If Donkey Kong Bananza is a game all about destruction, then the feature that allows for the most destruction could arguably be the best part of the game. According to a developer who worked on the game, the most destructive transformation for Donkey Kong might have gone too far, but that isn’t a bad thing.
Speaking to Game Informer at GDC, Donkey Kong Bananza programmer Tatsuya Kurihara spoke about DK’s Elephant Bananza transformation, which lets the primate inhale a large volume of destructible terrain and store chunks of it to throw. “I think we can agree the most destructive transformation is the Elephant Bananza, and honestly speaking, it probably went too far,” Kurihara said. “But at the same time, it’s fun, it feels good. And that’s what matters most.”
It’s hard not to agree with that sentiment–the Switch 2 game practically invites you to wreak as much havoc as possible, and if you want to strip an entire layer of all its terrain, sucking it all up with the Elephant Bananza is the most efficient and satisfying way to do so.
In the interview, Bananza producer Kenta Motokura said that Bananza and Super Mario Bros. Wonder both prominently featuring elephants was a pure coincidence.
“When I think about how the elephant transformation works in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, it’s clear to me that there were different goals for what they were trying to accomplish, even though it’s the same animal transformation, so I didn’t worry about it too much from that perspective,” Motokura said. “However, if they were vacuuming out blocks in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, I would have been a little bit worried!”
Also at GDC, the Donkey Kong Bananza developers discussed how the game started as a prototype based on Super Mario Odyssey featuring a Goomba with fists.