Donkey Kong Bananza launches next week, and we only just learned who the developers are behind Donkey Kong’s big, new 3D adventure. It’s the same team that made Super Mario Odyssey, which a number of savvy fans picked up on based on various UI and other context clues from the trailers.
But now that we know who the creators are, it’s time to bombard them with a banana horde’s worth of questions.
I spoke with Kenta Motokura, producer on Donkey Kong Bananza, and Kazuya Takahashi, director. You might recognize Motokura’s name as the director of Super Mario Odyssey, and he’s also been a part of a number of other Nintendo games since he joined the company as a 3D character artist in the GameCube era, working on the likes of Super Mario Sunshine, Pikmin, and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, as well as Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Land, and Super Mario 3D World on Wii U. As for Takahashi, he’s newer to Nintendo, only arriving at the company in 2020, but has a background in open world game design that he says gives him some “interesting” carryover from past experiences into Bananza.
We’ve covered some of the highlights from this interview elsewhere, such as how the game was conceived, where it lands in relation to other Donkey Kong games, and why it’s a Nintendo Switch 2 title. But there are plenty of other golden nuggets (or bananas) in the full interview, which we’ve published below.
Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
IGN: Can you both tell me about the conception of Donkey Kong Bananza? What idea or mechanic or theme was at the core of this game's development when it was first started?
Motokura: Well, I would say the very original impetus for the development of Donkey Kong Bananza was when my boss, Mr. Koizumi, approached our team and asked us to consider working on a 3D Donkey Kong game. And that's when we realized we really needed to know more about Donkey Kong, so we went and spoke to Mr. Miyamoto, the original creator of the character. And Mr. Miyamoto has experienced not only working on the Donkey Kong games that he was directly responsible for, but also worked alongside Rare on the Donkey Kong games that they created. And for him, 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.
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. Around the same time, we had a programmer who was experimenting with voxel technology. We actually had used this voxel technology in some areas of Super Mario Odyssey previously where for example, you could dig your way through cheese in the Luncheon Kingdom or you could plow through snow in the Snow Kingdom. So this programmer was engaging in various technical experiments where you might even throw voxels or make a hole having done so.
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. Sorry that answer went a little long, but that's how we went from the opportunity to work on this project initially all the way through to developing the concept that carried us through to the end.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first time a Donkey Kong game has been made in-house at Nintendo in, I think, 20 years. I was wondering if you knew why the decision was made to develop a new Donkey Kong game internally instead of having someone like Retro Studios make it?
Motokura: So 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. But of course, that's just my best guess. You'd really have to ask Mr. Koizumi for the real answer.
What sorts of things inspired you all while you were working on Donkey Kong Bananza? I know I've seen a lot of people remarking that someone on the team maybe liked Wreck-It Ralph a lot.
Motokura: No, I wouldn't say that we drew inspiration from any one particular source like you're describing, but rather because Donkey Kong has such a long history, we had a lot of different Donkey Kong titles to look at and consider places that we could receive inspiration. So when you mentioned in particular the comments on social media about Wreck-It Ralph, was it some similarity of Pauline to one of the characters in that movie?
Yes, it's Pauline riding on the back of Donkey Kong who's big and strong and Pauline's kind of a small, younger character. In Wreck-It Ralph, you have Vanellope riding on the back of this big strong fellow who can smash through things.
Motokura: Yes, as it turns out, from a very early stage in development on Donkey Kong Bananza, the team was discussing what kind of character would be best to accompany Donkey Kong on his travels. And as early as that stage, I do recall that someone had suggested Pauline might be a good choice, but Pauline was not implemented directly into GameSpec at that time. I think the moment we actually realized we would go in that direction came about as a result of an artist who created some concept art of the zebra transformation. We saw that image and thought it was really fun, so we immediately prototyped it to try it out in the game. And when our composer saw that, they decided to create specific music just for that transformation.
And the music for it was so good, we thought we could expand on this and turn it into a song and maybe Pauline would be a good choice to sing that song. And so we then asked the composer to create songs for each of the transformations and I think that's what really cemented Pauline's place. I think a lot of ideas really fell into place after we had decided on Pauline as the accompanying character, so I'll let Mr. Takahashi describe those.
Takahashi: I think one of the things that really works very well for us in choosing Pauline is that she's human so she speaks in a language that the player will understand. And our setting is a strange underground world where you're interacting with animals and even rocks that speak in some cases, so it's a lot to take in. I think it's really good for the player to have another human that they can see on-screen who is reacting to these strange things, noticing stuff, pointing them out, even giving hints. And in a game where you take destruction as its core gameplay, there's a lot of objects that are hidden waiting to be discovered. So it's really helpful to have information coming to the player as audio cues so it's not getting in the way of visual information on screen.
And we also wanted to emphasize the power of Pauline's song in this game. And so she has the ability to make music that shows the route the player could follow or even opens up new routes to go see. And we have a co-op play that allows a second player to control Pauline's vocal blasts that can interact with both the terrain and with enemies. Sorry, that was a rather long answer, but I really do think that a lot of ideas came out from this choice of Pauline as an accompanying character. So looking back, I think it was a choice we're all very happy with.
I think a lot of people were surprised when you confirmed a specific age for Pauline, that she's 13. Why did you specify her age and why is she young in this game?
Takahashi: Well 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. 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. So 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.
Motokura: 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.
Takahashi: 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.
Can you confirm Donkey Kong's age?
Motokura: I think that's another one that maybe is good fodder for player theories.
Seeing a young Pauline and knowing that you all worked on Super Mario Odyssey, I start to think story-wise, this is maybe a Super Mario Odyssey prequel. Is there an official Donkey Kong timeline? Is there a canon timeline that explains where all the Donkey Kong games go?
Takahashi: 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.
When you were creating Donkey Kong Bananza, at what point in development did you learn that Donkey Kong was going to be receiving a visual redesign?
Motokura: So we're always thinking about what sort of in-game expression of the character would be appropriate. You want to make sure that you have a character that can be very expressive, very emotive. And so from the very beginning of the project we were considering over the long history of Donkey Kong, what elements could we pull into in terms of creating this appearance that would be fun for fans. And as a result, we spent a lot of time thinking about distinctive visual features of Donkey Kong as a character among the developers. Even going all the way back to Mr. Miyamoto's original designs. We found a lot of expressive features in that character design as well. But also, in games like the Country series, you see him adventuring in a jungle where he has more of a cool and wild side. And so we wanted to pull together a lot of these different elements of the character over its long history, to come together for the design of Donkey Kong Bananza.
I think there's a perception that the new design of Donkey Kong exists because of the movie. Did it originally come from you all and then was reflected in the movie and Mario Kart World and everywhere else? Is that right?
Motokura: 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.
[Author's note: Following the interview and prior to publication, Nintendo PR reached out to offer the following additional context to Motokura's response: "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."]
I know a lot of people identified very quickly that your team, the Super Mario Odyssey team, was behind Donkey Kong Bananza because of certain elements like the menus and the open world design. What do you feel distinguishes Donkey Kong Bananza the most from Super Mario Odyssey?
Motokura: I think one of the biggest differences is that in the case of Donkey Kong Bananza, the entire world is made up of this voxel technology. And the reason for that is we wanted to create an arena that would make the best use of Donkey Kong's physical strength as a character. So I think for me, that's the biggest difference.
Takahashi: And I think you can see this come across in the level design where we had to consider the importance of the continuity of destruction. And on one level, similar to Super Mario Odyssey, each level has to be fun just if you're playing through it the normal way without doing a lot of destruction. But the makeup of this game also allows for the kind of destruction that keeps connecting to new discoveries. If you see something in front of you and you pick it up and you throw it and it brings down a wall and there's something interesting behind it, but then you also start to destroy the wall in that back area and it leads to another new item or area. That's what we mean by the continuity of destruction.
Also, you may even encounter a Banandium Gem, which is different from the Power Moons in Super Mario Odyssey. In Donkey Kong Bananza, Donkey Kong actually eats the Banandium and gets a skill point that he can use to power up his skills. So you also might have different playstyles where experienced gamers are using these skill points to enhance or embellish their skills, whereas relatively new players or less experienced, might want to add to their life bar, for example, for survivability. We also have a gameplay cycle that I think differs from Super Mario Odyssey in that you can also go collect a lot of gold through your various explorations and use these to buy things which then allows you to experience different things in the game, creating a virtuous cycle that is different from what you would see in Super Mario Odyssey.
You mentioned the Banandium Gems. Are Banandium Gems bananas or are they rocks?
Takahashi: So yeah, what we're talking about is a material that only exists in the Donkey Kong Bananza universe, which we refer to as Banandium. And so that material makes up a lot of what you're encountering, whether it's a Banandium Gem or a Banandium Chip for example. And so when Donkey Kong engages in a Bananza transformation, he uses Bananergy. I know it may sound kind of silly to be explaining all of this in such a serious voice as we're talking about Banandium, but that's the setting that we've created for the game and that's what powers his transformations. But you'll also find that Banandium as a material has a deep connection to some story elements that I hope you'll enjoy.
I'm going to imagine that Donkey Kong is eating banana-flavored rocks.
Takahashi: Yeah, that sounds pretty good actually.
Why was this game best suited to release on Nintendo Switch 2 as opposed to Nintendo Switch or both?
Motokura: So this game originally began its development cycle on Nintendo Switch 1 and at the time, we were still using voxel technology and thinking of lots of different ideas for applications. But when we learned about the Switch 2 development, we realized that the best implementation of these ideas and technology would be on Nintendo Switch 2.
Takahashi: And when I was previously talking about the importance of the continuity of destruction, that was something that we could expand on and have a longer continuous play experience with that kind of concept on Nintendo Switch 2. So this allowed us to engage in creating really extremely rich variety of materials and very large scale changes in the environment on that new hardware. 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. But it's not really even just the processing power of the Switch 2 that I think attracted us and gave us some interesting possibilities. There was also the device itself that offered things like mouse control, which you can use in co-op play for a second player to control Pauline's vocal blasts or DK Artist, a mode where you can sculpt a large set of voxels.
You mentioned earlier drawing inspiration from all the different Donkey Kong games there have been in the past. In what ways was it important for you to honor Donkey Kong's history and make reference to past games? And in what ways did you want to tread new ground with who Donkey Kong is in the future?
Motokura: I think that balance comes from us taking the core gameplay of destruction of voxel technology, but also thinking about past game elements and which will be the best match for this style of gameplay that we have now. We wanted to make sure that we were drawing elements from past titles that would be really fun for long-time fans of the series once they were implemented into Donkey Kong Bananza, especially considering the voxel destruction that makes up the core of our gameplay. But we didn't just want to rely on nostalgia alone, we wanted to make sure that these came together and blended into a new experience altogether.
Takahashi: So for example, we're bringing forward some familiar gameplay elements like barrel cannons and mine carts, but we're thinking about what is different and interesting about voxel technology that allows you to do something new that people haven't seen before. And that's also kind of thinking that we did in bringing forward animal companions like Rambi for example. But really, there's a lot of these kinds of elements for people to discover, so I hope you really enjoy finding all of those.
What am I not asking you about that you're really excited to talk about?
Motokura: So one thing that I do want to mention is that when we first considered making a new Donkey Kong game, we really wanted to think about how we would pull in lots of new players. So we have a lot of interesting gameplay elements here, but also we wanted to give people some flexibility in terms of choosing a difficulty level that they feel comfortable with. We wanted to find a way to please those fans of really hard stages in past Donkey Kong games, as well as welcome people who may be somewhat new to the genre of action games. And so as we said before, giving people the chances to make the decision about whether they want to raise different skills. For example, if it's someone who is experienced in action games, they may choose to enhance or embellish an exciting skill. Whereas if it's someone who's somewhat new to action games, they might want to raise their life for survivability.
Takahashi: And for those who have found Donkey Kong games in the past to be really difficult, we also want to mention assist mode, which allows you to adjust the difficulty as well. And if I were to bring up something that I just wanted to mention specifically in answer to your question, it would be talking about how many different prototype experiments we did testing out different kinds of voxel destruction. I'm really fond of the approaches that we found in terms of finding stages where you have to cool down lava using ice to proceed or find a way to negate the properties of a damaging material to move forward. And I think that's really created a lot of very interesting and unique gameplay that can only be found in Donkey Kong Bananza. I hope people have fun enjoying different types of new destructive gameplay.
Motokura: We also have a co-op play mode that allows for two players to play at the same time. And I think this is something that also allows for adjustment of difficulty as well. So we're hoping that people could either play with a friend or if you have a child that really likes Donkey Kong but maybe wouldn't be able to play out the game on their own. We hope this leads to some really good experiences.
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].
