Nintendois a more mysterious company than most. There’s little transparency in which developers are making which games, as the conglomerate prefers instead to keep a united front, putting the Nintendo label on anything developed by any of their internal teams.
It’s still possible to figure out which team made which game; Nintendo just isn’t in your face about it. We know The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 3 and more were made by Nintendo’s largest internal team, Entertainment Planning & Development (EPD).
We don’t currently know who developedDonkey Kong Bananza, Nintendo’s second brand-new release for the Nintendo Switch 2 (if you don’t count Welcome Tour). There’s a suspicion among observers that EPD is responsible for Donkey Kong Bananza, an assumption people have formed based on the quality of the trailers we’ve seen thus far.
The Next 3D Mario Could Be Years Away
Although some are happy about EPD potentially being behind Bananza, others are unhappy because it means Nintendo’s “A Team” was creating Donkey Kong Bananza instead of the next 3D Mario platformer, meaning the latter may be a few years from release, as a result.
This logic doesn’t really hold — we should want Donkey Kong Bananza to be the best game it can be, rather than bemoaning that Mario isn’t the star. However, some people really enjoy the cast of characters in Mario, and are disappointed that Donkey Kong may have centre stage for the foreseeable future.
Kit Ellis, Nintendo of America’s former director of social media marketing, and Krysta Yang, former senior manager of creator relations at Nintendo, recently speculated on the development of Donkey Kong Bananza.
Ellis believes EPD is most likely behind Donkey Kong Bananza, unless “they’ve got some new arrangement where somebody else is involved in one way or another.” He then adds that if EPD is indeed responsible, “we might just be waiting for a good long time before we get the next 3D Mario game.”
“That team is incredible, nobody’s disputing the quality, [but] they are not fast, they are not prolific, they are not pumping out games,” Ellis continues.
Yang adds that the next 3D Mario game could be four or five years away as a result, making it a late-generation game in the cycle of the Switch 2. She also speculates that Nintendo hasn’t confirmed who developed the game for fear of angering people desperate for the next 3D Mario game.
A leaker revealed in 2021 that a Donkey Kong game was in development by a team spun off from EPD, augmented by developers from other teams. If this is true, and the game was Bananza, then there may be hope yet for those waiting for the next 3D Mario (thanks,NintendoLife).
We likely won’t know who is responsible for Donkey Kong Bananza until closer to release. Donkey Kong Bananza releases for the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17.
