The Daily Click ::. Projects ::. DataJack
 

Project: DataJack
Project Started: 31st July, 2008 Last Update: 22nd November, 2013
Project Owner: Rick Shaw Project Members:
Project Type: game Project Progress:
More Info: http://epicbanana.com/ Faves: 27

The Grand Reveal: I am Epic Banana
Posted 2nd Nov 10, by Rick Shaw  
So, it's time to come clean. In the project description, I said that Datajack will be the spiritual successor to a 90s klik n play game: in fact, I was referring to The Establishment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sao6I9EGvSo .

In the 90s, with my brother Gib, I released many freeware games for the Mac under the name "Epic Banana". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Banana
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/epic-banana/
Note that this was long before "epic" became a staple of internet and irl lingo.

Epic Banana was best known for "A Day at Work," "Another Day at Work: Wednesday", "Yogurt Commercial", "The Establishment", "Office Building" etc. They were for the most part small, quirky games. Our focus was in pushing games and gameplay outside the traditional genres of action (so that you can play a videogame about acting in a yogurt commercial), adding details that were totally unnecessary to gameplay (like attracting police attention in a golf game), and just plain having fun.

Grey Gerling has been excellent enough to put together the Epic Banana archive (entirely without my help!) here: http://www.barfquestion.com/eb_site/eb_index.html You can still play these games if you have a PPC mac or emulator.

Maybe some of you remember Epic Banana, but probably most don't. The Mac game scene was great, innovative, communal and ultimately pretty small. I'm glad people have still kept the EB torch burning throughout the ages. Our return to the software scene will be EPIC- and of course, all our games will continue to be 100% free.

Ryan "Rickshaw" Foltz

Posted by Marko 2nd November, 2010

Not heard of all this, but damn it is interesting reading! Please submit The Establishment, i'd love to play it - it reminds me of a stealthy, MGS-esque game i made with KnP once where the guards could you your footprints in the snow and would follow them to find you. But The Establishment...

...epic, indeed!
 
Posted by Agent_Zeppin 8th November, 2011

As someone who grew up on a rather sluggish Performa in the 90s, Epic Banana was one of the defining features of owning a Mac and, for a number of years, it was hard to disassociate the two in my mind. I burned so many hours into those games. Even the less replayable, early DR3 stuff. They just bled character. The creaky G3 in my younger brother's room still has the full collection and its not uncommon for any of my siblings to play them (Another Day At Work and The Establishment being favorites).

DataJack looks like its keeping with your imaginative tradition and so I'm standing by with a Wineskin wrapper for whenever it gets released so I can play it on one of those newfangled Intel iMacs. Too cool.
Comment edited by Agent_Zeppin on 11/8/2011
 


 



Project Forums


Favourite

Advertisement

Worth A Click