Early previews for Donkey Kong Bananza have been positive so far, with some describing the game as a potential Super Mario Odyssey moment for the DK franchise. That just might be the most apt description possible, because Bananza is being developed by the same studio behind what is considered to one of the best Super Mario video game of all time–Super Mario Galaxy fans might beg to differ here–Nintendo EPD Tokyo.
Nintendo had previously confirmed this during one of its Treehouse presentations, but beyond that, the company is being secretive about who is leading development on the project or who some of the key staff members are. This would also explain why we haven’t seen a new 3D Mario game since 2017–but we have seen numerous other Mario projects since then–if the studio has been focusing heavily on creating this ambitious new adventure for DK. GameSpot has reached out to Nintendo for clarification, and we’ll update the post as soon as we hear back from the company.
As noted by VGC, development on modern 3D Mario games has been led creatively by Kenta Motokura, Yoshiaki Koizumi, and Koichi Hayahsida, but their names haven’t been listed in new EPD-developed games since Odyssey in 2017. Several of these games were developed in conjunction with other Nintendo divisions, and it is worth noting that Nintendo has a much higher retention rate of employees compared to other studios and publishers across the world, where mass layoffs have sadly become very commonplace.