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Donkey Kong’s Wildest Game Yet Started Life as a Goomba With Giant Arms
July 17, 2025Donkey Kong’s latest outing isn’t just a fresh romp through banana jungles—it’s a total reinvention of the platformer classic. Donkey Kong Bananza, a headline-grabber at Nintendo’s June 2025 Direct, unveiled wild destruction-driven gameplay, chaotic environments, and an accidental origin more bizarre than you’d ever think—a Goomba with massive arms. Yes, really.
Set to launch exclusively on Nintendo Switch 2, Donkey Kong Bananza is a side-view, single-player platformer with smashing flair. The game’s early tech demo saw a broad-shouldered Goomba cause physics-based mayhem, laying the groundwork for a gleefully overpowered Donkey Kong and his island-levelling tantrums. At heart, the game embraces chaos, and it started with a mistake that Nintendo didn’t instantly toss in the bin.
The Origin of Donkey Kong Bananza’s Destruction Mayhem
This new chapter in the Donkey Kong franchise came to life through experimentation. According to producer Keisuke Yamakura in his interview with Eurogamer, the earliest build of Bananza featured a Goomba. Not an ape. A Goomba. And for some reason, it had comically oversized arms.
This bizarre creature, however, could punch through walls, swing from vines, and toss debris in every direction using a veritable playground of destructible elements. It was goofy, but it worked. Instead of scrapping the model, Nintendo’s development team decided to channel that wacky energy into Donkey Kong himself. The Goomba’s arms may be gone, but its punchy legacy lives on.
That legacy transformed into a physics-rich jungle world where every crate cracked, every vine snapped had weight. The team retained that tactile feel of smashing, balancing chaos with control. Much like in Donkey Kong Country Returns, you barrel through hostile terrain—but this time, it pushes back dynamically. Trees collapse. Water buckets topple. Enemies scatter realistically.
Switch 2 Tech Unleashes the Beast in Donkey Kong
It’s not just the gameplay that’s evolved. Running on the beefier Nintendo Switch 2, Donkey Kong Bananza is polished with lush visuals, fluid animations, and a slightly taller Donkey Kong model. This isn’t the stubbier version from past platformers—he’s sleeker, faster, and more emotionally expressive.
Nintendo placed a heavy focus on natural movement and body weight. Every time Donkey Kong lashes out in fury or latches onto fluttering ropes, the motion has believable momentum. The added visual detail—think shifting foliage, crumbling temple ruins, and water ripples—gives each level a sense of living, breakable presence. You’re not just running through a setpiece—you’re tearing it apart, one vine shake at a time.
Side-on platformer fans will also notice a mix of verticality layered throughout stages. The camera responds smoothly—zooming, panning, reacting—not unlike modern Metroidvanias. This dynamism gives Donkey Kong Bananza a stronger sense of immersion than its predecessors, with the chaos always front and centre.
Gameplay breakdowns so far highlight destructibility as a core loop. Monkey barrels erupt into kindling. Ropes fray after multiple uses. Players can weaponise nearly everything—timber, rocks, enemy helmets. All of this interaction weaves into the core mission-based levels while hinting at larger-scale smashing objectives.
Fans of action-adventure games with rich physical interactivity will very likely feel immediately at home here. One moment you’re swinging over crocodile-infested waters, the next you’re using a fallen log as a weapon. Bananza channels both precision and pure absurdity, keeping the long-time platformer DNA while letting Donkey Kong’s punch do the creative thinking.
Throughout all this refinement, Nintendo never forgot one thing: it started as a messed-up Goomba demo. By embracing mistakes and layering in top-tier design, they gave Donkey Kong his most ambitious solo venture yet. It’s brash, fast, and oddly charming in its primitive punchiness.
Donkey Kong Bananza is expected to be a standout Switch 2 exclusive when it launches in 2025. No specific preorder or pricing details were confirmed at the time of the announcement, but players can expect updates closer to release. Whenever it arrives, one thing is certain—the king of the jungle has arms, and now, he’s using them like never before.
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