Nintendo experimented with adult Pauline in Donkey Kong Bananza

Donkey Kong Bananza introduced young Pauline into the mix, but it turns out that Nintendo originally experimented with the adult version of the character that fans were previously familiar with.

That information comes from an interview with Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream. During that discussion, producer Kenta Motokura indicated that the team wanted to feature Pauline early on, “but we could not find a way for her to fit well into the gameplay.” Later on, the character was made younger as it was more natural for her to be on DK’s back that way.

Below is our translation of the excerpt regarding adult Pauline in Donkey Kong Bananza:

Motokura: Pauline was one of the characters we originally wanted to appear in this game, but we could not find a way for her to fit well into the gameplay. Once we made a prototype for the Bananza transformations, (Naoto) Kubo made a song from that, and then once we connected the song and the transformations, the inclusion of Pauline was decided.

Why was her age set as 13?

Takahashi: In order to allow them to travel and adventure together, we put her on DK’s back. At first we tried her as an adult but a girl felt better in terms of size, and we thought that this would be the first time for many to play as DK, so as a new character this seemed to fit better.

Nintendo Dream went on to bring up how it seems unusual for Nintendo to publicly announce the set age of a character. However, Takahashi said that as far as the story is concerned, “13 is an age where you start to experience conflicts and struggles, and also when you begin to think about your dreams for the future.” Because of that, Nintendo “thought it was the perfect age to be able to portray that kind of a story.”

On the topic of Donkey Kong Bananza, we recently shared something you may not have noticed about what can happen when DK dies in the game – check that out here.

Translation provided by Simon Griffin, SatsumaFS, and Philip Proctor on behalf of Nintendo Everything.