The Moment My Kids Screamed During the (Excellent) Donkey Kong Bananza Trailer

It's clear the new Donkey Kong will be a hit because of two things: Pauline and co-op.

It’s rare that I’m able to watch a Nintendo Direct when it airs live with my children, but this week’s closer look at Donkey Kong Bananza, the first wholly original Donkey Kong game since 2014’s Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Nintendo’s ill-fated Wii U, fell during a 15-minute window where my kids are eating food before heading off to daycare. (My oldest is now out of school). And so, we watched it together.

This one detail says a lot: my wife kept getting frustrated they weren’t responding to her questions. That might be a negative for the parent, but Nintendo’s probably happy.

Both of my daughters are indifferent to Donkey Kong. They chuckled at Seth Rogen in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, but I’ve never seen them (nor their friends) ever play as Donkey Kong in Mario Kart. That said, when I briefly played Donkey Kong Bananza during Nintendo’s big Switch 2 event, I had a hunch my youngest would be into it.

Donkey Kong Bananza was revealed back in March as a game set to arrive just a few weeks after the launch of the Switch 2. Unconventionally, the next Nintendo hardware platform would arrive without any word on the next Mario game. And while a new 3D Mario is almost certainly on the horizon—at least, that’s what I tell myself—Donkey Kong Bananza seemed like a fun middleground, a character with fewer expectations.

I enjoyed my all-too-brief time with Donkey Kong Bananza, even if the 15-minute chunks were hardly enough to grasp much of the game beyond “it’s cool to smash things.” The thing is, for my youngest, I knew that “it’s cool to smash things” would be a home run. You could feel the influence of Minecraft and Nintendo’s recent Zelda entries in Donkey Kong Bananza, where there’s a combination of goal-oriented gameplay (find this, smash this, collect that) and freeform gameplay (it’s fun to smash everything around you and watch it fall apart). This is a bit of a blanket statement, but my impression of many children these days is they often gravitate towards the latter.

This is why I was more interested in having my youngest watch with me. To my delight, she was entranced, and very excited about watching the world blow up.

One minute and 45 seconds into the Direct, none of this mattered. Both shouted:

“Who is that?”

These children love Princess Peach. They love Daisy. Of course, they’d fall for Pauline.

Pauline is Nintendo’s original damsel in distress from 1981’s Donkey Kong arcade game, but she largely disappeared from the spotlight until re-appearing as mayor of New Donk City in 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey. Here, we encounter a younger Pauline.

In Donkey Kong Bananza, Pauline travels with Donkey Kong as friend and tool, helping transform Nintendo’s ape into different versions that have additional abilities, like flying. But I knew a follow-up question from my kids was coming as soon as Pauline appeared: “Can we play as Pauline?” I groaned. This did not look like a co-op game.

Then, 13 minutes and 56 seconds into the Direct, my eight-year-old yelled at the TV:

“TWO PLAYER!”

That, friends, is when both of them screamed in unison.

No, it’s not “two player” in the way that you or I would probably think about it, but more like the co-op that Nintendo has flirted with in its platformers since 2007’s Super Mario Galaxy. Then, a second player used another Wii remote to shoot stars at the screen and help the person controlling Mario from harm. In Donkey Kong Bananza, someone becomes Pauline and tosses rocks at the screen to help out Donkey Kong.

Even better, there are multiple ways for co-op to happen:

• Detach the Joy-cons and give one of them to the other player

• Use GameShare to have the second player be a co-op partner on another Switch

  • Importantly, that second Switch can be an original Switch

• Use GameChat and GameShare together, so you can talk while playing

  • Note: This requires both machines are a Switch 2

Would a more fleshed out co-op mode be nice? Sure. Do my kids care? Nope. Does it seem like Dad’s real Switch 2 launch game is Donkey Kong Bananza next month? Yep.

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• A reader proposed this idea about GameShare: Is there anything stopping Nintendo from extending the technology to an app on your phone or tablet?

• Another GameShare idea: Would it be technically possible to use GameShare to allow an original Switch to play a Switch 2 game, if Nintendo would allow it?

• I haven’t used GameChat yet, and it’s probably the biggest reason why I’ve been tempted to buy another Switch 2, because my kids are my best excuse to use it.