Today’s Nintendo Direct for Donkey Kong Bananza unleashed a ton of information about the game that fills in some of the gaps from its reveal. We now know that Pauline is DK’s sidekick, most of the Kong family is back, and even Rambi will make an appearance. More important to this particular article, however, is that Bananza will have a co-op mode similar to Super Mario Odyssey in that player two will control Pauline and aide player one by chucking objects at foes. If that wasn’t enough, the feature is not only fully compatible with GameShare (online and offline), but will work with the original Switch console.
GameShare is one of the new features of the Nintendo Switch 2 that functions pretty similarly to DS Download Play. For those unfamiliar, Download Play was a way for DS owners to play games with their friends that they didn’t own by “downloading” a temporary copy to get in on the action. Famously, Mario Kart DS supported Download Play, and many 3DS titles included the functionality for similar purposes (Tri Force Heroes is a great example). GameShare works similarly to that, allowing local players across Switch 1 and 2 systems to play games with their friends from a single copy of the game.
In Donkey Kong Bananza, you can GameShare to both local players and online friends through GameChat. What’s surprising, though, is that the game will work with the original Switch console via GameShare. Although developers always advertised this feature, it’s surprising that a major Switch 2 title receives this support so early in the console’s lifecycle. Obviously, this reveals that GameShare will work by wirelessly streaming the game instead of streaming a copy that is temporarily downloaded to the device. The Switch 1 would not be able to handle DK Bananza, which looks more involved than even something like Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
At any rate, if you have a friend with an original Switch who wants to play Donkey Kong Bananza with you, you won’t need to make them wait.
More Donkey Kong Bananza
Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky Kong are all back in Donkey Kong Bananza
Leave a Comment
Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
