The Donkey Kong Bananza Direct shows the game looking utterly bananas

Nintendo just wrapped up its Nintendo Direct for Donkey Kong Bananza, and there’s no other way to say it — this game is absolutely bananas. A far cry from the original reveal for the game, which was quite surface-level, it looks like Donkey Kong Bananza will be one of Nintendo’s biggest and most inventive games in years. 

We saw in the original trailer that destructible terrain and environments were at the core of the game, and that still seems to be the case now. Donkey Kong can smash through just about anything, punching holes through the landscape and throwing rocks into enemies to defeat them, but there’s a lot more depth to the system now, too. 

In addition to being able to destroy terrain, DK can now also use softer terrain to build structures, like a bridge to get across a ravine, or ride a large rock as if a surfboard, kind of like shield surfing in Breath of the Wild. You’ll be able to unlock a host of abilities to do more with terrain as you progress through the game – it looks to have a pretty deep amount of RPG elements, which is very unexpected for a game like this. 

Odd Rock, the little purple rock that we saw alongside DK in the initial trailer, seems to have largely been a ruse, too. In the Direct, we saw that Odd Rock was actually a young Pauline in disguise, and she’ll be joining the leader of the DK Crew on his journeys, using her magnificent singing voice to assist the ape throughout their adventure. This has interesting ramifications for DK lore, and we don’t really know if this Pauline is just a younger version of the Pauline we know with a revised timeline, a descendent of the Pauline that’s the mayor of New Donk City, or a de-aged Mayor Pauline — we’ll have to wait and see how that pans out in the game. 

Pauline’s singing voice also helps Donkey Kong take on incredible new transformations, including a powerful Kong Bananza form, which sees him grow in size and power, as well as a zebra form that can sprint fast enough to cross oceans without sinking and an ostrich form that can soar through the air. It’s honestly pretty incredible how much is going on here, and there’s undoubtedly so much more to discover, too. We didn’t even get to the Breath of the Wild-like shrines and 2D platforming segments, either, so you’ll need to watch the Direct in full if you want to see everything the game has to offer. 

Donkey Kong Bananza will be released exclusively on the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17, 2025.