I’ve been a lifelong Nintendo fan—I literally started my video game journey with Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda on the original Nintendo Entertainment System in the late 80s. So, I’ve always loved Nintendo’s intellectual properties. But like many gamers, my transition to adulthood has altered my relationship with some of these IPs; I don’t have endless time to play video games, at least not like I did as a child. When I do get time to play, my desires for what these gaming breaks give me have grown and morphed over the years. I often crave serious storytelling and find myself drawn to deep RPGs; other times, I want mindless action that can drain the frustrations of adult life, so I fire up my favorite squad-based shooters or more often something from the Alien universe.

That’s not to say that Nintendo can’t meet these desires. The Zelda franchise is in my bones, and I regularly go back and play through the older titles. That said, as much as I enjoyed the Wilds Era games (Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom), there was some hard-to-define quality missing from them, that didn’t give me the same joy or desire to replay them as I typically feel with my favorite franchise. Nintendo games, on the whole, have been good, but not great for me. There just hasn’t been a Nintendo release that I’ve lost my mind over, not for a while anyway. Enter Donkey Kong Bananza.

Admittedly, the game took me a few hours to get into, but once I was fully in, I was hooked. Donkey Kong Bananza is just so much fun, scratching gaming itches I didn’t remember having. It’s got the mindless stress relief: going Kong Bananza and smashing through 10,000 cubic meters of earth is fun I never tire of. The game also has the joy of exploration: hunting for bananas and rare fossils surprisingly captures a similar feeling as playing a Zelda game, that “oh, I wonder what’s over here” mindset that filled me with wonder as a child. Finally, the game has challenging platforming and combat that allow for strategy and player preference in solving that truly creates a unique experience. I love all the Bananza transformations and how the game seamlessly weaves them into the exploration and combat portions of the game. The fact that a single game can hit so many gaming targets puts it atop my Game of the Year list.

But the biggest surprise for me personally is how much my daughter and I love playing Donkey Kong Bananza together. We’ve been splitting time on my Switch 2, each of us progressing through the game on our individual profiles. But regardless of who’s playing, we’ve been glued to the screen, watching how the other person handles certain challenges or noting discoveries that the other person didn’t find. We find ourselves singing to the music, laughing over facial expressions from DK and Pauline, and even searching up the original Donkey Kong rap on YouTube. Donkey Kong Bananza has given my daughter and me another Nintendo IP that we adore, and time connecting with each other as we take a summer journey to the planet’s core.

So thank you Nintendo for giving me another incredible franchise to enjoy. I guess I’ll always be a fanboy.

Tell us what you think! Are you enjoying Donkey Kong Bananza? Share your reactions in the comments below or join the conversation on Boss Rush Network’s Discord, Facebook, and Twitter.

Featured Image: Nintendo