In a previous interview, Nintendo confirmed that Donkey Kong Bananza was initially in development for the Switch 1 before being moved to the Switch 2. In fact, we even got a screenshot showing what things looked like on the old hardware. But now, in another interview, we know more about why Donkey Kong Bananza really wouldn’t have been possible on Nintendo Switch 1 at the end of the day – especially in its final state.
Donkey Kong Bananza typically runs at 60 frames per second on Nintendo Switch 2. On Switch 1, 30 FPS would have been the goal – but it seems the team struggled even to achieve stable performance at that level. What’s even more interesting is that at the time of Switch 1 development, Nintendo hadn’t yet created the lower layers and, according to co-director Wataru Tanaka, “if we continued to create the game like this all the way through, it might not be possible.”
Below is our full translation of the excerpt from Nintendo Dream’s interview with Tanaka, artist Daisuke Watanabe and producer Kenta Motokura:
This time the game was for Nintendo Switch 2, and I definitely felt the increase in Nintendo Switch specs in terms of things like the amount of terrain fragments scattered around, but did that make development more difficult?
Tanaka: Rather than saying it was harder, I’d wonder if we’d be able to pull it off on the original Switch. From a programmer’s point of view, the memory capacity would be very limited, and I think it would be difficult to accommodate the many steps we did on the Nintendo Switch.
As for the differences with Nintendo Switch 2, the team would say things like “We can have a frame rate of 60 FPS”, “We can increase the amount of placed destructible objects that the player can interact with”, “It will be easier to design and create levels with chain reactions of destruction”. So overall the response has been very positive because there’s been an increase in what we’ve been able to do.
In an “Ask the Developer” interview, you showed photos of the game being developed on the Nintendo Switch and it looked like it was mostly finished. Did the game at that time and the game today play out essentially the same way?
Tanaka: The basic structure of the game was the same but it was still under development and the lower floors had not yet been completed. It was a time when we said to ourselves that if we continued to make the game like this until the end, it might not be possible.Watanabe: At that time, the game was in a state where the frame rate did not maintain a stable level of 30 FPS, and therefore the feel and response was very different. I think it didn’t really feel like the same game we have now.
Motokura: Even the shadow expression was at a stage where we didn’t know if we could add it. There were already times, for example when a lot of gold was coming out, where the processing couldn’t keep up, so I was surprised to think that the machine was being pushed to the limit of its capabilities.
Tanaka: It wasn’t so much the amount of gold, but rather the intensity of changes in the image (voxels), we were just starting to get into the technical side of this, and we thought there would still be many changes as development continued.
Is it true that more than the appearance of the terrain itself, it is the material of the terrain that modifies the processing of the voxels?
Tanaka: Yes, it’s true. When you hit or dig into the ground, you see fragments break and roll. At this time, behind the scenes, intense processing is carried out to ensure that the fragments have a good shape and disperse satisfactorily.
Donkey Kong Bananza is now available on Nintendo Switch 2. If you’re wondering what the game was like on Nintendo Switch 1, check out this page.
Translation provided by Simon Griffin, SatsumaFS and Philip Proctor on behalf of Nintendo Everything.
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