Nintendo's Next Step with Donkey Kong Bananza Is So Obvious

By Garrett Martin | July 18, 2025 | 3:30pm

Games Features donkey kong bananza

Nintendo's Next Step with Donkey Kong Bananza Is So Obvious

Donkey Kong Bananza has been out for exactly one day and I’m pretty sure the internet is ready to call it the greatest game ever made. The hype and hyperbole might be out of control, but only very slightly: Nintendo’s new punchformer is an irresistible pop bulldozer of a game, with some of the most chaotic—and cathartic—action around. There’s something primordial about the appeal of its wanton destruction; it’s like an interactive cartoon whose over-the-top violence is instantly calming no matter how loud and calamitous it might be. Nothing in games this year has felt better than wrecking every inch of a level with Donkey Kong’s fists, and I’m pretty sure this kind of thrillpower will have a very long tail.

Still, inevitably people will tire of Bananza. They’ll slug their way through every level and wring every drop of destruction out of them, and then move on to something else—for despite the industry’s desperate attempts to create one, there will never be a true forever game. And when the crowd has punched every last brick and is ready to move on from Bananza, it’s obvious what Nintendo should do to pull them back in. They need to make iconic settings from other Nintendo games into Donkey Kong Bananza levels.

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Who wouldn’t want to demolish Peach’s Castle brick-by-brick with only the two furious fists of an excitable gorilla? What good is Hyrule’s Temple of Time if we can’t knock the whole damn thing down? Some of Bananza’s levels already resemble the craggy caverns of Metroid; Nintendo might as well let us go ape all through Zebes and Tallon IV. And hey, wherever all those little Pokémon live? Let’s bust that up while we’re at it, too. (It’s some kind of island, right? With, like, a noir city on it somewhere?)

A DLC pack that recreates familiar places like this as Bananza’s destructible sandboxes would be a smash hit. And although it would absolutely be the kind of nostalgia-baiting, IP-driven corporate synergy that has made so much of modern pop culture feel empty and uninspired, the, um, transformative nature of Donkey Kong’s violence would transcend such concerns. A Bananza level set in Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ Garreg Mach Monastery wouldn’t just be saying “hey, remember this?” It’d be saying “hey, remember this?”, and then also saying “now go ahead and clobber the hell out of it, buddy.” And that’s the kind of recontextualizing you expect from good post-modern art.

Really, the possibilities are as endless as Donkey Kong’s capacity for destruction. Bananza could let us pulverize our way through Earthbound’s USA parody of Eagleland, or get creative with the stylish architecture of Splatoon’s Inkopolis Plaza. Literally dozens of Mario or Zelda locales would make for popular levels, and longtime Nintendo nerds would love deep dives into the back catalogue like a thoroughly demolishable 3D take on Hogan’s Alley (from the game Hogan’s Alley). And hell, a sporting arena could do double-duty and represent both Punch-Out and Pro Wrestling. Who hasn’t dreamed of terraforming an Animal Crossing village with just two fists—and who wouldn’t want to use a QR code to turn their own personal Animal Crossing: New Horizons island into a Bananza sandbox? You can’t sit there and tell me that you’ve never dreamed of launching that smug Excitebike jerk straight into the stratosphere with a well-placed uppercut. By tapping into the kind of shared universe nonsense that drives Super Smash Bros. and occasionally pops up in Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Bananza could seal its status as the Switch 2’s first new Nintendo classic, while also dealing a mighty blow against boredom and complacency. The ball’s in your (entirely punchable) court, Nintendo.

Editor-in-chief Garrett Martin writes about videogames, theme parks, pinball, travel, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.