Donkey Kong Bananza allows you to destroy almost everything in its levels. The Switch 2 exclusive even has a special menu option to restore a level to its default configuration in case you get too wild. Nintendo’s developers knew they wanted destruction to be central to the 3D action platformer’s design, but destruction alone wouldn’t be enough. They also needed the world the players were breaking to be beautiful.
Every child knows the irresistible desire to topple a perfectly placed tower of blocks or stomp on a carefully crafted sandcastle on the beach. Do Donkey Kong BananzaThe destruction really sang, it had to look like something worth breaking. “It is more amusing has destroy something that doesn’t look as he can be destroyed,” said the game’s software engineer, Tatsuya Kurihara, during a presentation at GDC 2026 this week, while speaking through a translator. “He East more amusing has destroy that which East beautiful.”
The levels required many additional visual flourishes, from patches of flowers and wildlife to ornate rock formations and snaking, overgrown trees to make the destruction feel like the show-stopper it was intended to be. It revealed that the game’s average level has 347,070,464 individually destructible voxels to help create the effect. This is an impressive result made possible by Nintendo’s unique style of creative experimentation and collaboration.
My city These remarks were delivered March 11 to a packed room at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It was the only talk Nintendo gave at the show and by far the most packed, with two queues snaking around the third floor as young game developers and established veterans raced to get a glimpse of the talent behind Nintendo’s games and hear an inside look at what makes them such popular hits.
It was a lively but simplified presentation. There were times when there was more of the energy of a Nintendo Direct than a deep dive into the technical art of game creation. It was as much a look at how the company approaches game development in general as it was a look at how the Switch 2’s first sprawling adventure game was created.
Like most Nintendo games, Donkey Kong Bananza grew out of small ideas the team had explored in previous projects. In this case, one of the main building blocks was voxel technology. used in Super Mario Odyssey for snowdrifts, blocks of cheese and other destructible objects scattered throughout some of its worlds. Kurihara was responsible for these game mechanics and decided to see if he could prototype them into something that could support an entire game.
My city The first result, as shared during the presentation, included a Goomba with two giant fists punching through Super Mario OdysseyThe Wooded Kingdom of . The initial test proved successful. “After manufacturing A box Or prototype, I felt THE ability has destroy any part of THE ground was A satisfying new interaction,” Kurihara said. “I especially liked the idea of being able to tear off pieces of terrain and throw them to destroy objects or make them stick. It was exciting. I felt we could create a game around the main idea.
It was producer Kenta Motokura who wanted to use these mechanics as a basis for the new Donkey Kong game. A veteran of the company for over 25 years, Motokura began his career at Nintendo as a character artist on games like Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. Now in charge and having recently led Super Mario OdysseyMotokura wanted to bring Donkey Kong back into the 3D action platformer genre. The voxel technology proved a perfect fit for the character’s established penchant for throwing and crushing.
My city None of this is all that surprising. In fact, it almost seems obvious. But part of Nintendo’s talent as a games company is its ability to combine simple, iterative ideas into games that nevertheless end up feeling exceptional and surprising. It’s this marriage of technique and creativity that can make new ideas inevitable in hindsight.
Motokura’s presentation and Kurihara highlighted two of the ingredients of this magic formula. The first is a penchant for looking at the past and reinventing it. Donkey Kong Bananza one might believe that it has nothing to do with the original Super Mario Bros. but as Motokura pointed out, part of the inspiration for making almost everything in the game destructible comes from that NES game’s second level, where Mario is underground surrounded by blocks that can be broken to create unique paths, including one that leads to a secret warp pipe.
“I’ve loved this scene since I was a kid,” he said. “You can interact with almost anything on the screen, and depending on how you do it, there are multiple ways to do it.” Donkey Kong Bananza also revolves around power-ups for DK that change how he can interact with and destroy the world. This is the modern analogue of Mario receiving a fire flower. SME1.
My city While the GDC conference focused on how the technology was put in place to power the Switch 2’s first big single-player success, it was just as much about Nintendo’s broader game development philosophy. Motokura and Kurihara kept returning to the theme of “merging” their ideas in a complementary way.
They also repeatedly stated that Donkey Kong Bananza was a joint effort made possible only by a large team where everyone’s contributions and comments, regardless of discipline, are integrated into the project. The conference ended with a photo of the “Banana Bunch,” a rare look at the core development team behind the hit 2025 at a time when Nintendo is more secretive than ever about who worked on what.
The company’s creative processes have never seemed more careful, but also never more relevant to an industry that struggles with chasing market trends, boom-and-bust production cycles, and selecting stable, long-term game development companies.
“This game was made by valuing everyone’s ideas and skills and merging them,” Motokura said. “And it doesn’t stop there. I hope to continue the merging process with all the game developers here today. Let’s create fun games and build excitement. Finally, I want to congratulate everyone here.”
