Development of the upcoming 3D platformer, Donkey Kong Bananza, began on the Nintendo Switch 1. If you’re wondering how it looked on previous-gen hardware, read ahead.
During the latest edition of Ask the Developer on Nintendo’s official website, the Donkey Kong Bananza development team at Nintendo EPD was asked whether the upcoming 3D platformer was planned as a Switch 2 game from the very beginning. In response, producer Kenta Motokura revealed that the game’s development originally began on the original Nintendo Switch. A screenshot showing the graphics assessment for Donkey Kong Bananza on both the Switch 1 and Switch 2 was also revealed.
Donkey Kong Bananza Switch 1 vs Switch 2 Graphics
A comparison between how Donkey Kong Bananza looked on the Nintendo Switch 1 and the graphical upgrades it received on the Switch 2 can be seen below.
The Switch 1 screenshot of Donkey Kong Bananza on the left is missing looks barren in comparison to the Switch 2 screenshot, which features much denser foliage, higher quality assets, improved lighting, and higher Level of Detail (LoD).
Designer Daisuke Watanabe mentioned that the development team first looked into how it could upgrade what it had originally built for the original Switch to take advantage of Switch 2. As evident from the comparison above, one of the most obvious improvements was that far more objects could be placed in the environment than before. He mentioned that being able to place more objects in the terrain didn’t just enhance the game’s visual richness. It also increased the amount of things players could destroy, which, according to him, amplified the exhilaration of being able to demolish anything and everything. This went hand in hand with the game’s core concept of destruction, convincing the development team that the game would be even more enjoyable as a title developed exclusively for the Switch 2.
Programing lead Wataru Tanaka offered the programmer’s perspective, saying that voxel technology is well-suited for creating gameplay centered around destruction. However, it also uses a lot of system memory, and the development team faced the challenge of Switch not having enough to support everything it wanted to do. The larger memory pool and greater processing capabilities of the Switch 2 gave Nintendo EPD the freedom to incorporate gameplay ideas it had previously abandoned, such as explosions flinging large objects or causing them to collapse, due to them being too demanding for the original Switch. Designers could also place as many objects as they wanted.
