2025 | Donkey Kong Bananza Direct (18th June) (2pm UK // 6am PT // 9am ET)

ResurrectedContrarian said:
hopefully true... spin this insane part of the team out of the Mario franchise, so they can go wild with garish visuals in DK while leaving Mario's future outings more pure
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I agree. If this is true, this also means that the next big 3D Mario game is in development, at least. I was under the impression that Bananza was the "3D Mario" team's project instead of a 3D Mario game, because they found that smashing up the environment works better with Donkey Kong.
 
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touchfuzzy said:
I'm a Nintendo zealot and also liked Astro Bot -- easily my favorite PS5 game of the gen.

But this whole 'most GOTY awards ever' thing is a farce and everyone knows it. It's just because there's more and more random sites being counted than ever before. Like if there was 400 sites doing GOTY awards in 1996 I'm pretty sure we all know what the 'most awarded 3D platformer ever' would be.
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Last year also lowkey sucked

Astro Bot was good but come on
 
I'm still confused by where this is in the timeline. pauline is still a child but this seems to be modern DK because Kranky, Diddy and Dixie Kong are all still here?
 
Buggy Loop said:
OT title

Donkey Kong Bananza |OT| There's always money in the bananza stand

arrested development banana stand GIF



Or

Donkey Kong Bananza |OT| It's one bananza Michael, what could it cost? $70?

Confused Arrested Development GIF
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Either of these...but JWalter for the win.
 
I'm surprised no one is talking about it, but of course the first YouTube video you'll see of the sculpture mode will be a giant penis on Donkey's head.

That aside, apart from the hideous colors (sorry, some of those purple environments are just awful), the rest looks solid, and I like the dynamic between Pauline and DK.
 
Punished Miku said:
I think the Broodals do look dumb, but generally I think they're treating the game like a toymaker would. It's purposefully clashing and cheesy at times. The T-Rex and the real life humans don't match and they don't even make any attempt to have it match. It's like a kid with toys from different companies just playing and having fun. There's lots of varied costumes, the random feudal Japan level, it's just kind of a catch all style. It has the random pixel art 2D levels too. I wouldn't say Odyssey is my choice for best art style ever. It's almost post-art style parody.

Donkey Kong looks like a giant, giant step up in terms of coolness and cohesiveness of the design for me. The color use is purposefully dissonant, odd, unusual, clashing. I love it. They're purposefully using unusual color combinations and garish design style. You see some of this with Splatoon too, like you mentioned. Especially Pearl. Probably why I like it so much.

As for some characters looking ugly, that's kind of been a hallmark of Nintendo design for decades. Most Zelda NPCs are a special brand of ugly that takes talent to create. Just memorable, goofy looking people similar to something from classic Disney but with Japanese design sensibilities.
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I think we need to draw a line between 'ugly' and 'unappealing'. The former can definitely be appealing, while the latter may be stuff that doesn't necessarily try to be ugly, but it is. Falbi and Fyer are definitely ugly, but there's enough charm and taste to their designs that make them stand out. The Broodals, on the other hand, are just completely unappealing devoid of any spice put onto them.
falbi.webp

And even then, Mario never really had that 'special brand of ugly' of Zelda characters, most of its flair was on very manga-like chibi characters with a slight touch of cuteness. It was never particularly goofy, or at least not to extreme levels.
As I said, the Western-influenced overly cartoonish direction works great on Splatoon, but I dislike it on Mario.
 
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Rran said:
I'm going to be let down if the Pauline thing ended up just being some sort of magical de-aging or time-travel/parallel universe stuff. A big reason why the premise of them being buds is so compelling is because we know how these characters interact in the "future" with DK arcade. Would be kinda lame if they just hand-wave it away with some sort of deus ex doodad.
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No, actually it's completely irrelevant for most people, the "Super Mario Lore" people gonna be disappointed big time once they realize Nintendo doesn't care about "lore" or whatever
 
Hudo said:
Interesting:

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I don't think this guy knows anything about the inner workings of EPD Tokyo because he only interviews western developers, but it's also a no brainer that they're working on the next big 3D Mario and that its release probably is much closer than what people think. Nintendo have gone on a recruitment spree these past few years to prepare for Switch 2 development and I'm pretty sure one of their goals is for their main teams to work on multiple games at the same time.
 
Aldric said:
I don't think this guy knows anything about the inner workings of EPD Tokyo because he only interviews western developers, but it's also a no brainer that they're working on the next big 3D Mario and that its release probably is much closer than what people think. Nintendo have gone on a recruitment spree these past few years to prepare for Switch 2 development and I'm pretty sure one of their goals is for their main teams to work on multiple games at the same time.
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I bet Monolith Soft are helping out as well.
 
Hudo said:
I bet Monolith Soft are helping out as well.
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Speaking of them, people aren't ready for Monolith's new game. When you see what they were able to achieve with Xenoblade X on Wii U (4 Gamecubes ductaped together) with an open world that still mogs 90% of all games released today imagine what they'll be able to do with Switch 2 (40 Gamecubes ductaped together).
 
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This looks really good. Nintendo experimenting with creativity and gameplay. Feels like Splatoon/Odyssey devs are involved.
 
The framerate looks massively improved from what DF observed in the SGF demo.

Before they showed how the game had a frametime spike on every thrown physics interaction and when he initially ripped the chunk from the landscape, that was not present here afaics.

Worse than that some DK animations appeared to be separately synced from the framerate of the camera/world which looks awful, I didnt see that here.

Almost all the drops I saw in this Direct were on initial seconds of new level, the map, the photo mode and when the camera was really close to tons of alpha effects going off.

Level transition initial stutter and on the map is something that does not affect gameplay for in a meaningful way for me and the photo mode probably supersamples, increases the internal res and drops frames or literally caps to 30 to allow the former IQ increases to take place and again does not affect gameplay.

The framerate dropping/frametimes spiking on heavy alpha effect overlap, especially when near the camera, is both a Japanese developed game optimisation-failure standard and something thats present in many games on much more powerful consoles.

Its either that happens or alpha effects are lowered in resolution and you end up with pixelated crusty alpha effects all the time just to account for edge cases. Very occasional framerate drops is the preferred solution to me.

I hope DF do a breakdown of the difference in performance from the demo build to this new one to confirm or deny what I've said. It would be funny af if they say its identically borked and I look like a total cunt writing all that out.

Edit: Rewatched on my 65" TV instead of mobile, the frame drops are the exact same as before. My cunt status is confirmed lmao.
 
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Aldric said:
Speaking of them, people aren't ready for Monolith's new game. When you see what they were able to achieve with Xenoblade X on Wii U (4 Gamecubes ductaped together) with an open world that still mogs 90% of all games released today imagine what they'll be able to do with Switch 2 (40 Gamecubes ductaped together).
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I do actually hope that them releasing a DE of Xenoblade X on Switch with the new story additions is hinting at a Xenoblade X2 for Switch 2.
 
Oberstein said:
I'm surprised no one is talking about it, but of course the first YouTube video you'll see of the sculpture mode will be a giant penis on Donkey's head.

That aside, apart from the hideous colors (sorry, some of those purple environments are just awful), the rest looks solid, and I like the dynamic between Pauline and DK.
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When they drew the tentacle on his head I was like

Hd Reaction GIF by MOODMAN

foq3c0yl81nc1.jpeg
 
Salmon said:
I would really prefer if they delayed this title. I want it to be good (I want something to play except my Switch 1 library), but this feels extremely unpolished. Those frame lags will honestly kill the gameplay. I can accept that the game looks pretty rough in the graphics department, but not both gameplay and graphics.
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You're just a shit talking troll
 
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Aldric said:
Speaking of them, people aren't ready for Monolith's new game. When you see what they were able to achieve with Xenoblade X on Wii U (4 Gamecubes ductaped together) with an open world that still mogs 90% of all games released today imagine what they'll be able to do with Switch 2 (40 Gamecubes ductaped together).
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NoyWIL.jpg
 
I think it looks potentially awesome. This is the way forward, playing with physics and otherwise to differentiate gameplay. Makes for interesting and semi dynamic solutions, but doesn't look so open ended like Zelda that it breaks every encounter eventually because it will be highly dependent on environmental availability of items/materials. But I love this idea. A lot of those 2D sequences/mini challenges look interesting. Game looks awesome and potentially very creative, IMO. Rare day 1.
 
NGL, i went into the video ready to hate on DK cuz DK generally sucks and is a dumb character but this Bonanza game looks kinda good despite having DK in it.
 
Day 1. Ngl, the initial reveal trailer looked a bit meh but seeing all the different game mechanics and biomes coming together, looks like it'll be a fun collectorthon!
 
This is what I've thought all along. This doesn't really look like something made by the full Mario team, it clearly has a lower budget and a smaller team working on it. And of course the main team is working on the next 3D Mario (it's probably already done, SMO was 8 years ago).

Codes 208 said:
I'm still confused by where this is in the timeline. pauline is still a child but this seems to be modern DK because Kranky, Diddy and Dixie Kong are all still here?
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The Mario universe doesn't have a timeline, Nintendo does whatever they want with each game in it.
 
RoadHazard said:
This is what I've thought all along. This doesn't really look like something made by the full Mario team, it clearly has a lower budget and a smaller team working on it. And of course the main team is working on the next 3D Mario (it's probably already done, SMO was 8 years ago).



The Mario universe doesn't have a timeline, Nintendo does whatever they want with each game in it.
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It could also be Rare's lore rather than Nintendo's I guess.
 
Kuranghi said:
The framerate looks massively improved from what DF observed in the SGF demo.

Before they showed how the game had a frametime spike on every thrown physics interaction and when he initially ripped the chunk from the landscape, that was not present here afaics.

Worse than that some DK animations appeared to be separately synced from the framerate of the camera/world which looks awful, I didnt see that here.

Almost all the drops I saw in this Direct were on initial seconds of new level, the map, the photo mode and when the camera was really close to tons of alpha effects going off.

Level transition initial stutter and on the map is something that does not affect gameplay for in a meaningful way for me and the photo mode probably supersamples, increases the internal res and drops frames or literally caps to 30 to allow the former IQ increases to take place and again does not affect gameplay.

The framerate dropping/frametimes spiking on heavy alpha effect overlap, especially when near the camera, is both a Japanese developed game optimisation-failure standard and something thats present in many games on much more powerful consoles.

Its either that happens or alpha effects are lowered in resolution and you end up with pixelated crusty alpha effects all the time just to account for edge cases. Very occasional framerate drops is the preferred solution to me.

I hope DF do a breakdown of the difference in performance from the demo build to this new one to confirm or deny what I've said. It would be funny af if they say its identically borked and I look like a total cunt writing all that out.

Edit: Rewatched on my 65" TV instead of mobile, the frame drops are the exact same as before. My cunt status is confirmed lmao.
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Meanwhile, they still do the ugly dithering transparency for DK himself etc. Which is obviously an optimization, but it looked awful ten years ago and it looks awful now. The next Mario is also gonna have this, mark my words.
 
Codes 208 said:
It could also be Rare's lore rather than Nintendo's I guess.
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I don't know about that, this is clearly Nintendo's DK and not Rare's. The inclusion of Pauline is maybe the biggest proof of that, plus of course the redesigned DK. Sure, they have also thrown in a few of Rare's characters, but they seem to have minor roles.
 
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Codes 208 said:
I'm still confused by where this is in the timeline. pauline is still a child but this seems to be modern DK because Kranky, Diddy and Dixie Kong are all still here?
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It's in the same canon as SM Odyssey and occurs before it

We now know why adult Pauline named her city "New Donk City" in Odyssey

This game looks fucking great, you can tell it's from the Odyssey team because it's basically the same level design as Odyssey but it's the Odyssey final set piece where Bowser smashes everything made into an entire game
 
Today's reminder that "Jump Man" was actually the villain, he was filled with indecent lust and climbed an entire construction zone just to kidnap Pauline and steal her away from her buddy Donkey Kong so he could forcibly marry her

Fuck that "Jump Man" asshole TBH

This is my new headcanon deal with it
 
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