Donkey Kong Bananza Developers Interview

Donkey Kong Bananza releases next week, and we've only just discovered the development team behind Donkey Kong's major new 3D adventure. It's the same studio that created Super Mario Odyssey, a connection many observant fans deduced from UI elements and other clues in the trailers.

Now that the creators are confirmed, it's time to hit them with a mountain of questions worthy of a gorilla's banana stash.

I spoke with Kenta Motokura, producer of Donkey Kong Bananza, and Kazuya Takahashi, its director. Motokura's name may be familiar as the director of Super Mario Odyssey. His long tenure at Nintendo began in the GameCube era as a 3D character artist, contributing to titles like Super Mario Sunshine, Pikmin, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Land, and Super Mario 3D World on Wii U. Takahashi, newer to Nintendo having joined in 2020, brings open-world game design experience that he says provides "interesting" insights for Bananza.

We've highlighted key parts of our interview in other articles, covering the game's origins, its place in the Donkey Kong series, and the reasoning behind its Nintendo Switch 2 release. However, the full conversation below contains many more golden details—or should we say, bananas.

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.