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We’re less than a week away from the launch of Donkey Kong Bananza, and recently IGN did an interview with director Kazuya Takahashi and producer Kenta Motokura to discuss the game before its release. As has been suspected for months now, it is official that the Super Mario Odyssey team (Nintendo Entertainment & Planning Division) is working on Bananza. Indeed, it appears that the game actually began life on the original Nintendo Switch. However, as they began experimenting more and more with the destruction of the game world, it became apparent that Switch 2 would be a better fit from a processing perspective to achieve their vision.
Bananza’s core gimmick, the ability to obliterate the terrain of the game world, is born from the voxel technology that EPD pioneered in Odyssey (they specifically mention drilling into cheese and snow in that game). For Bananza, the designers are extrapolating on the drilling and making it something much more elaborate and exciting. This writer can attest to how engaging it is ripping up chunks of terrain and flinging it around, or using it to smash enemies and, well, even more of the terrain. There’s certainly more to Bananza and its labyrinthine subterranean world, but this one mechanic is going to do a lot of heavy lifting in drawing in players and compelling them to discover all of the secrets littered around.
Another curious aspect of Bananza that has caught the attention of many fans is the redesign of Donkey Kong himself. When asked if the cinematic design of DK from The Super Mario Bros. Movie had anything to do with the character’s new look, or if instead the team’s design influenced the film (and Mario Kart World), Motokura gave the following response: “It’s true that sometimes there is a base for the model that will be used as the fundamental structure for different types of content, yes.” Apparently, Nintendo PR then stepped in to clarify with this statement:
Mr. Miyamoto’s original design for Donkey Kong serves as the fundamental baseline that can be used for different types of content, including in Donkey Kong Bananza but also the movie and Mario Kart World. The recent Donkey Kong as seen in Donkey Kong Bananza has roots in the original design created by Mr. Miyamoto with the element of Donkey Kong Bananza.
It would seem that Donkey Kong’s new look comes directly from Miyamoto himself, which tracks with rumors that the designer has never been a big fan of the cooler look that Rare created for the character. However, this writer would wager that the onset of The Super Mario Bros. Movie likely played the biggest factor in creating this new look for DK. After all, it was stated that DK is now more expressive, which was needed for the film.
What’s more, one of the other questions that Motokura and Takahashi were asked was what led to Bananza being developed in-house by Nintendo. As the interviewer points out, DK games have been handled by external developers (albeit, ones owned by Nintendo in Rare and Retro Studious) for the past few decades, so what made Nintendo opt to take on the task now? Again, the root is arguably traced back to The Super Mario Bros. Movie. As Nintendo continues to expand its presence in film, it would make sense to give DK and company a facelift to make them as appealing as possible across various forms of media.
The topic of legacy is brought up in the interview, and Takahashi and Motokura both feel that it’s essential to try and please longtime fans while being welcoming to new ones. Thus, the difficulty level that DK fans are accustomed to is being maintained, but things like Assist Mode will help to ease the struggle for those who might not quite be able to rise up to the challenge. There are also other elements, like rocket barrels and mine carts, that will be making a comeback but with an eye towards evolving their functionality in coordination with the new voxel technology.
We’ll see how all of this pans out when Donkey Kong Bananza hits store shelves next week on July 17, 2025.
Source: IGN
