Donkey Kong Bananza vs. Harmony

Today Nintendo has aired a Direct for Donkey Kong Bananza and the game looks quite phenomenal, they are truly doing something fresh and grand with this classic IP. The Direct revealed a young Pauline as DK's singing sidekick and since this is likely coming from the creators of Super Mario Odyssey, it feels like a potential prequel to that game, where Pauline became the mayor of New Donk City. Some more connections between Donkey Kong and Super Mario, besides the usual Mario Karting, certainly wouldn't hurt. After all, it all began with Donkey Kong on Arcade.

Anyway, something about the footage felt quite familiar to me and it wasn't the Super Mario Odyssey style and outfits. It was about a singing girl riding on some big animal, who can even transform into bigger animals with the power of "Bananza", like a running Zebra and a flying Ostrich. It reminds me of the cancelled game by Retro Studios, called "Harmony", where a demo of it was leaked alongside a Nintendo Switch devkit dump earlier this year.

You can read some technical stuff about it on TCRF. There also used to be some footage of it, but it was taken down, where you will have to settle for a video from Arlo. Anyway, in the game you were going to play a redheaded girl, who sings to summon different creatures, like some grassy plant giant, who even has a similar statue to Donkey Kong. And then she is riding on their tops as you control these creatures, just like young Pauline on Donkey Kong. It wasn't anything amazing, so I'm not disappointed that this project didn't go anywhere, but to me it seems like some essence of this is going to live on with Donkey Kong Bananza.

Since the Harmony demo is from 2017, the prototyping Switch days, I doubt that Bananza had any influence on its cancellation. Like, the similarities could have been considered a problem, but I feel like it's more likely that there was a healthy influence. Maybe there was and we could hear about this in the developer interviews. Maybe Retro Studios was even involved in the development somewhat, but they were busy with Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, so it's doubtful.

In any case, the duo of Donkey Kong and Pauline has a lot more charm, so I certainly prefer that direction. And this truly has to manifest in the next Super Smash Bros. game somehow – I don't want the old Donkey Kong anymore, I want DK & Pauline. The Kong Bananza could even become his Final Smash.

Another game that I was reminded of by the footage is Tears of the Kingdom. The Lagoon Layer looks a lot like the Sky Islands. And the giant holes that lead down to the next layer feel a lot like the chasms into the Depths. If only the digging would have been as smooth in that game...

Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo Switch 2

Super Smash Bros. finds itself in a similar position to Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch 2. Both franchises usually only produce one game per system, if at all, and both have gotten their most extensive and ambitious entry in the series so far on the Nintendo Switch, with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing: New Horizons respectively. These games can still be played on the Nintendo Switch 2 and with Kirby Air Riders and Splatoon Raiders in the making, we shouldn't expect successors anytime soon, since these projects block their usual developers.

Of course, Masahiro Sakurai may retire after Air Riders and never make another Smash Bros. game again in his life, where someone else might take over, but we all know that this is not how famous producers roll. He will likely return to Smash Bros. after development of this side project has finished later this year, but this still means that we shouldn't expect a successor to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the next two or three years.

As for Ultimate, it's possible that they may update the game for Nintendo Switch 2 somehow, but we shouldn't expect any meaningful additions here, like new stages or fighters, though it would certainly be lovely. And it won't fix the game's biggest issue, which is the latency based netcode, where a change to rollback netcode wouldn't be possible due the required backwards compatibility, where you will still be playing against Nintendo Switch users. And even for a new Smash game on the Nintendo Switch 2 rollback might still be too tricky to implement, since the game isn't just about itemless 1v1s. We'll see.

The next game will have to face a number of challenges anyway, the biggest one being Super Smash Bros. Ultimate itself. With 89 fighters and 115 stages to offer, it creates a similar situation to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and its 96 courses, where it will be difficult to top this. Mario Kart World doesn't even try and instead went into a completely different direction, much to its success.

And this might also be an option for the next Super Smash Bros. title – don't just make it the next game in the series, make it a completely new game. So far every entry has always built upon its predecessors, step by step. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate even used most of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U as a foundation to make "Everyone is here!" possible, arguably the greatest moment in the franchise's history.

But it's easy to tell how historically grown the series is at this point and how much dead wood it's been carrying. By focusing on bringing back most of the classic stages in the series, there was ultimately little room for new ones. And a bunch of the characters only exist on the roster, because they used to be in one of the past titles, not because they have any real relevance today.

Just look at Sheik, who has been in every entry ever since his/her introduction in Melee, where Ocarina of Time was such a massive milestone that it led to four character additions at the time. But the character of Sheik is long in the past, never to be featured in any of the Zelda games again, where today the spotlight in Smash Bros. may feel a bit odd. And Ganondorf, even though his moveset has evolved a little bit, is still a heavyweight Captain Falcon clone at his core... Which probably won't ever change, unless Super Smash Bros. itself changes.

And that's the idea behind a reboot: ignore everything that came before. Treat it like a completely new thing, as if Super Smash Bros. was first made today. Mainly use the latest iterations of Nintendo's characters as an inspiration to make it a true product of its era. And don't limit yourself by any conventions of how Super Smash Bros. was played before.

Let's take Samus, for example. We're long past any range limitations with attacks, so there is no good reason why she has to fight with such a limited Power Beam. Firing long-range beams should be her normal attacks, where potentially she should even have access to the Wide and Wave Beam upgrades. She should also be able to crouch slide, like in Metroid Dread, and the Grapple Beam could be so much snappier.

Donkey Kong may come with his redesign from Donkey Kong Bananza, even when people haven't warmed up to it yet. And gameplay-wise he could become the Anti-Steve, a character who is able to completely demolish the stage (at least temporarily). Someone wants to recover? Just rip off the stage's corner and throw it at them!

They could also go crazy with Link and give him abilities from Tears of the Kingdom, like Fuse, Recall and Ascend. The latter could be his recovery move, where he could dive right through the stage from below. Recall could become a fancy reflector and Fuse could let him do all sorts of things with the game's items, like merging a baseball bat into the Master Sword.

If this all sounds ridiculously overpowered to you, then keep in mind that this article was written by a Min Min main, who obviously doesn't care for restraint. But the way of how they had translated ARMS into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was truly something else – a character that feels like no other in the entire game. And maybe this shouldn't be an anomaly, maybe that's how every character should get treated going forward. Playing Samus in Super Smash Bros. should feel like playing a Metroid game, not like playing a completely crippled version of her, which conforms to certain basics. (If we ever see the Knight from Hollow Knight as a guest character, then I expect the same here.)

With every fighter redesigned completely from scratch, the roster will get much smaller, of course. But the roster will likely end up smaller in the next game in any case and the huge number of 3rd party deals won't be sustainable forever. However, if everyone is new, then it will be much easier to accept any cuts, because ultimately no one is truly returning in such a scenario. You will get a new Mario, a new Donkey Kong, a new Link, and a new Samus, instead of the same old characters from the past six titles.

This philosophy should also go into all the other aspects of the game, like stages and items. Don't take anything for granted. Don't even take for granted for how things are supposed to work. Items and stages could be completely connected in this game, where instead of having all these random drops, the items become an integral part of each stage.

Let's say that there is a "Great Sky Island" stage, based on Tears of the Kingdom, then it could feature Bomb Flowers, Puffshrooms and different Zonai Emitters as its items. They would work similar to your classic Bombs, Smoke Balls and so on, but they appear as a natural part of the stage. There could even be a Device Dispenser present in the background, which spits out different Zonai capsules.

Or, in a Super Mario stage you would find ?-blocks for your typical power-ups, like the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, Super Leaf and alike. Pokéballs would only be present in Pokémon stages. Maybe some stages (and franchises) won't have items at all, which is also okay. There doesn't necessarily need to be a default set that always appears, but this is where Assist Trophies come in place, which could function similar to the Flying Man on Magicant. Instead of an actual item that you pick up, they should work like stage bosses, where you can get them on your side by attacking them. For example, there could be a Hyrule Castle stage from Breath of the Wild, which features a Guardian as the "main item".

By making items an integral part of the stages, it would already add a unique experience to every stage by default, making the stage selection a lot more interesting. But it would also limit things, where you won't be able to summon Metroids at Hyrule Castle any longer. This is just one possible idea for a different approach, however, and you would be able to turn off items in any case, together with stage hazards.

If the stages were to get more crazier by design, then having competitive variants of each stage would become even more important. We already had the Battlefield- and Omega-versions in the past, but maybe a new game could offer both a normal and a competitive variant for all its stages, where the latter features a simpler layout, no stage hazards and no items. If you play "For glory" online (which really should return), then it will choose those, where such an approach will offer much more variety than just playing Final Destination all day long.

Anyway, this article has turned from the question of Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo Switch 2 into a discussion of how to reboot the series... But it's by far the most interesting approach, where after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate it's time for something fresh.

Animal Crossing on Nintendo Switch 2

Today Nintendo has announced that Splatoon 3 will be getting a major update with new weapons and a returning map (Urchin Underpass), as well as enhancements for the Nintendo Switch 2. On top of that, they are making a Switch 2-exclusive spin-off to the series, Splatoon Raiders.

That's exciting news for Splatoon fans, but for fans of Animal Crossing this means that it might take years for a new game to arrive, since both series are (sadly) developed by the same team, Nintendo EPD5. This has been an issue for a while, where Animal Crossing: New Horizons could have done well with regular updates, which simply wasn't in the cards due to the development setup.

Considering that it's actually the second-best selling Nintendo Switch title, with a gigantic margin even, it's a questionable decision not to have a dedicated team for the franchise. Other franchises, like The Legend of Zelda, even get multiple development teams working on different projects in parallel, like Tears of the Kingdom and Echoes of Wisdom. Of course, Animal Crossing is a franchise where one game per generation is more than enough, where it is reasonable to let its developers work on other projects in the meantime. But Splatoon has also become quite popular and both series profit tremendously from regular content updates...

Now, the best we can hope for in the near future is that they will also consider making a similar update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Well, they said that version 2.0.0 was going to be the last major update for the game, but this was many years ago and I don't think anyone would mind if they are going to change their minds on this. Similar to Splatoon 3, this game isn't really a candidate for a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, because you need it to stay compatible with the Nintendo Switch for the multiplayer stuff, so it would also have to be some free update, where all the new contents are accessible to everyone with the game.

As for what they could add to the game at this point, they could follow the example of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and its Booster Course Pass. Here they took contents from the mobile game, Mario Kart Tour, brushed them up and brought them onto the Nintendo Switch. Why not do the same with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp? They have stopped development on that title as well and it's filled neat things that people would certainly like to have in New Horizons. Whether that's furniture, clothing, or even new fruits, there is a lot they could re-use here to add more value.

And let's not forget about all the things that never made the cut from New Leaf, like the Splatoon and Legend of Zelda guest characters, or being able to create your own galleries in the museum. Sprinkle some of the most wanted quality of life improvements on top and you will make a lot of fans happy. Let players create a second island on Nintendo Switch 2 systems and you will find people upgrade to the new hardware for this alone... With that in mind, it doesn't necessarily need a new Animal Crossing game on Switch 2, at least not anytime soon. They could just iterate New Horizons and make it the best it can be.

As for the next game, they will have to come up with something innovative here to set it apart from New Horizons and to also create an experience that wouldn't have been possible on the Nintendo Switch already, like how they made Mario Kart World an open world driving game. People will still be able to play New Horizons on their Switch 2s, whether it will receive a shiny update or not, and there needs to be more than prettier graphics to warrant a new game.

One idea would be to offer much bigger towns than in any game before, and also being able to join online communities, so you can live together with friends all over the world, not just the people in your household who you share a Nintendo Switch with. Being able to interact with others online was a massive seller during the covid pandemic and such a game would deepen this aspect. This would also be a huge incentive to invest into Nintendo Switch Online, which is what Nintendo wants us to do in any case.

However, if you've been on a community Minecraft server or anything similar, you'll know that there is the risk of such servers dying down quickly. And once you're the only one taking care of the town, it's easy to give up entirely on the game, because being alone in a multiplayer environment feels much lonelier than just playing in singleplayer. So, Nintendo would have to come up with a more dynamic approach here, where people can move to other communities (with all their belongings). In the end, living together with other players online should enrich the experience, without taking away from the classic charm. But it's just one idea.

Whatever the next game will look like, the most important thing is that they bring back the Zelda crossover contents. I'll never forgive them for leaving them out in New Horizons!

Tears of the Kingdom – Sage Fabrics

It's been a while since I have played Tears of the Kingdom. In fact, I haven't really touched the game since completing it about a year ago. And given that you own a Nintendo Switch 2 already, there are now several good reasons to revisit the title, such as improved visuals or the new voice memories in the Zelda Notes app. But if you stay with the Nintendo Switch for now, like I do, then the new amiibo will have to do.

Sadly, they still haven't fixed the amiibo system (and probably never will). So, if you want the new paraglider fabrics in a timely manner, you will have to save scum, where at least this still works fine. I got lucky with Sidon, who gave me his fabric on first try, and with Yunobo after a couple of tries. But in case of Tulin and Riju I had to reload over a dozen times.

The designs of the new fabrics are nothing outstanding, but still quite good nevertheless. They were at the risk of treading the grounds of redundancy, since you already have the fabrics for the different tribes in the game and also the four Champion fabrics, where now they had come up with something new. But Riju's is the only one where this might be an issue, but I personally like its design much better than Urbosa's or the Gerudo fabric.

And the others are a bit more original. With Tulin it even looks like you have mounted him right above you, which is funny. And Yunobo's fabric is bearing the YunobCo symbol, which is really cool, but it would have been disappointing if this weren't the case, and this feels like an omission in the main game, even. The only letdown might be Sidon, where I personally like the other Zora designs better, but at least they were trying to do something different.

Anyway, below you can find a gallery of all the new stuff. For each of the fabrics you can see the message when obtaining them, their full design in the paraglider rework, and how they look in action.

 

Sage of Wind Fabric

 

 

Sage of Fire Fabric

 

Sage of Water Fabric

 

Sage of Lightning Fabric

Got the Tears of the Kingdom Sages amiibo

While the entire Nintendo community is busy with showing off their shiny, new Nintendo Switch 2s, my inner Nintendo simp will have to settle with what's probably the least interesting thing that came out today: the four amiibo of the Sages. Tulin, Yunobo, Sidon and Riju, all featured in their awakened form, now also get some well-deserved attention in the form of plastic figurines, equipped with NFC chips.

It's only fair after how they had to take the backseat to the Champions in Breath of the Wild (well, technically it was Teba in that game and not Tulin), but sadly they didn't get the same four-in-one pack. Or maybe this is a good thing, because some people might only want one of them, e.g. Sidon. And the prices are 33% higher this time around.

The figurines themselves are nice. They can't really compete with the Tears of the Kingdom Ganondorf from late 2023, but I do personally like them more than the Link and Zelda that we got in this series. Wielding the Champion weapons makes them look a lot more interesting already.

Riju and Tulin are quite filigreed, especially Riju, and they come with bent see-through stands to keep them in the air. Yunobo is very sturdy, not as heavy as Daruk used to be, but it still feels quite nice. And Sidon shines with his impressively detailed crown and collar.

They truly don't have to hide from their Champion counterparts, where they show more details here and there. For example, Sidon's Lightscale Trident actually shows those little, cyan pendulums beneath the top part. But they still go nicely next to each other, as you can see in the photos above.

What's not so nice are the new backsides for the amiibo boxes. They are now completely generic, only telling you that you can use amiibo with compatible software. And what software that might be is now up to you to find out... To be fair, with an amiibo from Tears of the Kingdom, you can make an educated guess, but it was still nice to read what it actually does within the game.

Well, it's curious that they were still featuring the Nintendo 3DS on the package back in 2023, where it's understandable that they don't want to show that any longer, or even things like saving your Mii on the amiibo. But they could have swapped all that for the Nintendo Switch 2 and generally put some more effort into this.

Of course, this isn't a deal breaker and most people may even throw the package away anyway. However, I always cut off the cardboard part to collect them for later reference and because the artworks look nice. And now there is a stylistic split between the first three Tears of the Kingdom amiibo and this group.

Still, I'm looking forward to the Mineru amiibo and to complete the collection. I have yet to scan them for their fabrics, where I haven't even seen them all, but I will do this later today or tomorrow and then make another post.

Echoes of Wisdom ~ Echo Favorites Added

Today Nintendo has launched updates for all Nintendo Switch games that will receive Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade, whether that's for free or as a paid Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, for tomorrow's launch of the new console. Some titles, like Xenoblade Chronicles 3, also got a compatibility fix. Most of these updates only relate to the Nintendo Switch 2, but some games also got some general improvements on top, where you will profit from them on the Nintendo Switch as well – the updates are downloaded in any case.

Tears of the Kingdom, for example, has received the paraglider fabrics for the four new Sage amiibo of Sidon, Riju, Tulin and Yunobo, which will also be released tomorrow. And both it and Breath of the Wild now support Portuguese as a system language option (voices will be in English, however).

But the big winner in all of this is The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, because its version 1.1.0 contains what's by far the most requested feature for the game: the ability to favorite echoes and then display only your favorites. This is the message in the game for the new feature:

This functionality gets unlocked once you've obtained 30 echoes. There is no limit to how many favorites there can be, so you can mark all of them, even though this would defeat the purpose. You can also manage your favorites from within the Notebook, which is a bit more comfortable. And you can sort your favorites in the same ways as all the echoes. There are even new background visuals for the favorites in quick menu, so you can tell its state on first glance:

Overall, this is a fantastic addition, which can make managing your echoes much simpler, instead of only relying on the "most used" sorting. Ideally, there also would have been filters for certain echo types (e.g. fire enemies), but this alone will help quite a lot.

The exact same thing was even part of my update suggestions for the game from last year, where this is would have been nice to have since the beginning. But better late than never... And I'm still planning on replaying the game in Hero Mode, once I have a Nintendo Switch 2, where I will certainly make good use of the favorites going forward.

And it's a shame that they didn't bother with adding this feature to the looooong material list in Tears of the Kingdom, where you had the exact same issue. Or that they didn't bother with improving anything in Breath of the Wild, where it could make good use of all the quality of life changes from Tears of the Kingdom. These are the Zelda games where they are selling these new Nintendo Switch 2 Editions, after all. But maybe this will still happen later on... Tears of the Kingdom will need one more update for the Mineru amiibo anyway.

If the favorite feature in Echoes of Wisdom gets received well, which it should, then Nintendo may even consider doing similar improvements to the other Nintendo Switch Zelda games. And they really should. No game is ever perfect, but they can strive to be.

Nintendo Music: Tears of the Kingdom Added

There it is! Just in time for the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition release of Tears of the Kingdom, we get the entire soundtrack on Nintendo Music. It contains a total of 344 tracks, fully based on the official soundtrack from last year, track by track, which means that it also has all the trailer music. This new playlist is a beast to listen to and a gigantic addition with almost twelve hours, arguably the most important one for the franchise.

But of course they shouldn't stop here. Hopefully, the soundtrack of the Link's Awakening remake will be coming soon, to cover as much from the Nintendo Switch as possible. There has yet to be an official soundtrack for Echoes of Wisdom, where they will probably release that first, before they add it to Nintendo Music... Which means that it could still take years before it appears in the app, given that they bother with releasing a CD version of it to begin with, but I personally liked the game's music quite a lot.

The soundtracks for A Link Between Worlds and Majora's Mask are also good candidates to be dropped at any point. With Twilight Princess I'm guessing that they might wait for the game to be included into the Nintendo Switch Online library, where they could even do like a double release, where you get the GameCube game and the soundtrack in the same week. This could also be true for stuff like Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, but those have low priority and first there needs to be Nintendo DS games.

Anyway, there was no new Zelda music last month, but instead they have added a "Best of: The Legend of Zelda series" playlist, which is so shallow that it wasn't even worth mentioning until now. At least they are updating it when adding new games, where in case of Tears of the Kingdom they've added the main theme, the opening and Lookout Landing...