Donkey Kong Bonanza Began Development After Mario Odyssey’s Launch

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Grand Theft Auto 6 has been in development for quite some time. The last game in the series came out in 2013, and Rockstar’s latest title, Red Dead Redemption 2, was released nearly seven years ago. Given the scale of the next GTA, a long development time was expected. Take-Two confirmed that development actually began in 2020, not 2018 as some rumors suggested.

Surprisingly, Nintendo announced that their upcoming game, Donkey Kong Bananza, has been in the works even longer than GTA 6.

Donkey Kong Bananza Has Been In Development For Almost Eight Years

Donkey Kong Bananza is more than just a game about a monkey. It’s being developed by the talented team behind Super Mario Odyssey. However, many games today take a long time to develop.

In an interview with La Vanguardia, producer Kenta Motokura and director Kazuya Takahashi shared that development for Donkey Kong’s latest adventure began after they finished Super Mario Odyssey in 2017. That’s almost eight years—three years more than GTA 6 has supposedly been in development for, and about the same amount of time it took to create Starfield. It’s no surprise that the game has shifted from the original Nintendo Switch to the Switch 2.

As a big Nintendo fan, it’s hard to imagine that Bananza will be as large as those other games, showing just how different game development can be today.

“I can tell you that we started developing it after finishing Super Mario Odyssey,” said Motokura.

Motokura also explained why it has taken so long to release a new Donkey Kong game, saying, “At Nintendo, we make many types of games, and we always think about what best fits the type of experience we want to create at any time. We felt this was the right time to develop this game.”

Let’s hope that Bananza has been developed alongside the next 3D Mario game, as eight more years for that would be hard to wait for.