Okay, how many of you automatically went to press the ‘B button to jump the first time you picked up Donkey Kong Bananza? It’s been a staple in Mario games for a long time, so it’s pretty natural to assume things would be similar here. Except it isn’t, but the change actually makes a lot of sense here. And we have one Shigeru Miyamoto to thank for that.
In an interview with Nintendo Dream (translated by Nintendo Patents Watch on Blusesky), the game’s director, Kazuya Takahashi, revealed that Miyamoto was the one who suggested that ‘B’ should be Dig, not Jump.
Acknowledging that B has historically been the jump button in many Nintendo platformers, Takahashi said “Miyamoto-san pointed out to me, “’for digging downward, wouldn’t the B button be more intuitive?’” And, given that the B button is the bottom face button… yeah, that makes sense.
Seems like Takahashi agrees, too — “When I actually tried it, this key mapping indeed felt more intuitive. So that was Miyamoto-san’s suggestion.” Well, there you go then.
Of course, for those traditionalists who can’t get over the B button not being jump, there’s the option to assign Jump to the B button. All’s right with the world, then.
There are some other fun tidbits in the interview, like how long the team spent balancing the sound of DK’s footprints with the sound of destruction. It’s worth checking out the whole piece for a real deep dive into DK’s latest outing.
Are you still enjoying Donkey Kong Bananza? Have you swapped the Jump and Dig buttons around? Let us know in the usual spot.
