Troglodytes' gorilla

It's 1991.  Ayatollah Khomeini is in the wriggling throws of death. The Soviet Union has collapsed upon itself like a fusty and mouldering estate housing a desiccated clan of Havishams. I bear witness to the precipice of history itself, revolving around me, spokes akimbo and threatening to drag me feet first into the ambivalent chasm of passing time. Too bad I'm wearing velcro shoes and bumbling with otiose fingers at a keyboard that weighs more than I do. 

I'm playing the first video game I've ever played.  On a screen in front of me, two QBasic gorillas hurl explosive bananas in a vain attempt to destroy one another. It's the polar opposite of My Dinner With Andre and I love it. There's two commands to enter: the velocity of your banana, and the angle you fling it, underarmed and lustily, primeval as the newly risen sun. In a surrealistic turn, you can control the gravity of your playing field. You can destroy the buildings upon which you revel at your opponent. You can destroy the sun. With a banana. You are ruination reborn. 

In the same year that the SNES was released, and that legions of children would be battle-toading and riding coloured dinosaurs, I stared at a DOS prompt and embraced a kafkaesque vision of the earth's future: one riddled with gorillas, bent on destruction. I think it's an understatement to say that this game would forever shape how I viewed gorillas, and more importantly, bananas.

Play it here.