How Shigeru Miyamoto affects Donkey Kong Bananza's voice and movements

Donkey Kong: Bananza is a win, taking the rare IGN 10/10 and prompting our commentators to call it “a great successor to Super Mario Odyssey and bringing huge rewards to the classic Nintendo character.” It's a high praise for a brand new donkey game, and there doesn't seem to be much of a dedication from original Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto. But Miyamoto did share some feedback about Bananza with the development team, and now we know what that is.

We already have Learned from past interviews Miyamoto couldn't stop digging whenever he played the game in development. But now, Thanks to a new interview with Nintendo Dream Web (Independently translated by IGN), we also know what he thinks about the work of mining. According to game director Kazuya Takahashi, it was Miyamoto who suggested the “B” to prompt Donkey Kong to dig down instead of jumpers like Super Mario Odyssey. As he said:

Takahashi: Mr. Miyamoto also recommends button assignment. Since the game is an extension of Mario, we initially let you jump off the B button. But Miyamoto pointed out: “If you were to dig, would B be more intuitive?” Indeed, when I tried it, the critical mission felt intuitive, so it was based on Mr. Miyamoto's opinion.

Interviewer: I understand. The Y button is on the side and the X button is on the top, which is consistent with the Switch 2's button layout, so even those who are not familiar with action games will be easier to play if they keep this in mind.

Takahashi: Of course, some people are used to using B to jump with Mario, so for those people we can already change that in the options.

But that's not all. Miyamoto apparently also influenced a small but critical element of sound design, which was linked by producer Kenta Motokura and sound director Naoto Kubo:

Motokura: During the development process, both Miyamoto and Koizumi were constantly destroying the ground and surrounding areas. There are a lot of options to play in the field, so I think it feels good. He made some adjustments to the sound, right?

Kubo: Yes. “The donkey's movements look a little light. Maybe his footsteps are a little too light, too,” Miyamoto-san said. The footsteps are always what you hear all the time when it comes to sounds, so we think that if we make them too big and heavy, the effects of destroying the sounds may become weaker, so we keep them subtle. We adjusted the volume a little, letting Mr. Miyamoto listen to it, and we repeated it a few times. Finally, I think we can achieve a good balance so that we can lose weight.

So, thanks to the footsteps of Miyamoto's giant's sounded compared to all the excavation and crushing sounds he made. Thank you, Mr. Miyamoto!

Over the past few months, we have learned all kinds of interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits. We made one Large interviews with Motokura and Takahashiwhat we learned How and why the game is,,,,, The game's position in the donkey “Canon” and Necessity of Publishing on Nintendo Switch 2.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior journalist at IGN. You can find her post on bluesky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Is there a story tip? Send it to [email protected].