Pauline is gaming’s original damsel in distress, captured by Donkey Kong as a guy with a hammer dodges barrels and climbs scaffolding to save her. Now she’s returning to the DK universe with the Switch 2's Donkey Kong Bananaza, but this time as a kid. Some fans have wondered what the hell is going on with the timeline. But the game’s developers recently explained how kid Pauline wound up in the game, and it turns out it has nothing to do with lore and everything to do with how design ideas seem to naturally flow from one another at Nintendo.
In an interview with IGN, Donkey Kong Bananza director Kazuya Takahashi and producer Kenta Motokura (Super Mario Odyssey’s director) were asked why Pauline is riding on DK’s back in the game. Their answer was a perfect window into how game development often seems to work at Nintendo, with each new decision occurring as a response to previous ones rather than as a top-down structure superimposed upon the project from the start. While Pauline was suggested as a possible sidekick for the game early on, she wasn’t there from the beginning (Bananza started development as a Switch game, the pair confirmed).
“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,” Motokura said. “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.”
He continued, “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.”
From there, a lot of other parts of the game started falling into place. Donkey Kong can’t speak but Pauline can, providing a narrative guide to Ingot Isle where the game takes place. Pauline’s music also became a clever way to mask game mechanics like pointing out which direction the player is supposed to go in. Co-op, meanwhile, lets a second player control her voice to stun enemies as DK is running along. Pauline is in the game because her character fits with cool gameplay ideas, not because Nintendo cares about the Donkey Kong timeline.
That doesn’t mean there’s no room for fun speculation about characters and crossovers, like whether Donkey Kong Bananza is secretly a prequel to Super Mario Odyssey. Motokura was asked point blank how old Donkey Kong is, but he demurred. “I think that’s another one that maybe is good fodder for player theories,” he said.
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