10, unlike with the Xenoblade Chronicles X one.

05:14 - Match #2
Skin: Special Theme 39 (Donkey Kong Bananza)
Mode: Invictus
Here is an Invictus match—I placed 3rd overall (so you can see the manga and embers background for Invictus), but I was eliminated 6 minutes in, yet it took another 4 minutes for the remaining two players to duke it out and declare a winner. This was the caliber of people I was up against. Then again, as I was targeted by them both, I didn’t stand a chance. (I could see, reviewing my footage, that the player on the right was doing rapid combos, while the person on the left was doing rapid consecutive T-Spin Triples.)

12:52 - Match #3
Skin: Special Theme 39 (Donkey Kong Bananza)
Mode: Normal
Well, I kept going, and after much effort and trying on the Friday of this event, and Saturday, I finally did it: I got 1st place. I just had to get lucky and either not deal with these crazy players (most of whom are Japanese and, as I had feared, were playing this Maximus Cup at all hours of the day), or there had to be two or more and they’d take each other out, as I would normally do to get 1st place. I don’t know which of these would apply to this match, or if it’s neither, but here it is. As you can see, I was approaching 2,000 points. I’ve gone on for longer in the past (I chased around 4,000 points with the Fire Emblem: Three Houses Maximus Cup, and I completely failed to get a Maximus victory for Animal Crossing: New Horizons or Monster Hunter Rise until after their respective events had ended), but I will not hide it.