Donkey Kong Bananzais the second major first-party release for the Nintendo Switch 2, following Mario Kart World, which was bundled with the console at release.
We know that Mario Kart World wasoriginally going to be released for the Switch, but the team behind the project were unhappy with the technical compromises they were making, and were happy to switch to developing the game for the Switch 2 mid-development cycle.
As it turns out, a similar situation occurred during the development of Donkey Kong Bananza, which we now know was developed by Nintendo EPD, the team behind Super Mario Odyssey.
The Donkey Kong Bananza Team Was Drawn To The Switch 2
In an interview withIGN, Kenta Motokura and Kazuya Takahashi, respectively producer and director of Donkey Kong Bananza, revealed that the upcoming game was originally in development for the Switch 2’s predecessor.
“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,” Motokura explained. “But when we learned about the Switch 2 development, we realised that the best implementation of these ideas and technology would be on Nintendo Switch 2.”
Takahashi then explained that the processing power of the Switch 2 was a big boon for the destructive environments the team wanted to implement into Bananza, but there were other features of the console to consider when the team decided to make the switch (hah).
“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,” Takahasi said.
Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, Pokémon Legends Z-A, and Metroid 4 were all in development for the original Switch. It’s unlikely we’ll see many games that were conceived as exclusive Switch 2 releases until the middle of the console’s life cycle.
