As a director, the upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza will be the first game by Kazuya Takahashi in the role. In a recent interview with La Vanguardia (via VGC), Takahashi has spoken about revisiting older games in the Donkey Kong franchise in order to get ready for Donkey Kong Bananza. He also revealed that he started playing all of the classic Donkey Kong games once he got assigned to work on Bananza.
“I do have very fond memories of playing Donkey Kong Jr. and later Donkey Kong Country,” said Takashi. “After I learned I’d been assigned to the Donkey Kong Bananza team, I replayed all the games in the franchise.”
In the interview, Takahashi also spoke about how the 1994 title Donkey Kong Country in particular was one of the more important changes in the franchise’s history. The title, originally released on the Super NES, made use of rotoscoped 3D models for its 2D gameplay, making it one of the most unique looking games of its time. The game also introduced new and unique mechanics which ended up becoming staples of the Donkey Kong series.
“In particular, Donkey Kong Country introduced unique mechanics like barrel cannons and minecarts,” explained Takahashi. “I wanted to revisit those elements and add a sense of destruction. That motivated me to incorporate past memories along with new ideas.”
Takahashi also spoke about some of the technical aspects of Donkey Kong Bananza, including some viewers noticing dropped frames in the various gameplay showcases and trailers that have been released for it so far. When asked about this, Takahashi spoke about the developers making use of various techniques like hit-stop and slow motion to emphasise impacts, and how these might end up looking like performance drops. However, he also offered assurance that overall gameplay would be smooth.
“There are several factors to consider,” Takahashi said. “First, we intentionally used effects like hit-stop and slow motion to emphasize impacts. Second, because we use voxel technology, there are times when there are major changes and destruction in the environment.
“We’re aware that performance may drop slightly at these times. However, as you say, overall the game is smooth, and at points where large-scale changes occur, we prioritized fun and playability.”
Earlier this month, producer Kenta Motokura revealed that Donkey Kong Bananza was originally envisioned as a game for the original Switch. However, as development continued, the use of voxel technology was making the game a bit too demanding for the Switch. The decision was ultimately made to develop the title for the Switch 2 instead.
“This allowed us to engage in creating a really extremely rich variety of materials and very large scale changes in the environment on that new hardware,” he explained. “And when destruction is your core gameplay, one really important moment that we wanted to preserve was when a player looks at a part of the terrain and thinks, can I break this? Because that creates a very important surprise that has a lot of impact for them and that was something that was best done on Switch 2.”
Donkey Kong Bananza is coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17.
