We know Donkey Kong Bananza as the third first-party Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive game, following Mario Kart World and Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. However, this might not have been the case originally, as in a recent interview with IGN, the developers of the 3D platformer reveal that it was initially being created for Switch 1 systems.
To begin with, producer Kenta Motokura explains: "So this game originally began its development cycle on Nintendo Switch 1 and at the time, we were still using voxel technology and thinking of lots of different ideas for applications. But when we learned about the Switch 2 development, we realized that the best implementation of these ideas and technology would be on Nintendo Switch 2."
Director Kazuya Takahashi then elaborated with the following: "And when I was previously talking about the importance of the continuity of destruction, that was something that we could expand on and have a longer continuous play experience with that kind of concept on Nintendo Switch 2. So this allowed us to engage in creating really extremely rich variety of materials and very large scale changes in the environment on that new hardware. And when destruction is your core gameplay, one really important moment that we wanted to preserve was when a player looks at a part of the terrain and thinks, can I break this? Because that creates a very important surprise that has a lot of impact for them and that was something that was best done on Switch 2."
The interesting part is that Takahashi also specifically explains that the processing power and the increased power of the Switch 2 wasn't the reason for the change of platforms, it was also the variety of new mechanics and features on offer.
He expresses: "But it's not really even just the processing power of the Switch 2 that I think attracted us and gave us some interesting possibilities. There was also the device itself that offered things like mouse control, which you can use in co-op play for a second player to control Pauline's vocal blasts or DK Artist, a mode where you can sculpt a large set of voxels."
Do you think it was the correct decision to make Donkey Kong Bananza exclusive to Switch 2?