Coming up with ideas is a funny thing: You never know when inspiration might strike, or what might stoke its embers. But more often than not, it’ll be something totally unexpected. Just look at the brains behind the upcoming Switch 2 exclusive, Donkey Kong Bananza. Some of the things that players will get to experience when the game releases on July 17 have origins that nobody would have ever guessed.
In a recent interview with IGN, the game’s development team revealed that Pauline was not originally included in the earliest design specifications drawn up for Donkey Kong Bananza. Rather, it was only after someone on the team saw some concept art for Donkey Kong’s zebra transformation that the developers wondered if it might be worth adding the mayor of New Donk City to Donkey Kong Bananza.
“I think the moment we actually realized we would go in that direction came about as a result of an artist who created some concept art of the zebra transformation,” recalled Bananza producer Kenta Motokura. “We saw that image and thought it was really fun, so we immediately prototyped it to try it out in the game. And when our composer saw that, they decided to create specific music just for that transformation. ”
At the time, we didn’t know what the zebra concept art looked like. Now, though, Nintendo has published the image in an Ask the Developer interview and… it’s probably not what you’re expecting:
How does one go from this stallion-like beefcake to a young child who is walking around barefoot is anyone’s guess. In the more recent interview on Nintendo.com involving two members of the entertainment planning and development team, Naoto Kubo and Wataru Tanaka, alongside producer Kenta Motokura, the idea for Pauline seemingly comes out of nowhere after the team changed up the theme music for the zebra pictured above.
Who would’ve imagined this zebra sparking such a complete shift in the music?
Kubo: I know, right? And then, just as we were thinking, “Oh, that transitioned quite nicely. This might be rather interesting,” Motokura-san comes along and says…
Tanaka: So that was when it happened.
Motokura: Right, and I said, “Maybe we can add Pauline?” (Laughs)
Everyone: (Laughs)
OK then! Who am I to question genius?
Another baffling yet endearing anecdote in the Nintendo-published interview with the Bananza team details the creation of the game itself. Did Nintendo begin by drafting up ideas for a new Donkey Kong game? No, silly. Donkey Kong came after a load of experimentation.
The nexus for Bananza took shape shortly after the release of Super Mario Odyssey. The programming team at Nintendo had been researching possibilities for “smashing mechanics” for the purposes of creating a game where everything in the environment is destructible. Nintendo pulled in the Odyssey programmer who worked on the guardian deity players meet in the Sand Kingdom, the Olmec-inspired Knucklote. As Odyssey players might recall, that boss battle sees Knucklote slamming his hands into the ground in various ways, and the game is reactive to his actions. The boss can leave indents in the sand, and he can break environmental details like icicles. Naturally, this programmer would be a good fit for ideating a game with a destructible environment.
In the most predictable possible progression of events, the programmer performed surgery on a grape by attaching two fists to a Goomba. In a short clip shared by Nintendo, you can see the brown tyke walk around a rocky environment that crumbles under its mighty fists.
Donkey Kong Bananza is Nintendo going full galaxy brain. May the wonders never cease.
You can read the full interview, which is full of fun stories like this, here.
