A few weeks ago, Nintendo confirmed an unusual piece of lore: Pauline is 13-years-old in Donkey Kong Bananza.
This is an odd thing for Nintendo to have done. Historically, it doesn't include exact information about character ages in official communications. Heck, it won’t even say whether or not Waluigi is Wario’s brother, friend, rival, or enemy.
So when we spoke to the game’s producer Kenta Motokura and director Kazuya Takahashi, we had to ask. Why did Nintendo specify her age? And why is she so young in the game, when she’s clearly an adult in Super Mario Odyssey and other appearances?
We didn’t get a straight answer out of the pair, but Takahashi did explain a little bit about Pauline’s role in the game, and why she isn’t just a continuation of Pauline from Odyssey.
“One of the important roles that we knew we wanted this character to accomplish was in accompanying Donkey Kong on his travels and acting in some cases as a bit of a narrator,” Takahashi responded.
“And considering we would probably have both new players who are experiencing a Donkey Kong game for the first time, as well as people who are long-time fans of Donkey Kong, we had the opportunity to offer a character that was familiar to long-time players, but had a new appearance that might be interesting for new folks as well. And so we're always thinking about the setting of not just the world but also each character itself and how that's going to impact player enjoyment in the end.”
He ended on a bit of a tease: “Now as to why 13-year-old in particular was the choice, I think that's something that we want players to, in the course of enjoying the game, start to puzzle out, think for themselves.”
This was curious, so I asked a few more questions, which proved not much more enlightening unfortunately. I asked if the team would confirm Donkey Kong’s age, to which Motokura said, “I think that's another one that maybe is good fodder for player theories.”
Okay, fine, it was admittedly a bit of a joke question. But here’s a real one: does this mean there’s an official Donkey Kong series canon timeline? Is this a Super Mario Odyssey prequel?
“Certainly because a lot of team members also worked on Super Mario Odyssey, there are some similarities in terms of how they think about the setting of the characters for both games, but it's something we really can't explain all of for now because we need to leave something for people to consider as they're playing the game,” Takahashi cryptically replied.
So it sounds like Pauline’s age is story-relevant, which means Nintendo’s keeping quiet and letting the game tell the story. We’ll just have to wait and find out next week.
We spoke to Motokura and Takahashi about a number of topics related to Bananza, including how the game was first conceived and the necessity of releasing on the Nintendo Switch 2. You can read our entire interview in full right here, and check out our hands-on preview of the game here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
