Donkey Kong Bananza players have managed to blow it wide open in less than a week, and the speedrun potential is bananas: "It's wild how much of the game you can bypass with the right tricks"

Donkey Kong Bananza players are pushing the game's speedrunning potential to its limits. It hasn't even been a week yet, and already someone has figured out how to get to the endgame without unlocking over half of the Bananza transformations.

Super Mario Odyssey showed that Nintendo EPD Tokyo has the sauce to create some incredible speedrunning games thanks to their in-depth movement systems; and players were showing that off on day one of Donkey Kong Bananza with a skip for the Canyon Layer being discovered. The game features five Bananza transformations that let DK take on the form of a superpowered beast, and the abilities gained through these are integral for completing their specific areas… at least they're meant to be.

Spoilers for the final Bananza transformations and a screenshot of an endgame area follow.

In the time since Bananza's launch, it's gotten even more intense, as now players have discovered it's technically possible to beat Donkey Kong Bananza without unlocking a number of the Bananza transformations. In a post on Reddit, a user has posted a thread titled "The amount of sequence breaks in this game is crazy" alongside a screenshot of Pauline and DK hanging out in the Planet Core Layer. However, upon closer inspection, the screenshot reveals that they only have the first Bananza transformation (Kong) and the second-to-last one (Elephant) displayed on their HUD.

The amout of sequence breaks in this game is crazy from r/donkeykong

"Just did a second run of DK Bananza trying to skip as much content as possible and I ended up unlocking only 2 Bananzas in the entire game." The user said, "It's wild how much of the game you can bypass with the right tricks. There are also entire layers you can skip. It's a really fun and surprisingly strategic way to experience the game differently."

While this wasn't a speedrun, it definitely shows off the potential of what Donkey Kong Bananza speedruns could be with this much of the game able to be casually bypassed. I'm sure someone will find a way to skip other Bananza's at this rate.

Granted, the final area of the game seems pretty much impossible without these, as there's one segment that requires the Zebra Bananza to reach the final boss, but I'm sure that'll be figured out in no time, too.

Donkey Kong Bananza credits reignite a popular Mario Kart World fan theory that the beloved gorilla is getting his own expansion in the Switch 2 racer.