Banana-Brained Community Forums

The one-stop reference for anything you may or may not want to know about the Banana-nana-Ninja games! Details about each game are posted here.

Dueling Ninjas!

Based on the game mechanics of Samurai Kirby, Dueling Ninjas! pits a chosen BNN character against five others in a series of one-on-one showdowns. While the opponents are staring each other down, a prompt will appear onscreen; at that moment, you must press a certain key within a limited time. If you are too slow, jump the gun, or you press the wrong key, you lose. But if you press the correct key fast enough, then you proceed to the next opponent.

Characters

• Baninja (Happy Banana Parlor)
• Seppuku (Bamboo Forest)
• Haiku (Cloudtops)
• Sudoku (On the Bus)
• Master Fuji (Dojo)
• Granny Smith (The Clan Hideout)

Each character will defeat his/her opponents in different ways. Play every character to see every victory animation.

Difficulty Settings

Speed determines the time delay before your opponent strikes. The higher the Speed setting, the less time you have to press a key. The Speed settings are Quick (slowest), Swift, and Blinding (fastest).

Skill determines the set of keys that the prompt will be chosen from. At the Novice skill level, you need only press the space bar when the prompt appears. At Intermediate, you will be prompted to press one of the four arrow keys. At Expert, you will need to press one of the numbers 1-9 on the numeric keypad. At the Advanced level, the prompt will be randomly chosen from the 26 letter keys.

Depending on what combination of Speed and Skill you choose, the overall difficulty level will be ranked as either Basic, Easy, Difficult, Challenge, Master, or Hardcore. If you defeat all 5 opponents at the Hardcore level then you may enter your name and be listed amongst the Hardcore Players. The list of Hardcore Players is accessible from the game's title screen.

Timing

As you progress through the matches, you will have progressively less time to respond to a prompt. Here is the way timing is calculated for any match:

• Base: .75 seconds for Quick, .5 for Swift, .25 for Blinding
• Add .4 seconds for 1st match, .3 for 2nd match, .2 for 3rd match, or .1 for 4th match
• Add a bonus .1 seconds for Intermediate, .2 for Expert, or .3 for Advanced

Hence, you will run out of time much faster if you play at a low Skill level. This is to make up for the extra "thinking time" it takes to find the right keys on higher Skill levels. It takes extremely keen reflexes to win the final match in a Blinding/Novice game (.25 seconds) even though it is only ranked as a Difficult level. However, the final match at the Hardcore level can be beaten in .55 seconds, more than twice the time -- but you need to choose from 26 keys to beat it instead of just keeping your finger poised over the space bar.

To beat the game on Hardcore, you must have keen reflexes and you must know your keyboard very well.

Master Fuji's Fortune Cookie

Most of Master Fuji's wisdom is derived from fortune cookies -- and now, you can crack open an individually-wrapped, crispy-baked piece of knowledge every day! Click on "Open Today's Cookie" to see the featured fortune of the day, or click "Open Random Cookie" to read a random fortune from the ever-growing collection.

Fortune Cookie updates daily with new fortunes (unless, of course, I'm unable to access the internet at any time). Sometimes I'll just add one new fortune to be the daily feature; sometimes I'll put up a new feature along with a few extras in the collection. To see them all, you'll have to open up a lot of random cookies.

At the bottom of each fortune is a "Lucky Line" that tells you what sorts of things may or may not be lucky* for you today. The Lucky Line is randomly generated from a wide (and ever-expanding) range of categories and entries, so you'll seldom see the same one twice. Even if the fortune itself is something you've seen before, the Lucky Line will always be different.

SUBMITTING YOUR FORTUNE IDEAS

Email your fortune cookie ideas to fortunes(at)banana-ninja(dot)com. I'll will read every fortune that comes in, so don't worry about your ideas being overlooked. But, I will only use the ones that have the best appeal, and even if a fortune makes the cut it might be days, weeks, or months before I get around to using it. Also, keep in mind that I've thought up a great deal of fortunes myself, so I may have already used your idea. It is also possible that something like it is already in the collection (or the waiting queue) and you just haven't seen it.

How will you know if your idea was accepted? Well, when and/or if I add your fortune(s) to the collection, you will be given credit for it in the Writing section of the forums. If you want credit for being a fortune writer, you must supply the name that you want used on the credit! If you don't send a credit name along with your ideas, then you will be credited as "Anonymous."

Criteria

I'm looking for originality. Please don't send me a list of funny fortunes that you found on a website. Chances are I've seen them anyway. I don't mind if you paraphrase an amusing concept and make it your own, but if I know that an idea has been directly plagiarized from somewhere else then I won't use it (or, if it's good enough, I'll just try to find a way to rework it myself).

Feel free to send me any real fortunes that you've gotten in restaurants or otherwise. Examples would be unintentionally funny fortunes written in "Engrish", or fortunes with an amusing double entendre.

Fortunes with adult content will not be used! I want this to be relatively young-person-friendly, so only very mild references to sex, drugs, or alcohol will be tolerated. These cookies will be cleaner than daytime television -- which, of course, is not exactly sterile or even sanitary, but clean enough to keep Mom and Dad happy more or less.

* Luck may be good or bad. The cookie guarantees nothing; after all, it's just pixels and data and not even an actual cookie, or an actual anything for that matter.