Nintendo kicked off today with a Donkey Kong Bananza Direct presentation, which showcased a bunch of new gameplay details about the upcoming adventure, but perhaps most importantly, revealed that the Odd Rock character we met when the game was first revealed back in April, isn't a rock at all - it's Pauline.
It's not the Pauline we know from Super Mario Odyssey, though—it's Pauline as a young child, with dreams of becoming a singer. Before that can happen, however, she needs to make it back to the surface. Stopping Void Kong and his crew from reaching the planet's core and getting Pauline back to the surface seems to be the driving narrative force in Donkey Kong Bananza.
The direct showcased how Pauline and DK will work together, with DK using his strength to pound, grab, smash, and throw nearly everything around him, using the game's environmental destruction core gameplay concept to carve new paths, and create new paths by reassembling bits of the environment in some cases.
While Pauline uses her voice to manipulate the environment to solve puzzles, and with the help of Giant Elders teaching Pauline and DK their Bananza-powers, Pauline can transform DK into three new forms. The first transformation is Kong Bananza, which makes DK a bigger, stronger gorilla, capable of smashing parts of the world that normal-sized DK can't, and if you can believe it, causing even more chaos.
The other two transformations are Zebra and Ostrich Bananza. When DK transforms into his Zebra form, he's much faster, can run along water, and run across platforms that would otherwise crumble under normal DK, who wouldn't be fast enough to make it across without falling.
Ostrich Bananza gives DK the ability to fly, reaching heights DK otherwise wouldn't be able to reach, and drop egg bombs on enemies as you take to the skies. You can swap between each transformation, and activate them whenever you like, so long as you have a full Bananergy-meter, an energy meter you fill by collecting gold.
We also got a look at a few of the collectibles players will search for, like Banandium Gems, which can also be collected in smaller Banandium Chips form. There's also gold, collectible fossils, and challenge courses to find to earn more Banandium Gems, which can in turn become skill points, which was another major gameplay reveal.
DK has plenty of abilities players can take advantage of, whether that's smashing the environment, using chunks of the world to surf along the ground or on water, or double-jump, and they can all be upgraded through earning and spending skill points.
Pauline is also a playable character in Donkey Kong Bananza's two-player co-op mode, though it doesn't look like she's capable of getting off DK's back. All she can do is send vocal blasts out to various parts of the environment, helping DK out in puzzle solving and combat.
Donkey Kong Bananza also supports game share with other Nintendo Switch devices, which means that you can play the co-op mode with a friend, even if that person doesn't have their own copy of Donkey Kong Bananza. Game share works with Switch 2 devices locally or over online play, though it seems to only work with Switch 1 consoles through local game sharing.
The full direct was nearly 18 minutes, and in that time Nintendo showed off a lot about Donkey Kong Bananza, including plenty more depth than the game's first previews showcased.
When Wccftech's Nathan Birch previewed the game, he wrote, "I spent most of my time with Donkey Kong Bananza thinking about the possibilities presented by its mechanics. The tools are certainly there for puzzles that would require you to, say, mould the terrain in specific ways using your fists, explosives, and other tools to reach a goal. There’s a lot of potential here, and it seems likely the demo I played only showed a portion of DK’s full bunch of abilities."
This direct made it clear that there's plenty of potential in DK's abilities, and it'll be interesting to see in the full game how far Nintendo takes them all. In the meantime, we await that full release on July 17, 2025.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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