Super Mario RPG: Guerilla trends on Twitter in Japan as fans celebrate the legendary meme’s revival 

Nintendo just announced the release of the Super Mario RPG remake on November 17 and released a trailer, giving fans a sneak preview of what the remake will bring. Japanese fans were quick to notice that that the remake includes Guerilla, a well-loved meme character from the original game and his name soon started trending on Twitter. 

So, who’s Guerrilla and what makes him special? Guerilla is a Kong-like being, shackled by chains to an iron ball, that appeared in the original Super Mario RPG from 1996. Guerrilla’s name is obviously a play on the words “gorilla” and “guerrilla warfare”, and his appearance is almost identical to Donkey Kong. He has not appeared in the Donkey Kong side of the series, and his relationship to the Kong family is unknown. 

Moreover, the character’s Japanese name, ドソキーユング (Dosokey Yung) is an even more clever play on words, as the name is designed to look almost exactly like ドンキーコング (Donkey Kong) at first glance by replacing Japanese characters that look very similar to each other. In this case, the “n” (ン) in donkey is replaced with “so” (ソ), and the “ko” (コ) in kong is replaced with “yu” (ユ), resulting in a perfect bootleg name. 

Apart from the “almost same but different” appearance and name, Guerrilla is also famous for the phrase displayed when he has his mind read by Mallow’s Psychopath ability. In the English version, Guerrilla’s thoughts are “Don’t confuse me with someone else!” alluding to his resemblance to Donkey Kong, while the Japanese version translates to “I am a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons is coincidental,” again denying connection to the original Donkey Kong. 

Guerrilla is essentially a “dollar-store Donkey Kong” character the developers slid into the game for giggles, and fans, especially the Japanese fandom, quickly recognized his meme-potential. 

However, precisely due to Guerrilla being pretty much a gag, no one really expected him to be featured in the new Super Mario RPG remake. People pretty much thought it was a given that the character would be scrapped, which led to a wave of surprise in the fandom when the shackled ape reappeared in front of everyone’s eyes in higher definition than ever, in a polished 3D edition. 

As a result, Guerrilla started trending on Twitter in Japan, as people celebrated and hyped the remade bootleg character, reminiscing upon the original Super Mario RPG.