Nintendo reveal Donkey Kong Bananza developer and it’s a bit of a surprise

For months there’s been no official indication of who’s making Donkey Kong Bananza for Switch 2, but now Nintendo has finally spilt the beans.

Although they’ve always been one of the most idiosyncratic game companies in the business, most of Nintendo’s stranger habits are tolerated, or even encouraged, by fans. But not their recent insistence on trying to hide who makes their games.

Around two years ago they stopped announcing who the developers are behind certain titles and made it hard to tell even once you played them, unless you sat through all the credits. Why they’re being like this is a mystery but apart from being disrespectful it’s made it hard to know what to expect from Donkey Kong Bananza.

Names such as Luigi’s Mansion developer Next Level Games have been suggested, as possibly being involved, but it’s all been guesswork up until now, with Nintendo finally revealing that it’s the same ‘team’ behind Super Mario Odyssey.

They haven’t made any kind of public annoucement, but we recently attended a preview event for the game and pointedly asked who was making it. We were told it was the Super Mario Odyssey team, but no clarification was given beyond that.

Nintendo refused to say who the director is or to clarify what they meant by ‘team’. Odyssey was made by Nintendo EPD, with some help from external studio 1-UP Studio (née Brownie Brown).

EPD is the largest of Nintendo’s internal development divisions and has many different groups, which are further subdivided into individual teams. Odyssey was by Production Group No. 8, which is based in Tokyo.

Taken as read, Nintendo’s comment suggests that it is, more or less, the same team behind Odyssey that is making Bananza, but we can’t help but wonder whether the word team is being used more loosely here, and it’s actually the people behind Bowser’s Fury.

They’re also part of Production Group No. 8 and Bowser’s Fury was a very experimental bonus title, released alongside the remaster of Super Mario 3D World. It was a little rough around the edges but appeared to be the work of younger, up-and-coming developers.

Nintendo never confirmed that but while this new comment has made it clear who isn’t making Bananza, we’re still very interested to know the exact people involved.

If it is Odyssey director Kenta Motokura and/or co-producer Yoshiaki Koizumi that suggests that a new 3D Super Mario game is a long way off – or being made by a completely different team.

There’s so far been no hint whatsoever at a new Mario title and while Bananza does scratch something of the same itch it’s a very different kind of game.

A sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie is due out next April, so there’s a good chance Nintendo is waiting until then to reveal anything, but as ever this new revelation only leads to more questions…

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