Mario may be the most important platformer in Nintendo’s gameography, but depending on your generation (mine, specifically), Donkey Kong represents a very, very close second. Maybe even a first, depending on my mood that day. Rare’s Donkey Kong Country games are formative video game experiences for me, and Retro’s Returns and Tropical Freeze games are some of the best 2D platformers ever made. Donkey Kong has, however, often been a franchise farmed out to talented developers outside of Nintendo. For Nintendo’s internal team to put its full weight behind the iconic leaping ape has been a surprise, but an absolutely welcome one after seeing the Bananza experience to its conclusion.
Donkey Kong Bananza is undeniably a platformer, but its core destruction mechanic makes it feel like something different, set inside a framework that Nintendo popularized and nearly perfected. The plot follows Donkey Kong and his accidental adoption of a young Pauline (the first damsel-in-distress from the original 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game) as they make their way deeper underground to the wish-granting core to get her home.
I was, perhaps embarrassingly, moved by the story – an element of its video games Nintendo has never prioritized. I came to care about Pauline as quickly as Donkey Kong and admired watching her confidence grow over the course of the game. I also looked forward to her conversations every time I rested at a getaway and enjoyed learning about her from the small snippets she offered about herself. Sometimes young sidekicks can be annoying, but Pauline is always charming and often helpful.
Jumping ability and accuracy are still essential to be successful in Bananza, but the star of the show is the destruction. With shockingly few asterisks, every environment can be destroyed and remolded by Donkey Kong’s giant fists. The effect is impressive on multiple fronts. It creates a sense of wild chaos that is fun to engage with. It also often lets you bypass elements of the environment and find all kinds of unexpected secrets. Ripping a giant piece of granite out of the ground and using it to smash a bad guy and expose its golden, smashable skeleton is the kind of thing video games were invented for.
Smashing everything, however, becomes exhausting at a certain point. Destruction never fully becomes stale, but I did hit a point where I was eager to not hammer away at the punch button. And thankfully, Bananza recognizes this. Puzzle areas that feel a little bit like Shrines from the recent Zelda games appear throughout every level. They offer a fun reprieve from the constant destruction and let the developers stretch their brilliant design muscles in ways I was eager to chase.
I found the game’s structure, making your way ever deeper underground, incredibly charming. Something about diving into each sinkhole and falling miles to the next area makes everything feel strange and even a little claustrophobic in a way I embraced. The interconnected sense of place made me constantly want to see what was next and who and what I would discover in the next layer. And I was especially not disappointed during the final few layers.
While it never fully moves away from destruction, later parts of Bananza focus a bit more on creation and forcing Donkey Kong to think outside of his fists in ways I appreciated. In fact, the ending and final levels leading up to it represent my favorite parts of the game. Bananza’s closing hours are nearly as strong as Donkey’s arms, and definitely moved me from strong crush to full-on love affair. The levels get stranger and more interesting as you make your way deeper underground, and I am eager to return to them and find each and every banana buried under its many layers.
Donkey Kong Bananza is the Switch 2’s first exclusive that feels truly and wholly new. This is an entirely unique adventure with familiar characters and new mechanics that I suspect would not have been possible on the original Switch. Donkey Kong and Pauline’s adventure is a showpiece for Nintendo’s new console, and it meets the incredibly high standard the developer has been setting for itself since the ‘80s.
