Donkey Kong Bananzahas released to rave reviews, holding an average critic score on review aggregation siteOpenCritic. It’s another first-party success story for Nintendo, which has been consistently putting out high-quality games for years.
An interesting thing about the eponymous Donkey Kong is that he’s voiced by Kouji Takeda in the Japanese version of the game. ‘Voiced’ is a strong word in this case, as Donkey Kong’s vocabulary is limited to a series of grunts in Bananza.
The New Donkey Kong
The weird part is… Takeda voiced Donkey Kong in the Super Mario Bros. Movie as well (well spotted,IGN). As you probably know, the movie role is actually voiced. Takeda’s English-speaking counterpart is Seth Rogen. Takeda also “voices” Donkey Kong in Mario Kart: World, replacing Takashi Nagasako who had performed the role for over two decades.
Takeda has performed other roles in Nintendo games in the past, such as Daruk in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He also played the Prince of Oceana in Metaphor: ReFantazio and 1-0FF in Concord.
Nintendo’s new era has been accompanied by a lot of recasting, including that of Charles Martinet’s Mario and Samantha Kelly’s Peach. Donkey Kong Bananza has also recast the voice of Pauline, with Jenny Kidd taking over from Kate Higgins, who voiced the character in Super Mario Odyssey. In fairness, Pauline is much younger in Bananza than she is in Odyssey, so recasting is appropriate in this case.
Nintendo fans are currently agonising over the canon timeline of Bananza, considering Pauline is younger than she was during her first appearance in the original Donkey Kong. We also know the gamestake place after Donkey Kong Countrybecause of the presence of Diddy and Dixie Kong. However, as you can imagine, the timeline doesn’t add up neatly.
Our own editor-in-chief, Stacey Henley, called Donkey Kong Bananza “a fantastic platformer with a lot of ideas hidden inside of its barrels,” in her4/5 review.
Donkey Kong Bananza is currently available exclusively for the Nintendo Switch 2.
