This '80s pop icon is back, and it's better than ever

Sydney Morning Herald

5 days ago

Donkey Kong is one of the most iconic video game characters of all time, and one of the earliest. Yet despite remaining relevant for the bulk of the past 40 years, none of the major Donkey Kong games since the 1980s have been made by any of Nintendo's internal Japanese studios, meaning the character has become a bit of a nebulous B-tier entity next to Mario and company.
With the Big N solidifying its properties through movies and theme parks, as well as new games, a Donkey Kong reclamation was inevitable. The surprising part is that Nintendo threw its absolute best at the franchise. Donkey Kong Bananza is not only a contender for the best game the series has ever produced, it gives other contemporary games a run for their money when it comes to sheer fun, constant innovation and technological achievement.
In the first year of the original Nintendo Switch, the company reasserted its place among the best game-makers by combining industry trends such as open-world design with its Mario and Zelda franchises to produce unexpected, delightful and utterly inimitable games. And now at the beginning of the Switch 2, Bananza sends the message that it's not slowing down.
Created by the team behind Super Mario Odyssey, it combines elements of Minecraft -like permanent terrain alteration with Mario-level control and acrobatics, an evolved take on 3D platformer collectables, heaps of fresh ideas and plenty of inspiration from the past Donkey Kongs developed by Rare and Retro Studios. It has the climb-anywhere style of the recent Zeldas, but also the cathartic ability to tunnel through and destroy just about anything you see. It also sets a new tone and visual design for the series and character, which feels current but is perfectly in line with the arcade original.
Bananza is set far away from DK Island, where our hero (and seemingly every other ape and monkey) is investigating a massive cache of underground gold. Donkey Kong is more interested in Banandium Gems, special jewels that look and apparently taste like the delicious yellow fruit, but unfortunately the evil Void Kong also has his eye on them. After a dastardly scheme sinks the mine deep into the ground, DK finds himself in a subterranean world populated by all sorts of weird creatures, and partners with a lost tween named Pauline (a young take on the damsel character from the arcade game) to head to the planet core.
DK's abilities seem simple – you can jump, roll, punch forward, down and up, grab stuff, slap the ground and whistle – but it all adds up to a very satisfying arsenal that's easy to deploy. You can smash directly down into the ground, or rip chunks of rock out of the wall. You can combine rolls and jumps to cover huge distances. You can surf on hunks of concrete over hazardous terrain, or use a kind of sonar to detect goodies underground and tunnel right through them. And it feels heavy, crunchy and satisfying, like the very essence of the character's benevolent aggression.
The central loop of the game is pretty simple too. You're steadily descending through layers, each one with a wildly different theme and inhabitants, and each with a number of sub-layers. Most have an elder to meet, who is of course a DJ, and because Pauline has a talent for singing, she can learn a magical song from each one. That's how you unlock transformations for DK. Several of these are just hideously jacked animals with angry faces and all the aesthetic appeal of the worst AFL mascots – an ostrich, a zebra – but intentionally and humorously so, and they come with abilities you will need to explore and progress.