Nintendo explains why Pauline was made young in Donkey Kong Bananza

It goes without saying that Donkey Kong is the star of Donkey Kong Bananza, but young Pauline – who’s 13 years old in the title – is pretty important as well. Aside from accompanying Donkey Kong on his journey, she plays a role in the gameplay.

Now thanks to an interview with producer Kenta Motokura and director Kazuya Takahashi, we have some information about why Pauline is in the game. Having a character journey with Donkey Kong was always a part of the plan. Eventually concept art for the zebra transformation was made, it was prototyped, music was made, and that music was turned into a song. 

In an interview with IGN, Motokura stated:

“Yes, as it turns out, from a very early stage in development on Donkey Kong Bananza, the team was discussing what kind of character would be best to accompany Donkey Kong on his travels. And as early as that stage, I do recall that someone had suggested Pauline might be a good choice, but Pauline was not implemented directly into GameSpec at that time. I think the moment we actually realized we would go in that direction came about as a result of an artist who created some concept art of the zebra transformation. We saw that image and thought it was really fun, so we immediately prototyped it to try it out in the game. And when our composer saw that, they decided to create specific music just for that transformation.

And the music for it was so good, we thought we could expand on this and turn it into a song and maybe Pauline would be a good choice to sing that song. And so we then asked the composer to create songs for each of the transformations and I think that’s what really cemented Pauline’s place. I think a lot of ideas really fell into place after we had decided on Pauline as the accompanying character…”

Takahashi went on to talk about how it made sense to have Pauline in the game as a human players could connect with as well as to put a focus on the power of her songs:

“I think one of the things that really works very well for us in choosing Pauline is that she’s human so she speaks in a language that the player will understand. And our setting is a strange underground world where you’re interacting with animals and even rocks that speak in some cases, so it’s a lot to take in. I think it’s really good for the player to have another human that they can see on-screen who is reacting to these strange things, noticing stuff, pointing them out, even giving hints. And in a game where you take destruction as its core gameplay, there’s a lot of objects that are hidden waiting to be discovered. So it’s really helpful to have information coming to the player as audio cues so it’s not getting in the way of visual information on screen.

And we also wanted to emphasize the power of Pauline’s song in this game. And so she has the ability to make music that shows the route the player could follow or even opens up new routes to go see. And we have a co-op play that allows a second player to control Pauline’s vocal blasts that can interact with both the terrain and with enemies. Sorry, that was a rather long answer, but I really do think that a lot of ideas came out from this choice of Pauline as an accompanying character. So looking back, I think it was a choice we’re all very happy with.”

Something else asked is why Pauline is 13 in Donkey Kong Bananza. Regarding that, Takahashi and Motokura stated:

Takahashi: Well one of the important roles that we knew we wanted this character to accomplish was in accompanying Donkey Kong on his travels and acting in some cases as a bit of a narrator. And considering we would probably have both new players who are experiencing a Donkey Kong game for the first time, as well as people who are long-time fans of Donkey Kong. So we had the opportunity to offer a character that was familiar to long-time players, but had a new appearance that might be interesting for new folks as well.

Motokura: And so we’re always thinking about the setting of not just the world but also each character itself and how that’s going to impact player enjoyment in the end.

Takahashi: Now as to why 13-year-old in particular was the choice, I think that’s something that we want players to, in the course of enjoying the game, start to puzzle out, think for themselves.

Donkey Kong Bananza comes to Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17, 2025. The developers also revealed that the project was originally in the works for Nintendo Switch and shared that it was the producer of Super Mario Odyssey who pushed for a new 3D Donkey Kong.