Donkey Kong Bananza Was Initially Developed For The Nintendo Switch

There’s been a certain “theme” we keep hearing about the Nintendo Switch 2 and some of its big games that are coming out this year, and were available at launch. Specifically, we kept hearing from developers that the games were actually supposed to be made for the OG Switch and then had a transfer over to the Switch 2. Most times, it was because the teams wanted to “do something bigger,” and that meant that the new console would be a better place for it. Donkey Kong Bananza is coming out next week for the Switch 2, and its dev team admitted that they also initially thought it would be for the OG Switch.

In an interview with IGN, multiple members of the dev team spoke about what it took to make the game and how the process all started. One of whom was producer Kenta Motokura, who noted:

“So this game originally began its development cycle on Nintendo Switch 1 and at the time, we were still using voxel technology and thinking of lots of different ideas for applications. But when we learned about the Switch 2 development, we realized that the best implementation of these ideas and technology would be on Nintendo Switch 2.”

That is a recurring thread for many teams when it comes to making things for the OG Switch or the Nintendo Switch 2. The Switch 2, despite what some detractors will tell you, has some big upgrades on both the visual and processing department, allowing for more space to do things without harming the game’s running ability.

Kazuya Takahashi, who is the director of Donkey Kong Banaza, added to this thought by stating:

“I was previously talking about the importance of the continuity of destruction, which was something that we could expand on and have a longer continuous play experience with that kind of concept on Nintendo Switch 2. So this allowed us to engage in creating really extremely rich variety of materials and very large scale changes in the environment on that new hardware. And when destruction is your core gameplay, one really important moment that we wanted to preserve was when a player looks at a part of the terrain and thinks, can I break this? Because that creates a very important surprise that has a lot of impact for them, and that was something that was best done on Switch 2.”

The hype for the game is huge, and many can’t wait to grab it when it releases on July 17th, only on the Nintendo Switch 2.