New Bananza Nintendo Direct confirms natural birth for Donkey Kong

The new Donkey Kong Bananza-themed Nintendo Direct was filled with tantalizing new pieces of information about the upcoming new DK game. Avid fans like me were soaking up every little bit of information, trying to figure out exactly how it fits together with the rest of the Donkey Kong series. There were lots of little lore reveals, including the fact that we now know that Donkey Kong came into the world via a natural birth. This is a revelation that adds a new level of understanding of his history – and no, I’m not joking (just really weird).

So while we anxiously wait for the day that Donkey Kong Bananza earns its spot at the top of the best Switch games list (as is its birthright), let’s fully unpack the revelation in the headline (look, we’ve got a month until the Donkey Kong Bananza release date, I’ve got to keep myself occupied). Yes, we could talk about Pauline being a little girl in it, or Diddy and Dixie being there, but we don’t yet have enough information about their roles to draw any solid conclusions about how this fits into the timeline or anything.

So, how do we now know that Donkey Kong had a natural birth? Well, until now, the only information that we had about the start of DK’s time on this earth came from Yoshi’s Island DS. In that game we see that various babies were kidnapped by Kamek’s Toadies and brought to safety thanks to the storks that we know canonically brought Mario and Luigi into existence. As these storks were helping Donkey Kong too, it seemed logical to conclude that they were what brought him into the world too.

But, no. Unlike Mario and Luigi, Donkey Kong came into this world via a natural birth, just like you or I. How do we know this? Well, the Direct gave us a glimpse of the character customization screen where you can put DK in different outfits. One of the outfits is simply called “Naked” and the description is “…as the day you were born. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of.” We know that the storks deliver babies already wearing nappies, or in DK’s case, a special bib. Therefore, though the storks helped protect him as an infant, they did not deliver him into this world.

Fascinating stuff. I can’t wait to see what else we get to learn from Donkey Kong Bananza. I suspect it will give us more insights into the history of the Donkey Kong universe than even Star Fox Adventures did – and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can have fun reading up on it while we wait for Bananza’s release.

Donkey Kong Bananza will be available on Thursday, July 17, 2025 and is already available to pre-order.

Read about everything announced in the Donkey Kong Bananza Direct for more information about the presentation. Our list of upcoming Switch games is also worth a look if you want more reasons to be excited.