As we get closer to the June 17 release date for Donkey Kong Bananza, Nintendo has been revealing more details about the title as we go along, like the fact that it was developed by the team behind Super Mario Odyssey. Just a few days after having confirmed this, producer Kenta Motokura has now confirmed that Bananza was essentially made because the Super Mario Odyssey team was asked to make a 3D Donkey Kong game.
In an interview with IGN, Motokura revealed that Nintendo executive Yoshiaki Koizumi approached the team with the idea for a Donkey Kong game that would be 3D. For context, since 2004’s Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, the Donkey Kong franchise has largely featured 2D side-scrolling platformers. These games have, however, made use of 3D graphics.
“Because Nintendo does have a lot of characters to choose from, we’re always considering what would be good timing to create a new game with a certain character to most pleased customers,” said Motokura. “But of course, that’s just my best guess. You’d really have to ask Mr. Koizumi for the real answer.”
After getting an idea of what their next project would be, Motokura explained that the team then went to Shigeru Miyamoto – the creator of Donkey Kong – to pitch some ideas of their own. It was during this time that the team came up with the idea of having unique actions available only to Donkey Kong because, as a character, he is physically stronger than Mario would be.
“For [Miyamoto], a lot of things that came up were the unique actions that a really strong character like Donkey Kong can engage in, things like the hand slap or blowing his breath,” he continued.
“And I also spoke to Mr. Koizumi who had served as the director on Jungle Beat. And for him, one thing that was a really important distinguishing characteristic from a character like, say, Mario, is that Donkey Kong has these longer, stronger arms. So we took all of these distinctive features of Donkey Kong as a character and tried to think about how we could bring them to play in a new game.”
Motokura also described how all of these ideas started really coming together when a member of the development team was playing around with voxel-based technology, which could potentially allow players to have a greater effect on the in-game world. For context, voxels – basically 3D pixels – are often used in games where environmental destruction or modification is a big part of gameplay. Some examples of this include Minecraft or Teardown.
This voxel technology could also be seen in Super Mario Odyssey in its Luncheon Kingdom level where players can dig through some of the cheese to get through obstacles.
“When we realized the compatibility of Donkey Kong’s distinctive characteristics, being strong and having these large long arms, and the possibility of voxel technology, we saw that this was a good match that led us to the idea of pursuing destruction as core gameplay in this title,” said Motokura.
Donkey Kong Bananza is coming exclusively to the Nintendo Switch 2. For more details, check out details about its co-op mode, as well as its Challenge Course ruins.