Nintendo dodges a question about Donkey Kong Bananza being a Super Mario Odyssey prequel

Donkey Kong Bananza is coming exclusively to Switch 2 on July 17, 2025, which means we’ve got just a bit under a week until the game arrives! Leading up to launch, IGN had the chance to talk with producer Kenta Motokura and director Kazuya Takahashi about the title, and the duo was unfortunately unwilling to engage on the discussion of Donkey Kong Bananza perhaps being a prequel to Super Mario Odyssey.

You can see Mr. Takahashi comments on this topic below:

Certainly because a lot of team members also worked on Super Mario Odyssey, there are some similarities in terms of how they think about the setting of the characters for both games, but it’s something we really can’t explain all of for now because we need to leave something for people to consider as they’re playing the game.

[director Kazuya Takahashi]