Considering how long the Nintendo Switch 1 generation lasted, it should be no surprise to learn that the soon to be released Donkey Kong Bananza originally started off as an original Switch game. In a new interview with IGN, DKB producer Kenta Motokura confirmed as much and gave some insight into why the developers decided to shift development over to Nintendo’s next-generation platform. As you would expect, it had to do with the more powerful hardware of the Switch 2.
“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?” Motokura explained. “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.” Reportedly, the team behind DKB started off with voxel technology to prototype the destructibility of environments and realized they could push it much further on Switch 2.
Motokura adds that it wasn’t just the extra horsepower, however, that led to the decision to switch platforms. “But it’s not really even just the processing power of the Switch 2 that I think attracted us and gave us some interesting possibilities,” he said. “There was also the device itself that offered things like mouse control, which you can use in co-op play for a second player to control Pauline’s vocal blasts or DK Artist, a mode where you can sculpt a large set of voxels.”
For the first year or so of the Switch 2, I think it will be common to see Nintendo state that its games were originally planned as Switch 1 titles. I truly believe part of the reason the Switch 2 didn’t launch sooner is that COVID-19 delays and the general state of the global economy held Nintendo back. It’s a shame that the console had to launch at one of the worst points in history for economic disparity, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed sales at all.
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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.
