Topic: Donkey Kong Bananza

I can’t explain how excited I am to play this game. I’ve always been a big Hulk fan. I feel like Nintendo gave me a Hulk game wrapped in a Nintendo IP. It is interesting that this game has a release date. I wonder how old the demo is that they are showcasing. There are a lot of reports of framerate issues. Obviously the world is big and literally 90% of it is destructible. However, I hope they iron the issues out before launch.

Apparently the game will be targeting 1080p/60fps in handheld mode, which would be very impressive if it does it well. No word on docked performance, but likely something in the 1440p/60fps ballpark if I had to guess.

https://wccftech.com/donkey-kong-bananza-handheld-mode-resolu...

@Bigmanfan makes the most sense.

Diddy lives

And he's got teeth and a pin on his hat, quite the extensive redesign hehe...

...it looks like they made him look more in line with how he appears in his brief appearance in the Super Mario Bros. Movie.

@rallydefault I read a long article once about Rare’s internal structure. They were really set up as competing teams and anyone who worked on one game got a share of the “bounty” so there was an incentive to keep teams very small (to prevent having to share) but also to elbow your way into the team making a game likely to be successful commercially.

I think that - for all of their clear technical skill - it was always going to be incredibly difficult for that structure at Rare to adjust well as games became more polished and teams had to become bigger. The developers who did successfully navigate the 00’s were structured very differently. It could have been done but it would have been as traumatic for them under Nintendo as it was for them under Microsoft.

I’d also say that Rare’s IP maybe wasn’t ever as valuable as some of us project it to be. Their most successful games were either Donkey Kong based or Goldeneye. They didn’t own them. Aside from those games it’s Banjo Kazooie, JFG, Perfect Dark and then games from the 8-but era largely unknown outside of the UK. Their IP stable was empty enough that the best they could throw on a puzzle game was (& I’m not making this up) “Mr Pants” - a stick man who wears pants.

I can see why Nintendo didn’t buy at the price. Still it is nice to imagine a world where Rare became a first party Nintendo team. It would have made a bit of difference to the GameCube in the market and they might have been a very interesting Wii developer.

New hi-res footage of DK & Diddy:

And here's how DK looks with the Mario crew:

Huh, looks like I missed something. Honestly, Diddy’s redesign kind of looks the same. Compared to DK’s Diddy’s redesign only looks like it has slight tweaks to it, with minimal change. Not complaining at all though!

Diddy's redesign is quite similar to the one that I've undergone in middle age.

@N00BiSH Donkey Kong looks so out of place with the rest of the characters. The other characters' redesigns aren't bad, I just think this makes DK look like he fits in less with the rest.

I dunno, I didn't like the DK redesign when I first saw it in MK but tbh he looks really good when placed with the rest of the Mario cast. Diddy actually looks like he could stand to be changed more to fit that vibe imo.

@PikminMarioKirby I disagree. If anything, he fits in better with the cast thanks to the more cohesive style choices. For comparison:

@Uncle_Franklin you also had a weird flesh divider around your eyes?

@N00BiSH Honestly the more I see of these redesigns, the more I love them. People give Nintendo flack for this being "Seth Rogan Donkey Kong," but this design was clearly planned before the Mario Movie even released. The Mario Movie was basically just where we got the design revealed- with the new DK game probably being produced before it.

I love how DK is actually expressive now, and looks more like he fits in stylistically with the rest of the cast, rather than what his Rare design looked like. Just wonder how they're going to handle it with the themepark if they're future-proofing this design with redone renders and icons.

@N00BiSH

And have only just developed teeth.

I'd argue it's not even that much of a new design but more a return to his original design. He was often portrayed as looking more goofy and cute/innocent looking outside of the Rare games... and he had teeth!

@Suketoudara I'd argue it's more of a hybrid of all his previous looks rather than an all-out throwback. It's got the characteristics of the Rare design(the tie and haricut), the body and facial build of his Miyamoto/Kotabe design, as well some influence from the illustrations of current Mario artist Shigehisa Nakaue.

Game characters have often been largely redesigned for their next game.
I think what makes this one feel strange and slightly more dramatic is that the new look first came in the movie

@PikminMarioKirby
I agree with you, really looks out of place in that picture, it's quite glaring.

@Dev-N
Which is interesting, because with this redesign, Nintendo have also sent out mixed messages with the design used at the theme parks. In 94 as now, they surely could have coordinated and used some foresight.

@Uncle_Franklin The reveal in the movie was definitely strange- but what also makes this feel more dramatic is the fact that Nintendo is replacing Donkey Kong's old design in pretty much every promotional marketing material with this brand new one. Even the Switch icons replaced the old design with the brand new Bananza one.

New footage of DK's new pal Odd Rock:

I like the snippet of BGM we get here. I dunno if he's on the OST, but the music sounds a lot like David Wise's current music style. If he isn't, then the composers have done a real good job of capturing that DK sound so far.