July 15, 2025
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Opinion: Honestly, I’m So Glad We Had To Wait For Donkey Kong Bananza

Opinion: Honestly, I’m So Glad We Had To Wait For Donkey Kong Bananza

By on July 15, 2025 0 0 Views
I saw this item shower for the first time after more than 60 hours of play. — Image: Omar Hafeez-Bore

Guys, I’ve played so much Mario Kart World.

I’ve done all the Grands Prix (on three stars, obviously), and the Knockout Tours (not on three stars, life is short). I’ve had an ongoing competition with friends on Mario Bros. Circuit Time Trial, where you go to bed victorious and wake up to a blurry photo of someone beating you by 0.003 seconds.

I’ve done more than 200 P-Switches and taken (I’ve just checked) about 211 photos in Free Roam, so now pressing minus is part of my normal driving flow and I share photos most days on our WhatsApp gaming group. Yesterday Ibby said “Great shots bro.”

I’m now at the point of obsession where you try to get the balance right to bounce on a Toad’s head indefinitely like a trampoline. Tricky!

It helps that the game is pure movement exuberance, every trick a bouncing, squashing, sparking laugh in the language of kart. And that the new moves turn it into a sort-of a momentum platformer, scratching some of the itch of not having a bona fide single-player Nintendo adventure at launch (and by ‘momentum platformer’ I mean you desperately try to fling your kart near a cliff edge with coins, overshoot, then try to get the rewind just right to end up on top anyway).

But there’s no way I would have mained this game so hard if Bananza was also out at launch. And I’m grateful for that, and the other ways the Switch 2 launch period has reminded me a bit of old-school Nintendo fandom. I know this feeling.

There’s Mario Kart, and the way the Free Roam mode has that unstructured (or unfinished har har) sense of self-directed play that came naturally when younger; getting new games on birthdays and Christmas, spending weeks licking the plate clean for all its offerings, then looking for new ways to play a game upside down and backwards (now spinning the plate?). The other day I was literally mooching around Mario Kart World backwards with ‘X’ held – it takes your focus off the route to better admire the cool tyre size transitions!

Then there’s the strong, thrifty, thorough energy in replaying all the upgraded Switch 1 games, too. You get that 20/20 new glasses wow-ness of loading up Tears of the Kingdom, say — simultaneously enjoying what you’re playing and how you remember it and loving the difference — and then using the Zelda Notes app (with grating GPS off) to finally polish off the main side quests. I was glad to have played the one with the mushroom-hunting gals, and it feels like a brief reprieve from the firehose of constant gaming newness, to dot some Is and cross some Ts and plunge again into the depths at 60fps and without a hitch.

This was a nice side quest. Thanks, Zelda Notes. — Image: Omar Hafeez-Bore

I suspect there’s also an element of Launch Period Grace, an unseen line where ‘the new stuff’ starts – as unreal-yet-real as a border on a map. I’ve got a new console and want to be playing it. That’s new-new stuff like Welcome Tour — a game I somehow keep going back to in small bursts despite it not recognising my TV as 4K, in which you can only pick up one piece of museum litter at a time — and new-old stuff like Cyberpunk.

I know some third-party stuff has apparently underperformed, but I’ve still felt that hunger-is-the-best-spice tug that means games like Fast Fusion get some love in a way that reminds me of first loading up my new Game Boy Advance at my dad’s house, with F-Zero Maximum Velocity (and a barely visible screen). Or all those 4-star, mid-80s-scoring classics-to-my-family, like Fighters Destiny or Snowboard Kids or Lost Kingdoms on the GameCube.

What’s weird is I think I was most struck the other day, when scrolling across the Switch home screen (apparently with unacceptable blur?), choosing which of the select, launch-glowed games to play. It reminded me of flicking through my N64 carts in their repurposed ice cream tub on days off school. Crazier still, I’ve just checked and there’s only about 10 of them, played and loved deeply enough to fill an era. (Yoshi’s Story was £18.99 from Cash Converters according to the peeling label on the back.)

Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life

I’ve had a blast getting to know my Switch 2, gorging on Mario Kart and the rest – pips and all. And now I’ve enjoyed these few weeks of runway where everyone’s gotten in-sync with excitement for Bananza – an all-timer Direct, some snippets of the songs, opening Chrome in lulls at work because Bing corrects it to ‘Bonanza’. So much of games is the context around them, and it’s nice to have some uncrowded space so ripe for hype. Now it feels like proper, Big Nintendo Release Time.

Just a couple of days to go.


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