Man makes Spelunky history by recording the first successful solo eggplant run
Instills hope for humanity.
Let's Player Bananasaurus Rex has successfully performed Spelunky's legendary eggplant run solo, making him the first person to ever record the act in single-player.
So what's all this about an eggplant, you ask? Let me lay it out for you: (Warning: there will be spoilers.)
When a player places a still wrapped Mystery Box on a sacrificial altar it turns into an eggplant. For years no one understood the purpose of the Eggplant. It wasn't until Spelunky was released on PC this summer that the game was hacked and it was discovered that if you feed the eggplant to the game's secret true final boss, Yama, he'll get sick, bloated and purple like a wayward child in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. In this ill state he'll die in one hit.
The problem, of course, is bringing it to him. Getting to Yama in and of itself is a Herculean effort and doing it while escorting an eggplant through the better part of 20 stages is virtually unheard of. Last month it was managed by a couple of co-op players, but doing it single-handedly is a whole 'nother story.
Complicating matters is the fact that you can only ever hold one item at a time, begging the question: how does one carry the Eggplant and the Scepter - a required item to reach Spelunky's final set of secret levels - through the same exit at the end of 4-1? As it turns out there is one way for a single person to do this. You see, the hidden Mothership level contains a robot tucked away somewhere in it. The robot operates as an AI partner and can carry the Scepter while you hold the Eggplant. When you emerge in 4-2, you can kill the robot, use the Scepter to unlock the entrance to the City of Gold, then fetch the Eggplant. Naturally, you need to babysit the robot carefully as the companions in Spelunky have a short life expectancy.
So what do you get for completing such an extraordinary task? Nothing but self-satisfaction and the everlasting adoration of your friends and viewers it seems. There's no journal entry or achievement tied to the Eggplant, nor does attempting this sort of run enhance your score in any way (in fact, it actually impedes it quite a lot). But the point is knowing that you've done it.
It's impossible to say if anyone's achieved this remarkable goal on their own accord, but Bananasaurus Rex is the first person to record the colossal feat and watching his increasingly stressed mental state across the 76 minute run is as harrowing as video game viewing can be. Give it a gander below and get ready to set a new life goal for yourself.
