Donkey Kong Bananza lit up the Switch 2 sales charts last year, and Nintendo’s modern classic is still being celebrated. Folks are bound to have their quibbles, and truly, there’s no such thing as a universally beloved video game. But, by and large, it’s near enough to it. Except, perhaps, for that Elephant Bananza transformation. Which is simultaneously excellent and kind of too ridiculous for the game’s own good, maybe.
Reflecting on Bananza on the whole, producer Kenta Motokura and lead programmer Tatsuya Kurihara have plenty of nifty words to say. The latter spared the chance, however, to look back on the elephant in the room (sorry) with a mixture of enthusiasm and… something like lamentation?
Still Fun, Though
Let’s first set the tempo: this wasn’t the voice of a crestfallen developer who believes himself to have committed some cardinal sin. In an interview with Game Informer, Tatsuya Kurihara blended hindsight’s acceptance with the customary Nintendo-esque good cheer of somebody who’s just glad he helped make something fun.
The Bananza Transformations go together with the core destruction, often taking it to new levels – even beyond what Donkey Kong can accomplish in his normal form. How did you go about prototyping and making it so they were balanced and not causing too much destruction? Or was it more of “the crazier, the better”? -Game Informer
I think we can agree the most destructive transformation is the Elephant Bananza, and honestly speaking, it probably went too far. But at the same time, it’s fun, it feels good. And that’s what matters most. -Kurihara
It’s important to include the interviewer’s own question up there (and this is a reminder to go read the full article; there’s lots of fresh insight) because that last bit seems to pull at Kurihara’s analysis meaningfully. Indeed, “the crazier the better” is the end result, despite the programmer’s potential vexation that the elephant transformation is overpowered. It really does, quite simply, suck up whole swathes of every stage. When you consider that Bananza’s gameplay is built upon a core pillar that everything can be destroyed… you’re bringing a tornado to a hoover fight, if you take my meaning.
And, if you happen to be wondering whether Super Mario Bros. Wonder coming out not too long before Donkey Kong Bananza, whilst also featuring an elephant power-up, was more than a coincidence… well, no. It wasn’t. This was not some slightly off-calendar effort at a Year of the Elephant, sorry. Kenta Motokura confirms it was an accident, emphasizing the big differences in how the gameplay is affected by the transformation. “However, if they were vacuuming out blocks in Super Mario Bros. Wonder,” he grants, “I would have been a little bit worried!”
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