Nintendo has created Donkey Kong’s most ambitious Donkey Kong adventure yet
By ForGeeks
Development of Donkey Kong Bananza, one of the flagship games for Nintendo Switch 2, started with destruction. Literally. The project’s creators have admitted that it was the idea of destruction that started a new phase in the famous franchise’s history.
Donkey Kong now ruins everything
“We really wanted to create a gaming experience built around destruction,” Bananza director Kazuya Takahashi told The Verge. That concept became the basis for the entire game: now Donkey Kong breaks, smashes, and clears a path through a variety of different materials.
“We really wanted to create an experience built around destruction,” said Bananza director Kazuya Takahashi in an interview with The Verge.
Bananza was developed by the same team behind Super Mario Odyssey, one of the main launch titles on the original Nintendo Switch. According to producer Kenta Motokura, the idea of destruction first came about while working on Odyssey: “In the Dinner Kingdom, you could shovel mountains of cheese, and in the Snow Kingdom, you could make your way through snowdrifts.”
Bananza’s development team is the same team behind Super Mario Odyssey, which was a staple of the original Nintendo Switch launch lineup.
Voxel technology has paved the way for new mechanics
At the heart of these effects is voxel technology, the three-dimensional analog of pixels. Whereas a pixel is the minimum unit of a 2D image, a voxel is the minimum element of a 3D object. Nintendo has been experimenting with this technology since the first Switch, and Bananza was originally developed for this generation.
Things changed with the Switch 2, however. “We envisioned a lot of possibilities with voxel technology,” Motokura noted. – “But when we learned about Switch 2, we realized that there were so many more possibilities.”
The new console opened up two key areas of development. First, the variety of materials that Donkey Kong can destroy has become much wider. Second, destruction can now be permanent: the effects of the player’s actions remain in the game’s world.
Donkey Kong Bananza is an exclusive for Switch 2
Bananza has become the second major Switch 2 exclusive after Mario Kart World. Nintendo is banking on a unique gameplay experience that combines familiar mechanics with technical innovation. The use of voxel-based graphics not only allows you to visualize destruction, but also turn it into a full-fledged part of the gameplay.
No details of Donkey Kong Bananza’s plot or mechanics have been revealed yet, but it’s already clear that the project will be one of the biggest blockbusters of Nintendo’s next-gen console lineup. From cheese destruction to total landscape change, Donkey Kong is taking Donkey Kong to the next level.
The Nintendo has created the biggest Donkey Kong adventure yet was first published on ITZine.ru.
