Topic: Donkey Kong Bananza

We'll have to wait for real reviews, but the previews I've seen have ranged from 'good but not for me' to 'like Odyssey but better'. I do think we haven't seen much of the game yet and that there will be a lot more depth.

As for the $70 price tag we've seen... I'm not happy but at least it's the price everyone semi assumed Nintendo would jump to because of TotK rather than the mario kart world price.

I too am hopeful as it seems to be from one of Nintendo's top teams. Just saying that the main gimmick so far - destructive environment - doesn't do much for me with the loud and chaotic gameplay.

So in the US it's a jump from 60$ standard price to 70$? Interesting. Here it went from 60€ to 80€. Don't think anybody would mind a 10€ increase much, with inflation all round. But 20€ or 25%, that's substantial.

The 90€ for MK World standalone are bonkers of course, that's a hike by 50%. That's not going to work, and I can only interpret it as a strong nudge towards the bundle.

@NintendoWife Yeah, Nintendo prices in EU are ridiculous. Let's see how they work long term.

New screenshot from Nintendo's socials:

slightly pixel-y shadow notwithstanding, I am impressed with resolution on display. Like, I was used to how Switch 1 titles looked, and they were fine, but I am not used to Nintendo titles being this crisp looking.

@N00BiSH That is a slightly horrifying screen shot 😆

But, yeah, both Mario Kart and Donkey Kong are pretty darn impressive visually compared to what we're used to on Switch.

Amazon France has permanently dropped the preorder price of the game to 60 euros, and I think other retailers might follow suite, because they'll probably realise a lot of people are not gonna pay 80 euros for any Nintendo game that's not Mario, Zelda or Pokemon. Hopefully Nintendo themselves will also realise this soon enough.

@Polvasti Ah, thanks for the heads up! Amazon Germany hasn’t followed yet, it is still 80€ here. Let’s wait and see then.

I can imagine it’s a tricky situation for Nintendo now, cause they can’t easily back down without drawing much attention and setting a precedent. But they only have themselves to blame, I’m sorry to say.

Yes, the fact that some retailers are lowering the price might give Nintendo a clue.

So apparently they're referencing the Northern Kremisphere in the game -

But that can't be right, Nintendo hates Rare, the internet told me so!

We've seen crocodile bones, golden skeletons, the game's color scheme of hot blue & pink, the eyes of many of the characters looking like Banjo-Kazooie style, and a Gnawty fossil, as well as this map. Nintendo never really hated DK/Rare, at least the EPD team didn't seem to, since Odyssey's New Donk City had references to Rare DK like Squawks Park and KRool st. (which lines up with Bananza being the Odyssey team).

Mario sports/kart/strikers do however seem against rare DK right now, with only movie DK making an appearance in Kart World, and Kremlings being replaced by Boom Booms in Strikers. Nintendo obviously at some point discouraged Rare DK, since the Retro Studios games tried to steer away from those for the most part.

@Dev-N From what I've heard, King K. Rool was supposed to make a really cool comeback in Switch port of Tropical Freeze but Nintendo opted for the comeback to be in Smash Bros. instead. I think Bananza could be K. Rool's epic comeback to the DK series. Perhaps VoidCo are just the Broodals equivalent from SMO?

Cranky Kong seems to be talking about a 'rival' that when the bananas were stolen, and that 'he knew exactly who to blame', so this is possible alluding to King K. Rool as well

The choices made for the Retro duology were made less out of disregard for Rare's contributions and more because they wanted to put their own spin on DK - not too dissimilar to what's going on with Bananza. I don't really think Nintendo actually had any disdain towards Rare. If they really hated Rare they wouldn't have kept the DK Island Swing as his main theme, or keep any of the Rare characters, or bring back K. Rool for Smash. A lot of people seem to be ignorant of the fact that Nintendo was always ok with Rare's concepts and ideas because at the end of the day it was always a proper collaboration between the two.

@N00BiSH Agreed, although music aside I think Bananza is making many more Rare references than Returns/Tropical Freeze did, I feel it was pretty obvious Retro was steering away from what the previous games established though. We got barely any, if at all, references to any baddies from the old games in Returns/Tropical Freeze, and we're already seeing Kremllin and Gnawty references in the little footage we have for Bananza, which gives me hope we'll be seeing more of it down the line.

@Dev-N Not exactly sure where it originated, but I don't think it was confirmed by Nintendo/Retro. There were rumors of it apparently related to the DK Vine group or something like that, and I think it's pretty likely that it's real.

Yeah I can't wait to hear more about Bananza, the game has tons of potential, and I definitely think K. Rool has a good shot of getting in it.

Going to get this. Love the destruction element. This will be a fun time.

New footage from the Nintendo Today app:

The most interesting thing here isn't the faces, but rather the music - that's an arrangement of Rambi's theme from DK64 in the background.

Really hope Diddy, Dixie and Tiny Kong are in this game.

@Don
I'd be shocked if they're not. If I had to bet, I'd say they're getting all the Kongs in here one way or another, maybe some of them as fairly deep unlocks or secrets, but still in there.

And a side note: I think Nintendo will always be a bit salty that Microsoft pulled the trigger on buying Rare before they did. For those of us who were around for those golden Rare years on Nintendo consoles, we were all scratching our heads when Ninty let that sale happen. Maybe they figured it was fine because Rare was still going to make handheld games for them? Don't know.

@rallydefault
I look forward to seeing the other Kongs. Yeah it was unfortunate Microsoft acquired Rare. Had they stayed with Nintendo we would have gotten Donkey King Racing (That was one of the games advertised on the back on GameCube console box) and so many other awesome games. Given how Microsoft treats Rare, they should offer to sell it to Nintendo but I think the damage has been done since most of the staff from the Nintendo era had already left the company.

@Don Diddy and Dixie are likely, but I'd genuinely surprised to see Tiny make a comeback. I never saw much value in the character - always felt like a less interesting Dixie to me.

@rallydefault I don't think they've ever had animosity towards the buyout. It was always their choice as to how much they'd support Rare, and after SFA, they just decided it wasn't worth the effort for some reason. A shame, given that they missed out on having Viva Pinata.

@N00BiSH
I read an interesting article in Retro Gamer about Rare. Nintendo really wanted them on the SNES for their graphical wizardry, and then gave them a pretty long leash on the N64.

I don’t think there was animosity, no, but I would wager there are Nintendo employees at various levels who think about that acquisition to this day and wish they were the ones who took the plunge.