Donkey Kong Bananza has had a lengthy development time, with the director claiming work started on the game right after Super Mario Odyssey.

The limitations of the original Switch hindered DK Bananza enough that the developers decided to wait for Switch 2.

Nintendo has given fans a rare peek behind its development curtain, and a look at how upcoming Switch 2 platformer Donkey Kong Bananza would have looked on Switch 1.

A Donkey Kong Bananza Switch 1 port could have emerged, but the Nintendo Switch 2 became the only way forward for the platform game.

Donkey Kong Bananza will be releasing at midnight of your region’s easternmost time zone on Thursday, July 17. This can be a bit confusing for those who live in larger countries, but as soon as it hits midnight anywhere in your region, the game will become available to play — barring any hiccups.

A technical experiment of putting the hands of Super Mario Odyssey boss Knucklotec on a Goomba led to the destruction mechanic being used in Donkey Kong Bananza.

Expanding on comments previously made to IGN about Bananza's origins, producer Kenta Motokura has said that the game's development began when Nintendo legend Yoshiaki Koizumi asked his 3D Mario team to work its magic making a 3D DK game instead.

Nintendo eventually decided that smashing environments was a perfect fit for Donkey Kong.

An all-new 3D platforming game, Donkey Kong Bananza, is launching exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17th. Donkey Kong punches, grabs, tosses, climbs, smashes and flexes his strength as he explores the depths of this wild action adventure together with his new friend Pauline.

Destruction is at the core of Donkey Kong Bananza, with seemingly every bit of the environment ready to burst into voxels (tech that was actually developed first for Super Mario Odyssey ), which naturally can result in dropped frames, as some Donkey Kong Bananza preview s have noted.