Donkey Kong Bananza (2025)

Donkey Kong, one of Nintendo’s oldest mascots has been treated like a second class citizen for quite a while. Even though the Donkey Kong Country games on the SNES are still touted as a top tier platformer, and gold standard, the series keeps getting put on the backburner. It’s been 11 years since the last Donkey Kong game and even that was more a return to the side scrolling platformer role. It’s been an even longer 26 years since Donkey Kong made his debut in 3D with Rare’s Donkey Kong 64.

When the Switch 2 launched just a couple months ago, the only real big, first party game was Mario Kart World, but it was much more of a multiplayer/party game. Not one you’d sit around for hours on end for an entire month diving deep into. It left an odd void in Nintendo’s usually decent launch lineup. I was scrolling through the eShop when I came across the Donkey Kong Bananza page and while I very rarely view trailers, I was jonesing so bad for anything for my new console, I gave it a look. I was immediately blown away by how this new game showcasing a mostly forgotten character was smashing his way though terrain and amassing a huge hoard of gold and bananas.

I was already sold on a game that looks like it took a huge page out of Mario’s playbook and substituted the main character but left everything else intact. Over the course of the next week as I brought it up on the podcast and streams, I would always talk about how the new Donkey Kong game looked like a 3D Mario game with no Mario, and that wasn’t a bad thing. I ended up spending the hard to swallow now default $70 price for a digital game, I went into the game with fairly lofty expectations, and luckily I was not let down.

Donkey Kong Bananza follows Donkey Kong, or DK as his name has been shortened to thanks to Donkey Kong 64 and the internet’s fascination with the DK Rap over the years, as he apparently works in at a gold mining camp on Ingot Isle digging out chunks of dirt and rocks to find Banandiaum, a valuable and rare gem. Another company called VoidCo, which is headed up by the infamous Void Kong steals the gems causing a massive sinkhole and plummets Donkey Kong and everyone else down deep into the subterranean layers of the planet. He stumbles along an odd shaped rock which houses a little girl named Pauline and they venture forth to not only escape the underground, but take back the Banandium Gems from Void and his cohorts.

That’s the long and short of the game and the main part is a massively huge semi-open world that allows travel between all the different subterranean layers. Donkey Kong and Pauline are attached throughout the entire game, not unlike Banjo and Kazooie, bringing a small piece of Nintendo and Rare’s history as a sort of reference. Donkey Kong provides the traversal and smashing abilities and Pauline brings her not trademark singing to the table, offering a weirdly interesting mesh of destruction and beauty. Mostly due to the emphasis on music, Pauline is there in cutscenes to provide a bit of childlike levity and comedic relief to the situations, but it never gets too dark or terrifying. Make no mistake this is a Nintendo game aimed at the broadest demographic available.

The levels are insanely bright and colorful, giving that child-like charm Nintendo strives for. However the stand outs are the Bananza transformations, which I have to be honest are such a weird and odd introduction. Each level is a different theme/setting (I guess most people just call them Biomes at this point) and they all are inhabited by a certain type of animal (the Zebras live in the Snow/Ice level, the Elephants live in the Lava level) and at the center is the community Elder, a massive old frail animal… who always wants to be a DJ. Yeah, it’s kinda a weird anachronistic ambition that doesn’t fit well and breaks the immersion.

This is where you start seeing some of the seams fall apart. Like in typical Nintendo fashion, they can’t help themselves stick rigidly to their formulas. Each elder is the exact same, only a different animal, each one you have to retrieve broken pieces of the record and once put together, each one puts on a DJ set where you transform into their animal type. Then the same type of cutscene plays out that gives you a tutorial on how to use the special moveset. Maybe it’s just because I’m nearly 40 years old and have seen this for nearly 40 years from Nintendo, but it becomes very boring after the first time. Luckily, this is just part of the main story, but the entire outside rest of the game feels very different and fun.

For most of the game, once Donkey Kong gets dropped into the next subterranean level, there is freedom to go anywhere and do anything. I ended up spending most of my streams just wandering around the levels exploring. I would always promise to chat at the start to “keep to the main story and plow through the game” only to end up still on the same level an hour and a half later. And that’s the beauty of this game. The fantastic terrain deformation allows Donkey Kong to smash sideways and slantways and longways and backways and squareways and frontways and any other ways you can think of! (Yes that was a Willy Wonka Wonkavator reference)

Being able to smash nearly everything in the game gives so much creativity to approach the objectives of each Banandium puzzle. Some are just littered through the level, being able to pick it up right away, but some are within portals that transport Donkey Kong and Pauline into a subspace pocket dimension. Sometimes is a full blown timed puzzle or enemy combat arena, others it's an open ended section to get from Point A to Point B, picking up Banandium Gems that are hidden throughout the area. It breathes so much life into the game, and also harkens back to the FLUDD-less levels within Super Mario Sunshine as well.

Each layer also has its own collectible fossils that can be exchanged for new items and cosmetic enhancements, and this is another tweak the team did from their previous game, Super Mario Odyssey. In Odyssey, all the collecting was just for cosmetic items that didn’t have any bearing on the gameplay itself, it offered nothing other than “here is Mario in a swimsuit, or Samurai outfit… how wacky right?!”. But here in Bananza, Donkey Kong and Pauline’s collecting actually allow for buffs to their character. Purchasing new britches for Donkey Kong (a word that needs to come back into our everyday lexicon) can help Donkey Kong swim 20% faster, or wearing a new tie can up the percentage of finding a hidden chest with gold inside.

Even the intractable characters are much more vibrant and enjoyable to talk to, as they offer helpful tips to find new Banandium Gems or even offer up a safe spot to heal or even change… along with a small record player that can swap out the music from collected records. And yes, you can listen to David Wise’s brilliant SNES DKC arrangements or Grant Kirkhope’s DK Rap. With 110 different music discs as they are called in the game, there is plenty to listen to.

One of the most fun parts of the entire game, besides just smashing the ever loving crap out of everything in the level, is all the small nods to the previous Donkey Kong games. In fact, the cameos from Cranky, Diddy and Dixie Kong and even Rambi brought a smile to my face, as it never felt forced or like it was trying too hard to incorporate too many references to the older games in the series. Instead it blends everything perfectly into its own unique and enjoyable experience.

Donkey Kong Bananza sets off to bring about a new reinvigorated interest in Donkey Kong and it does just that. Pauline’s time jump to before she was a famous singer/mayor of New Donk City is interesting, and provides a much deeper and storied lore for those who want more than surface level storytelling that Nintendo usually provides.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Donkey Kong Bananza as it gave me so much variety and expanded the game out way more than I initially thought it was going to be. The Banandium Gem puzzle portals were my favorite parts of the game, but when I tired of them, I’d bounce into the open world section to explore and dive into the terraforming destruction. Once I had my fill, I’d end up jumping into the main storyline quests and move down to the next layer and setting. Luckily the game allows the “Teeleportation” and use of a sandworm/fish hybrid to transverse between the subterranean levels easily. And with the addition of an objectives menu and very robust map, it gives every opportunity to find everything in the game.

With a game that blends old-school and modern game designs and ideas, it melds them together nearly perfectly. It is a shame that with such demanding in game mechanics the Switch 2 buckles pretty hard under the pressure, and frame drops are common, but infrequent unless in really tight and chaotic sections. It’s the most baffling decision that this wasn’t the actual launch title to the system. I agree that Mario Kart World should have been the pack-in/bundled game, but Donkey Kong provides so many hours of single player fun, it really is the true launch title for the Switch 2, and Donkey Kong shows why he is such a powerhouse, and the real King.