Donkey Kong’s design has received its biggest overhaul in 30 years forDonkey Kong Bananza. Not only the way the iconic monkey mascot looks, but DK has also been given more than just a tie to wear. Turns out there’s a very good reason for that, and it’s rooted in what Donkey Kong looks like from behind in 3D.
While there has been a 3D Donkey Kong game before -Donkey Kong 64- pretty much every DK game has been in two dimensions. Much likeKirby, whoNintendo once believed to be too round to have a 3D game of his own, Donkey Kong has remained 2D for the majority of his legendary run. As revealed duringNintendo’s latest volume of Ask The Developer, one of the first things the Bananza team felt compelled to do was cover 3D DK up a little.
Donkey Kong is wearing more clothes than usual in Bananza
A decision Nintendo made early on to save us from a “monstrous visual”
Since we’ll be looking at Donkey Kong from behind for the majority of Bananza, how the protagonist appears from that perspective, particularly when he’s moving, was one of the first things the dev team needed to consider about the character’s design. Turns out they quickly established that DK’s brown fur made him look “monstrous” when playing Bananza in third person.
“The back view of Donkey Kong just looks like a mass of brown fur, which would make for a monotonous visual if we simply rendered him in 3D. That inspired us to make some creative adjustments to his outfit, such as giving him britches and suspenders,” Bananza producer Kenta Motokura explained. They also made Donkey Kong’s hair “rich and thick” which is why he looks a lot fluffier in Bananza.
There is still an option in Bananza to strip Donkey Kong back down to just his tie that seemingly needs to be unlocked. If you want that “monstrous visual”, that’s on you.
Motokura also revealed that, contrary to popular belief, the Donkey Kong we saw inThe Super Mario Bros. Moviewas based on the design being used for Bananza and not the other way around. Since the film was released before we even knew Bananza existed, it was assumed that it was the movie’s design that inspired the change in the games. Turns out that’s not the case at all.
Now we know more about how long Nintendo has been working on Bananza; that timeline,unlike the in-game one, makes a lot of sense. The same Ask The Developer confirms thatNintendo decided to stop developing Bananza for the original Switch and make it a Switch 2 exclusivein 2021. It evenshared screenshots showing what an OG Switch version of the new DK game would have looked like.
