Ever since Donkey Kong Bananza was first revealed, players have been salivating to get their hands on the game. However, since millions of people are still unable to purchase a Switch 2, they wonder if the game could have been made for the original Switch instead. Recently, Nintendo revealed an image of what the game might have looked like on the Switch 1.
Donkey Kong Bananza Started as a Switch 1 Game
In an Ask the Developer Q&A with Bananza producer Kenta Motokura, directors Kazuya Takahashi and Wataru Tanaka, art director Daisuke Watanabe, and sound director Naoto Kubo, the team discussed how the game was originally planned as a Switch 1 game, beginning development after Super Mario Odyssey’s release in 2017. As Tanaka states, “It was clear that the memory available on Switch would struggle to handle that load, and we felt that manifesting the huge volume of terrain that we did in this game might have been unachievable on that platform.”
So, What Would Have Been Sacrificed to Release the Game on the Switch 1?
Watanabe stated:
“We first looked into how we could upgrade what we’d originally built for Switch to take advantage of Switch 2. One of the most obvious improvements was that we could place far more objects in the environment than before. Being able to place more objects in the terrain didn’t just enhance the game’s visual richness. More importantly, it increased the amount of things players could destroy, which amplified the exhilaration of being able to demolish anything and everything. That went hand in hand with the game’s core concept of destruction. It convinced us that this game would be even more fun if we developed it for Switch 2.”
The Q & A includes a pair of images comparing what Donkey Kong Bananza looked like in the Switch 1 build to the final Switch 2 build. Indeed, the Switch 1 still has an emptier environment compared to the Switch 2 image, though it doesn’t look bad by any means. Still, since the destruction physics are such a huge part of the game, it is understandable to want as much stuff to destroy as possible. In addition, while there are apparently some framerate drops in the Switch 2 release, the framerate would have apparently dropped much more on the Switch 1.
Conclusion
I preordered Donkey Kong Bananza even though I still have been unable to obtain a Switch 2 to play it on. Even if I have to wait a while to play it, the game looks amazing, and I won’t regret owning it. It would be nice to play it right away on my Switch 1, but I’d also like to pummel my way through the Donkey Kong Bananza environment without trouble. Let’s just see how those Switch 2s become readily available soon.
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