Barrel Cannon

Barrel Cannon
A Barrel Cannon
Series	Donkey Kong
Item Class	Heavy item/Trap
Appearance	Super Smash Bros. (stage feature only) Super Smash Bros. Melee (item and stage feature) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Adventure Mode stage feature)

The Barrel Cannon is an environmental feature in the Super Smash Bros. series as well as an item in Super Smash Bros. Melee. They hail from the Donkey Kong series, debuting in Donkey Kong Country, as well as several Donkey Kong games after it.

Usage

Touching any Barrel Cannon will cause a character to be stuck inside while the barrel spins around. If A is pressed while inside, the cannon will shoot the occupant in the direction the arrow on the barrel is pointing. If nothing is pressed after a set time limit, the barrel will automatically fire the occupant in the direction it is pointing. It turns the character into a projectile while moving, damaging foes that are hit. Also, a tech is needed to recover, as landing will stun the character.

Appearances

Stage Feature

The Barrel Cannon can be seen under Congo Jungle.

These are permanently placed on the bottom of Congo Jungle (N64) and Kongo Jungle (GCN) for recovery. They move back and forth and spin around. In the Melee stage, a Klaptrap will occasionally get stuck inside. While it is inside, the cannon cannot be used by anyone: those who touch it will be damaged by the Klaptrap. Eventually the Klaptrap will be shot out, occasionally straight up through the stage. This will cause high damage, knockback, and even KO those with high damage.

The Barrel Cannon returns in the Jungle Hijinxs stage in Super Smash Bros. 3DS/Wii U. Characters who hop into one can shoot toward the background or the foreground part of the stage depending on where they are, but if they use it too quickly the cannon will explode.

The Barrel Cannon trophy

In Super Smash Bros. Melee

In Melee, this item can be picked up and thrown, though the appearance of this item is rather rare, it won't even matter if the item drop frequency is set on very high prior to battle. These items also like to disappear very quickly, likely because of how far the barrel can send a character offstage, making recoveries impossible in certain scenarios. If a character is already inside it and another character runs into it, it will cause several small hits worth of damage (around 15%).

In Super Smash Bros. Brawl

This item doesn't appear as an item in Brawl as it does in Melee; however, it does appear in the single-player mode of the Subspace Emissary starting in the The Jungle stage. It has a very similar usage to its Donkey Kong Country use, which is mainly transportation to one area to another. It involves getting put into one barrel, and then getting shot into another barrel to the right of the screen, and then getting into the next right-side barrel until reaching the end. Precise timing is required to successfully get across said area; shooting too low will often result in a KO if recovery isn't executed quickly.

Trophy info

The Barrel Cannons were used in Donkey Kong games as a vital means of transportation, and their explosive nature is used similarly in Super Smash Bros. Melee. On the Kongo Jungle stage, one can catch characters as they fall from the main platform. Careful! The Barrel Cannon rotation may accidentally send you flying off the screen.

• Donkey Kong Country (11/94)

Trivia

• On the bottom of the cannon, it reads "2L84ME", which translates to "Too late for me", possibly referencing the difficulty dodging and escaping the Barrel.
• There is a glitch which requires this item, which is a variation of the Freeze glitch.
• The Barrel Cannon is one of six items in Melee to not make a return in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the other five items being the Egg, Cloaking Device, Flipper, Parasol, and Red Shell.
• If a Barrel Cannon is thrown at Giga Bowser, he will only repeatedly take damage from it until it falls off the stage or disappears since he is too big to be grabbed.

See also

• List of SSBM trophies (Donkey Kong series)