---
title: "Donkey Kong 64 &#8211; Originally had realistic shotgun which shocked Shigeru Miyamoto"
url: "https://www.nintendoreporters.com/en/news/general/donkey-kong-64-originally-had-realistic-shotgun-which-shocked-shigeru-miyamoto/"
description: "Remember Donkey Kong 64 in which Donkey had the Coconut Gun, an iconic weapon in it's own right."
author: "Patrick Dankers"
published at: "2019-12-15 16:32:42"
image: "https://www.nintendoreporters.com/storage/files/donkey-kong-64-originally-had-realistic-shotgun-which-shocked-shigeru-miyamoto.jpg"
markdown url: "https://www.nintendoreporters.com/en/news/general/donkey-kong-64-originally-had-realistic-shotgun-which-shocked-shigeru-miyamoto.md"
---

Donkey Kong 64 - Originally had realistic shotgun which shocked Shigeru Miyamoto | General News | NintendoReporters

 [![Donkey Kong 64 – Originally had realistic shotgun which shocked Shigeru Miyamoto](https://www.nintendoreporters.com/storage/files/donkey-kong-64-originally-had-realistic-shotgun-which-shocked-shigeru-miyamoto.jpg "Donkey Kong 64 – Originally had realistic shotgun which shocked Shigeru Miyamoto")](https://www.nintendoreporters.com/storage/files/donkey-kong-64-originally-had-realistic-shotgun-which-shocked-shigeru-miyamoto.jpg)Remember Donkey Kong 64 in which Donkey had the Coconut Gun, an iconic weapon in it’s own right.

But in early builds of the game, this weapon was originally a realistic shotgun that fired proper bullets instead of coconuts.

Footage of the build with the shotgun can be seen in some early promos of Donkey Kong 64:

 ![video](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wur1OxnYUzo/sddefault.jpg "sddefault")Please enable JavaScriptplay-rounded-fill

    08:06

[Link](https://www.nintendoreporters.com/en/news/general/donkey-kong-64-originally-had-realistic-shotgun-which-shocked-shigeru-miyamoto/)

In an interview with **Gamesradar**, Donkey Kong 64‘s creative director George Andreas recounted the story about how the Coconut Gun came to be. And you might be amazed …

It came as a result of the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto’s horrified reaction to seeing Donkey Kong blasting enemies apart with a realistic shotgun.

## [](#donkey-kong-64-killer-game)Donkey Kong 64 – Killer game

> Miyamoto-san, Iwata-san, and Howard Lincoln – chairman of Nintendo America at the time – came to our new studio. We switched on the game, they saw the rap, and then I started running around as DK. I swung on some vines, collected bananas, and they were beginning to really smile.
>
> And then I pressed the button to pull out the gun. It wasn’t a textured gun that you might expect but a realistic shotgun with bullets flying out and with horrifying sound effects. You get so used to things being in development, even if it is a placeholder, and I completely forgot that it was in there. I’m shooting beavers, turned to my side, and see this look of horror on Miyamoto’s face!
>
> Then he smiled and, taking some paper and a pencil, drew a coconut gun in front of us. It had leaves on it and he handed it to me. I looked at it and said ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool, we’ll put that in’ and the coconut gun was put in after that.

Well we made an impression of DK64 with a realistic shotgun above in our featured image … well we are glad they went with the Coconut gun here for sure!

   [](#)

 [  ](#)

> Generated for use by AI and Large Language Models (LLMs).
> Generated: 2026-09-08 13:06:24
> Maintained by: NintendoReporters
> Source: https://www.nintendoreporters.com/
> Contact: webmaster@nintendoreporters.com