Two months after announcing Donkey Kong Bananza, Nintendo has finally revealed the scope of the game’s ambition in its own dedicated Nintendo Direct. However, there are some strange hints of story that Nintendo revealed in the game that raises more questions than answers.
As reported by Nintendo Everything, it was confirmed that Pauline is the mysterious girl who was accidentally leaked in Donkey Kong Bananza art weeks ago. As we’ve seen, Pauline clings onto DK’s shoulder at his back, and she’s actually part of the gameplay.
There’s also hints of her story from the Direct that we do expect to to learn more about in the game itself. She originally appeared to DK as some mysterious Odd Rock, but she also apparently has some connection to the game’s antagonists, Void Co. Void Kong is shown telling Pauline that it was a mistake to try to escape them, as she seems to be connected to Void Co’s plans to reach the Planet Core.
But the most perplexing revelation about Pauline is, as it turns out, she’s thirteen years old. This revelation flies in the face of what we thought we knew about the character, because she has always appeared as an adult, dating back to when she was originally called Lady, and appeared as the damsel in Donkey Kong’s original game in 1981.
Now, we do know what you’re thinking; what if this game is set in the distant past? But that does not seem to make sense, because Dixie and Diddy Kong, and no less than Cranky Kong, are all also in the game. Hardcore Nintendo canon fans can’t say that the playable Donkey Kong is the original Kong, since the prevailing theory is that Cranky Kong was that original Kong.
But then, we may be thinking about this the wrong way. As Shigeru Miyamoto once said in an interview with GameInformer, Nintendo sees Mario characters as actors or family members who play different roles in different video games. That was how he justified Bowser playing tennis and kart racing with Mario and friends, and that may be the simple, reasonable explanation for why Nintendo now broke whatever semblance of canon Mario and Donkey Kong ever had.
Some fans do seem to be engaging on this in the same level Nintendo is on, as they are looking at this in terms of character dynamics and story beats. There’s already fanart comparing DK and preteen Pauline to Wreck-It-Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz, or Sully and Boo from Monsters, Inc. Suffice to say, beyond the graphics and gameplay mechanics, Nintendo has impressed fans with the hints at Donkey Kong Bananza’s story, and we’re all looking forward to learning where it takes us – canonically or not.
