Our Big Bananas Interview With the Developers of Donkey Kong Bananza

Donkey Kong Bananza launches next week, and we only just learned who the developers are behind Donkey Kong’s big, new 3D adventure. It’s the same team that made Super Mario Odyssey, which a number of savvy fans picked up on based on various UI and other context clues from the trailers. But now that we know who the creators are, it’s time to bombard them with a banana hoard’s worth of questions. I spoke with Kenta Motokura, producer on Donkey Kong Bananza, and Kazuya Takahashi, director. You might recognize Motokura’s name as the director of Super Mario Odyssey, and he’s also been a part of a number of other Nintendo games since he joined the company as a 3D character artist in the GameCube era, working on the likes of Super Mario Sunshine, Pikmin, and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, as well as Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Land, and Super Mario 3D World on Wii U. As for Takahashi, he’s newer to Nintendo, only arriving at the company in 2020, but has a background in open world game design that he says gives him some “interesting” carryover from past experiences into Bananza. We’ve covered some of the highlights from this interview elsewhere, such as how the game was conceived, where it lands in relation to other Donkey Kong games, and why it’s a Nintendo Switch 2 title. But there are plenty of other golden nuggets (or bananas) in the full interview, which we’ve published below. Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.