You have to go all the way back to the Nintendo 64 to play the most recent 3D Donkey Kong game. But without a new mainline Zelda or Mario title (Mario Kart World doesn't quite count) queued up for the Switch 2's launch in June,

I honestly could not have told you what I would have wanted from a 3D Donkey Kong game in the year 2025, but Donkey Kong Bananza seems to check all of the boxes I didn’t know I had. When I fisrt started the demo at a recent hands-on event for the Nintendo Switch 2,

Namely, the two most notable games I played were Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong: Bananza. The latter isn't a launch game, but they both made strong first impressions – not only as games themselves, but also as demonstrations of what the Switch 2 can do. Let's dig in.