Donkey Kong Bananza Took 7~8 Years To Develop - Started Immediately After Mario Odyssey (2017)

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Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
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Work began on Donkey Kong Bananza immediately after Mario Odyssey was completed

In a recent interview it has been revealed that work began on Donkey Kong Bananza immediately after the competition of the acclaimed Super Mario Odyssey. Once development of the last mainline 3D Mario…
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In a recent interview it has been revealed that work began on Donkey Kong Bananza immediately after the competition of the acclaimed Super Mario Odyssey. Once development of the last mainline 3D Mario adventure was completed the team set to work on Bananza. As previously mentioned Donkey Kong Bananza was originally a Nintendo Switch game until the successor was ready.

When did the development of Donkey Kong Bananza start?

Motokura: Although it cannot give you very precise details, I can tell you that we started developing it after finishing Super Mario Odyssey (2017).

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Interesting point to note and to add to the discussions where some folks say how streamlined and relatively quick Nintendo development is compared to other most other AAA projects, turns out it isn't that different after-all.
 
adamsapple said:
Interesting point to note and to add to the discussions where some folks say how streamlined and relatively quick Nintendo development is compared to other most other AAA projects, turns out it isn't that different after-all.
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That's one game. TOTK and Bananza both took over 6 years, but then look at their other titles and the norm is more like 4 years.
 
The timeline sounds very similar to Mario Kart World. However, we don't know when either of those games *finished* development.

Nintendo is notorious for sitting on games for years, and, obviously, they couldn't release either game before the Switch 2. And it seems like Nintendo was probably originally planning to release the Switch 2 sometime last year and delayed it to 2025.

I honestly think both have been all but done since possibly as early as late 2023 and have just had a small team assigned to them for QA and polish since then.
 
adamsapple said:
mynintendonews.com

Work began on Donkey Kong Bananza immediately after Mario Odyssey was completed

In a recent interview it has been revealed that work began on Donkey Kong Bananza immediately after the competition of the acclaimed Super Mario Odyssey. Once development of the last mainline 3D Mario…
mynintendonews.com mynintendonews.com




Interesting point to note and to add to the discussions where some folks say how streamlined and relatively quick Nintendo development is compared to other most other AAA projects, turns out it isn't that different after-all.
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That's indeed suprising, going to be fun seeing the reception. Could be a larger and more polished game then I thought, wish I enjoyed these kind of games as this could end up being banger for Switch² owners.
 
I want to see who here will bend over backwards to say that this is okay, while at the same time a week ago, you will have seen them say that it's not okay when western companies do it.

bill-hader-eating-popcorn.gif
 
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Not sure how much we can definitively say based on this. They also created Bowser's Fury during this time. Additionally, it's highly probable (based on the director of Mario Odyssey/Bowser's Fury producing this game not directing) they have split their team and are also working on 3D Mario.

There's no way in hell the 3D Mario team spent eight years not actively working on the next 3D Mario game.
 
Gaiff said:
Lol, in what year? 2008?
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Rockstar wasn't going ham on game development after RDR2. They have their GTA Online printing cash, so they're not in a hurry whatsoever. It's only now that they're in the polishing phase that they're going all hands on deck. If Rockstar wasn't as successful with their gta online, you'd see them not only releasing the likes of gta and rdr quicker, but also much more games in general.
 
They have Pentium III computers?

So Luigi's Mansion is still six years away from release?

Expedition 33 took 5 years, but they had 30 people. Nintendo is supposed to be a leading company; it should have more people.
 
Heimdall_Xtreme said:
They have Pentium III computers?

So Luigi's Mansion is still six years away from release?

Expedition 33 took 5 years, but they had 30 people. Nintendo is supposed to be a leading company; it should have more people.
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To be fair they also had half a dozen or more different outsourcing studios working on various parts of the game, other than the core 30~ Sandfall team.

But that isn't as catchy, I guess.
 
March Climber said:
I want to see who here will bend over backwards to say that this is okay, while at the same time a week ago, you will have seen them say that it's not okay when western companies do it.

bill-hader-eating-popcorn.gif
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Nintendo has more games released than months passed since the Switch came out lol, they have released so far like 1.3 or 1.5 games per month, other publishers can't even release a game every 5 years lol
 
During the reveal trailer, I genuinely hand-to-heart thought it was a quick and cheap launch game they farmed out to external studios, new hires, and interns like Arms. Would be interesting to see a poll on how many other people thought the same.
 
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blacktout said:
Nintendo is notorious for sitting on games for years, and, obviously, they couldn't release either game before the Switch 2. And it seems like Nintendo was probably originally planning to release the Switch 2 sometime last year and delayed it to 2025.
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Agreed. It feels like they've had both games and Switch 2 ready for a while.

adamsapple said:
Interesting point to note and to add to the discussions where some folks say how streamlined and relatively quick Nintendo development is compared to other most other AAA projects
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They're incredibly diligent and focused, but they'll always cut themselves as much slack as they need to get it right, unless it's coming up to christmas and PS2 is about to murder you so you need to chop Wind Waker and Mario Sunshine to bits to get them out the door asap.

Other than that one time though, yeah they're generally perfectly happy making people wait.
 
Instant_Classic said:
Correct, the whole Expedition 33 had only 30 people belief is misleading.

The game had hundreds of support via outsourcing.
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Literally every single AAA game has thousands (not hundreds) of outsourced contract developers. Have you watched a game's credits in the past 15 or so years? AAA western games are majority developed by Korean and Chinese assets farms and have been since the mid PS360 era. That's why those regions have seemingly come out of nowhere releasing better and more technologically advanced games than the western companies that used to hire them, they've already been making everyone's else's games for well over a decade.
 
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We don't actually know how long the game took to complete. Nintendo sits on games forever. I'd bet the bulk of this game(whatever that means) was completed within 5 years.

However I will say this. If the game took 7-8 years than I'm grateful Nintendo thought highly enough of Donkey Kong to give it that time and energy!

PS. Why doesn't my avatar animate on the actual forum? I can see it moving when I'm checking or trying to alter my profile information.
 
Haint said:
Literally every single AAA game has thousands (not hundreds) of outsourced contract developers. Have you ever watched a game's credits in the past 15 or so years? AAA western games are majority developed by Korean and Chinese assets farms.
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Yeah, but there is this notion that Expedition 33 was made by literally 30 people.

It wasn't
 
If I have to guess, I would say the longer development for this one specifically could be due to developing a new engine ( the idea of going up and down into multi level design under the same map could be a new engine thing )

Could be also the same engine Nintendo will use for the next Mario 3d ?

We really don't know, we don't know how many people even in that team. They could have been split into multiple projects so they are not 200+ employees under that game
 
adamsapple said:
mynintendonews.com

Work began on Donkey Kong Bananza immediately after Mario Odyssey was completed

In a recent interview it has been revealed that work began on Donkey Kong Bananza immediately after the competition of the acclaimed Super Mario Odyssey. Once development of the last mainline 3D Mario…
mynintendonews.com mynintendonews.com




Interesting point to note and to add to the discussions where some folks say how streamlined and relatively quick Nintendo development is compared to other most other AAA projects, turns out it isn't that different after-all.
Click to expand...
And people will still watch a trailer of a game & think they know how much work the devs done 😭
 
Instant_Classic said:
Yeah, but there is this notion that Expedition 33 was made by literally 30 people.

It wasn't
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Right, much in the same way there's a notion other AAA games are made by the "studio proper" teams of 150-300 or so people.

They weren't, it was many many thousands of people. So Expedition 33's accolades are completely justified, it was a indeed a much smaller scale production than the other games it put to shame.
 
Kataploom said:
Nintendo has more games released than months passed since the Switch came out lol, they have released so far like 1.3 or 1.5 games per month, other publishers can't even release a game every 5 years lol
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You didn't take a minute to consider why. Nintendo has a ton of different studios (including Namco helping them from the backend) all making a wide range of titles, from A, AA, to AAA. Nearly everyone else is sticking to AAA.

We all just saw a thread a few days ago about how they're considering hitting a red button for their AAA development to find a way to attempt to shorten development times. They know that with this new amount of system power, they're about to hit a wall, so they're trying to soften the incoming blow for gamers by using more money and resources.

This seems like a difficult pill for people here to swallow.
 
//DEVIL// said:
If I have to guess, I would say the longer development for this one specifically could be due to developing a new engine ( the idea of going up and down into multi level design under the same map could be a new engine thing )

Could be also the same engine Nintendo will use for the next Mario 3d ?

We really don't know, we don't know how many people even in that team. They could have been split into multiple projects so they are not 200+ employees under that game
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The engine hasn't changed and likely won't for truly next gen 3D Mario either, it's all "ModuleSystem" internally.
 
March Climber said:
You didn't take a minute to consider why. Nintendo has a ton of different studios (including Namco helping them from the backend) all making a wide range of titles, from A, AA, to AAA. Nearly everyone else is sticking to AAA.

We all just saw a thread a few days ago about how they're considering hitting a red button for their AAA development to find a way to attempt to shorten development times. They know that with this new amount of system power, they're about to hit a wall, so they're trying to soften the incoming blow for gamers by using more money and resources.

This seems like a difficult pill for people here to swallow.
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Oh, so basically what everyone else does, I'm wondering why it's not working the same for PS Studios or Ubisoft? Hmmm...

And "hitting a red button" lol, they've always done the same thing, it's no different than what they've been doing since forever, they're basically saying they'll do what are already doing and it shows in the cadence of releases they have, second to none in the industry.

And I think that's the reason why they can take too long in some developments like DKB or Mario Wonder, they are confident that they're far from lacking content, tho I'm not sure about them working exclusively on these games, there's just too much brainstorming and experimentation in design before programmers or artists are even needed so my assumption is that they've been alternating between developments while they're polishing as much as they can each entry until any of them is finished.
 
That sounds like a long time, but I bet the development cost of this is far less than the majority of other AAA titles that were 'developed for 8 years'.

No way it was 8 years of full-on active development.
 
SILKYSMOOTH30FPS said:
Rockstar wasn't going ham on game development after RDR2. They have their GTA Online printing cash, so they're not in a hurry whatsoever. It's only now that they're in the polishing phase that they're going all hands on deck. If Rockstar wasn't as successful with their gta online, you'd see them not only releasing the likes of gta and rdr quicker, but also much more games in general.
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It's normal for games to have a lengthy pre-production phase these days. The same may equally apply to Bananza, especially since it started as a Switch 1 title.
 
Kataploom said:
And "hitting a red button" lol, they've always done the same thing
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Also to your question, no. The way Nintendo structures it's types of games and releases is barely similar at all to other companies. The other guys have all doubled down on 99% AAA. You won't see 'quirky' smaller games from them as much as you would Nintendo. Again, you're trying to equate outputs of two different company strategies.

Every Nintendo fan should be thankful they didn't double down on constant AAA of everything like the other guys. If they did there would be no Mario Party, no Zelda Echoes of Wisdom, no F-Zero 99, no Metroid Dread, etc.
 
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The duration surprises me a bit, but I bet it was significantly cheaper than other AAA games. No high-end graphics, no actors, no motion capture, no 10-hour cinematics and monologues, no dei consulting.
 
amigastar said:
Damn it, what does that mean for a new Mario 3D game? Fuck.
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We've gotten confirmation that this game has a new director etc. , so there seem to have been some internal staff re-arrangements for this project. Which gives me hope that 3D Mario development has been chugging along simultaneously.
 
Robb said:
We've gotten confirmation that this game has a new director etc. , so there seem to have been some internal staff re-arrangements for this project. Which gives me hope that 3D Mario development has been chugging along simultaneously.
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Let's hope so, i don't wanna wait 7-8 years for a new Mario game. I think nobody wants, even Nintendo.
 
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amigastar said:
Let's hope so, i don't wanna wait 7-8 years for a new Mario game. I think nobody wants, even Nintendo.
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Yeah, I don't think it's very far away personally.

We have Mario's 40th anniversary this year and the 'Mario Movie 2' next year. I bet they have the game strategically ready in the pipeline to synergize with all of that.
 
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March Climber said:

Also to your question, no. The way Nintendo structures it's types of games and releases is barely similar at all to other companies. The other guys have all doubled down on 99% AAA. You won't see 'quirky' smaller games from them as much as you would Nintendo. Again, you're trying to equate outputs of two different company strategies.

Every Nintendo fan should be thankful they didn't double down on constant AAA of everything like the other guys. If they did there would be no Mario Party, no Zelda Echoes of Wisdom, no F-Zero 99, no Metroid Dread, etc.
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I'm not sure how that contradicts what I say about Nintendo always varying the scope of their games since forever instead of going full retard, I mean, full AAA, but well, I agree with all of what you said in the response
 
That probably includes a couple years of a small core team just brainstorming and doing random experiments that may or may not have panned out in the end before moving to full on production of an actually concrete game design. Like how long they spent prototyping BOTW in NES game form.
 
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I hope that they'll do a "Ask the Developer" for this game (most likely they will). And then one of the leads just comes out to say "Yeah...when I was a kid I was playing this PC game called "Red Faction"..."
 
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