Back in 1994, Rare reimagined Donkey Kong, transforming him from his 8-bit arcade origins into a pre-rendered 3D icon. This vision defined the character for nearly three decades, and now Donkey Kong is stepping back into the spotlight with his first original game in over a decade. Bananza isn’t just a return; it’s a reinvention – one of the most imaginative, playful, and technically ambitious titles the company has delivered since Breath of the Wild. From a game design perspective, Bananza pushes the 3D platforming genre into exciting new territory, but from a technical standpoint? It’s a showcase for Nintendo’s latest console.
But let’s not forget: early footage raised some concern. Performance didn’t appear to meet the high standards typically associated with a Nintendo first-party release with plenty of inconsistencies. So, the question is – has this been addressed in the final game? That’s what we’re here to find out – so today we’re diving deep into one of Nintendo’s most fascinating new games in years.
Conceptually, Bananza is a 3D platform game, much like the team’s Mario Odyssey before it, but the formula has been inverted, with players diving deeper into the core of the planet as you progress through all sorts of crazy worlds. What captivated me right away is the weird amalgamation of cuteness and darkness. The game has a unique tone to it that recalls 90s Nintendo, not to mention games like Oddworld – it’s just a bit weird around the edges in a way that made it compelling.
The game makes its most prevalent party trick known right away. During the intro sequence, the camera pans down below the rocky surface revealing a wall and a button prompt – as the wall crumbles, DK emerges, the game elegantly explaining to the player that, yes, you can smash up the environment. It’s the kind of feature players have dreamt about for years – one that games like Red Faction and its Geo-Mod tech first hinted at decades ago. The ability to truly shape the world through destruction: blowing holes in walls, altering terrain, and simulating, to some extent, the laws of physics. But Donkey Kong Bananza takes that concept even further – with an unprecedented volume of destructible surfaces baked directly into the core gameplay. And in many ways, this is what makes the game so fascinating… and, I’d imagine, so challenging to design.