amigastar
Member
Maybe as others said it wasn't the whole team working on Bananza because part of the them were busy with a new 3D Mario... maybe.
Donkey Kong Bananza Took 7~8 Years To Develop - Started Immediately After Mario Odyssey (2017)
- Thread starter adamsapple
- Start date
Team Andromeda
Member
Since when?
Lots of Nintendo games have taken years to develope and that why a lot of people like to credit them for giving the staff all the time in the world to make the games.
Yoshi Island was in development almost as long as Shenmue was
Pikmin 4 was meant to be almost done in 2015 LOL
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Connificent
Al Pachinko, Konami President
apple_of_enlightenment
Member
Bananza is a very accomplished game, game play and physics. But too ugly for me. But then I thought Splatoon was ugly and that did well.
Feels like they should have been working on Mario.
Feels like they should have been working on Mario.
Just from memory (articles and interviews that I have read over the years about how Nintendo make games): They start with a small number of people who experiment with the gameplay, maybe using boxes as characters, find out how things interact, see if any of this can be turned info enjoyable gameplay. At some point in time they decide if a game can be made from the experiments.
If yes, they start to increase the number of people involved. Maybe to 20-30. They start to think of what Nintendo characters will fit the gameplay they have experimented with. Is it a Mario game? Is it at Donkey Kong game? Do they have to come up with new characters (experiment with ink, squid characters to dive into ink, Splatoon). What type of gameplay and what character will be best to use for that type of gameplay? What characters will fit with the gameplay. I am sure that right now they have a large number of such small experiments going on, some of which in time may end up as games, maybe many years from now, on a system not even out yet. Only at the later stages do they go all in with people doing graphics, sound etc. What we think of when we think of how games are being made. Towards the very end, they add some story to tie it all together.
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apple_of_enlightenment
Member
SamuraiEdge
Member
8 years is worth the price for a KONG MASTERPIECE
KungFucius
King Snowflake
Are we sure that this game really took that long. They started working on it back in 2018 but at some point knew it was a Switch 2 game. It could have been in R&D for a long time or even paused after being nearly done to wait for release.
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
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.
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
My thoughts as well. They just stated when development began. This doesn't mean the game may not have been practically finished for some time by now, just needing some adjustments, while most of the team moved on to something else or at least started planning something else.
Portugeezer
Member
Development vs "development"
Kacho
Member
Pretty much.
kpopSuperstar
Member
People here will take this title and think they spent 7 years and 200 million on the game.
He is talking about pre-production. This team did several other projects before they started full production on Bananza.
I could write a title saying "Kojima hurls employees into the ocean" and you guys would call him a monster and be shocked that he could do that. Its terrifying to see how easily people buy into everything.
He is talking about pre-production. This team did several other projects before they started full production on Bananza.
I could write a title saying "Kojima hurls employees into the ocean" and you guys would call him a monster and be shocked that he could do that. Its terrifying to see how easily people buy into everything.
Doctor Hades
Member
They could have teams working on two or more games for all we know. I would not be surprised to find that they have also been working on Super Mario Odyssey 2 or whatever the next Mario game will be called, for release next year.
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Punished Miku
Gaslighter Pro: 16.7 Fireflops
I think COVID actually really messed up Nintendo. They barely know the internet exists and I think they have fairly hands on development culture, and extreme secrecy / privacy requirements so it must have been a shock to the system.
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I'm 100% with you, but it looks better than Splatoon and the new Direct sold me on the game.
Skifi28
Member
I dare you.
diffusionx
Gold Member
Japan had, IIRC, even stricter lockdowns than the worst parts of the USA like NYC. Probably fucked some things up.
Zacfoldor
Member
You sound clueless mate. How many people are working on the new GTA? Are you really comparing the scale of these two games? Do silksong next.
spookyfish
Gold Member
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
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…
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.
People don't like to talk about this and many in the video game media are NOT honest about this side of Nintendo. But there's a clear reason as to why some of their games will be $80!!!
Nintendo is such a cute and fun company, that it hurts for some people to be honest about their rising cost of game creation too.
SILKYSMOOTH30FPS
Member
You think the game has been in an intense development for 12 years? By the time it comes out, it'll be 13y. Nobody makes video games that take this long. Scam Citizen is all there is, and that's because it's a scame, not a video game.
SILKYSMOOTH30FPS
Member
They obviously have more people on gta, the game is generations ahead in complexity. 8y for Bananza makes zero sense.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Just like I thought. Many are struggling to deal with some reality here. Funny how many on GAF shit on western devs that also have games in pre-production for years too at times.
Nintendo getting the Nintendo pass once again by yall.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Don't shoot the messenger, it's the first line of the Nintendo Life article.
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.
Man years are what count, not the development time. Ten developers working for eight years might produce the same output as GTA 6's team working for one month.
Yeah, I'm thinking the tail end of SW2 for Mario and Zelda.
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yeah, but that had to be scrapped and start over, I'd love to see what Namco was working on and if Retro was able to use anything from that version.
touchfuzzy
Member
Difference being that Nintendo's games actually release eventually (and very often to critical acclaim and high sales)
Western devs will be in pre-production for three years and have the studio fold.
schaft0620
Member
I wonder if this is how these things happen:
- 2018 work starts, they want to do something different than Mario, they workshop a DK game around Odyssey design and engine.
- 2020 Pandemic hits with work shifts/there are delays and changes
- 2022-ish Switch Pro pivot
- 2023-ish Switch 2 pivot
- Fall 2024 game is finished, waiting for console launch
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
No way this game was finished 9 months ago. It would have been a launch game if that were the case.
SamuraiEdge
Member
Yeah that fits well with the initial first portion being a small team with good R&D. All been worth it to get a proper DK game.
diffusionx
Gold Member
People are missing an obvious point here. Nintendo started working on DK Bananza immediately after SMO. They did it on original Switch hardware. At some point the decision to switch (ahem) to the new console was made, then they had to wait for the new console to come out. They had the luxury of working on it for this long in whatever capacity they had to for that amount of time, but if the Switch 2 was due out last year this game likely would have been to.
Not necessarily... it seems Nintendo has been staggering their game release calendar for a long time now. I don't think this game was finished 9 months ago but that's because they planned on it for releasing in July a month after the Switch 2 cane out, intentionally.
Not necessarily... it seems Nintendo has been staggering their game release calendar for a long time now. I don't think this game was finished 9 months ago but that's because they planned on it for releasing in July a month after the Switch 2 cane out, intentionally.
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Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Why would it be a problem? Switch 2 managed to sell all its launchstock without it and now they help reduce gaps between releases a bit and maybe give DKB more space and visibility and hopefully more sales.
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Azelover
Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
Metroid Prime 4 is taking almost seven years.
Nine years if you don't consider the reset.
Mario Kart World might have taken a very long time aswell. I guarantee the MK team wasn't working exclusively on DLC for 8 Deluxe this whole time.
I'm sure they were planning and working on World ever since 8 came out. So maybe 10 years or so there..
Nine years if you don't consider the reset.
Mario Kart World might have taken a very long time aswell. I guarantee the MK team wasn't working exclusively on DLC for 8 Deluxe this whole time.
I'm sure they were planning and working on World ever since 8 came out. So maybe 10 years or so there..
Dacvak
No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
There's a lot of speculation going on in this thread. The truth is we have no idea what development cycles are like for Nintendo, especially now that everything is lumped into Nintendo EPD (which has something like 15 different subdivisions).
It's possible this game was "started" by a small team who worked on the voxel physics, alongside a dozen other games that may or may not see the light of day. It's possible they've been done with development for years. It's also possible that they've had 100+ people working on this non-stop for 8 years. And anything in between.
The point is, Nintendo development is a total black box. We get to peek through slivers of a crack every so often, but we'll likely never truly know how their modern development structure works. (Unless we get another mega leak…
)
Until then, the best thing we can do is speculate. But there's no point in jumping to set conclusions.
It's possible this game was "started" by a small team who worked on the voxel physics, alongside a dozen other games that may or may not see the light of day. It's possible they've been done with development for years. It's also possible that they've had 100+ people working on this non-stop for 8 years. And anything in between.
The point is, Nintendo development is a total black box. We get to peek through slivers of a crack every so often, but we'll likely never truly know how their modern development structure works. (Unless we get another mega leak…
)Until then, the best thing we can do is speculate. But there's no point in jumping to set conclusions.
RodriGames40
Member
Just take it as if it was a Switch 1 game, because that's literally what it is.
SILKYSMOOTH30FPS
Member
Not sure i follow what you're trying to say. Dev time matters and so is the dev team size. Do we know the size of the team in charge of Bananza? If it's 50 devs, 7y makes more sense, but even then, when you have the likes of Exp33 done quicker and by just 30 people, not sure wtf is Nintendo doing. And if their team is 100 people or more, then there's no way this game was in development all this time. They probably planned a concept, put it on the side for 3-4 years, and came back in the last couple of years to fully build the game. The game looks way too simple to be taking a long time to develop, no way it took them even 5y for something like that.
LordOcidax
Member
I have the feeling that this game is going to be way bigger than we think…
MSduderino
Member
? No reason to think this. Nintendo releases their games on a set schedule and has no issue sitting on stuff if needed. Mkw was clearly strong enough to carry the s2 launch.