Nintendo Details Why Donkey Kong Bananza Development Jumped From Switch To Switch 2

Donkey Kong Bananza, the next Switch 2 exclusive from Nintendo, launches in just two days on Thursday, July 17, and ahead of its release, Nintendo has released a three-part interview series with the game’s leads. That’s how we learned you can skip locations and parts of the story in the game, and why Donkey Kong Bananza’s destruction gameplay can be traced back to a Goomba with arms. It’s also where we learned more about Nintendo’s transition from developing Donkey Kong Bananza on Switch to Switch 2. 

When asked by the interviewer if Donkey Kong Bananza was planned as a Switch 2 game from the jump, producer Kenta Motokura explained that it began life as a Switch title, but was moved to Switch 2 around 2021 due to challenges the team (which also developed Super Mario Odyssey) ran into. Art director Daisuke Watanabe chimed in to add, “We first looked into how we could upgrade what we’d originally built for Switch to take advantage of Switch 2. 

“One of the most obvious improvements was that we could place far more objects in the environment than before. Being able to place more objects in the terrain didn’t just enhance the game’s visual richness. More importantly, it increased the amount of things players could destroy, which amplified the exhilaration of being able to demolish anything and everything. That went hand in hand with the game’s core concept of destruction. It convinced us that this game would be even more fun if we developed it for Switch 2.” 

One of the game directors Wataru Tanaka followed Watanabe up, explaining that from a programmer’s perspective, the voxel technology powering the destructible environments in Donkey Kong Bananza uses a lot of system memory, leading to challenges on Switch. With the game being in 3D, Tanaka said dimensions of textures and materials grow by up to eight times, compared to 2D pixels. “So doubling all three dimensions [width, height, and depth in voxels compared to width and height in pixels] gives you 2 x 2 x 2, or eight times the data,” he said. “It may sound simple to just ‘double something,’ but the reality is that memory usage, voxel density, and all kinds of processes end up gobbling up eight times the resources. It was clear that the memory available on Switch would struggle to handle that load, and we felt that manifesting the huge volume of terrain that we did in this game might have been unachievable on that platform.” 

With the move to Switch 2, Tanaka said the team gained not only more memory to work with, but great processing capacity, too, giving the team more freedom to incorporate gameplay ideas it previously abandoned because they were too demanding. He also said the Switch 2 could not only handle the heavy processing requirements, but do so at 60 FPS. “Things we’d given up on, like explosions flinging large objects or causing them to collapse, were now possible,” Tanaka added. “Designers could also place as many objects as they wanted. There were so many moments when we thought to ourselves, ‘Now we can really do this.'”

Watanabe finished answering this question, explaining, “Not only did Switch 2 enable the game to run well, it unlocked the game’s full potential –  no, it made the game possible.” 

Donkey Kong Bananza launches on Switch 2 this Thursday, July 17. 

In the meantime, read Game Informer’s hands-on preview impressions after two hours with the game, and then check out this Donkey Kong Bananza New Gameplay Today. After that, check out the Donkey Kong Bananza amiibo and then catch up on everything we learned about the game during the Donkey Kong Bananza Direct last month.

Are you picking up Donkey Kong Bananza this week? Let us know in the comments below!