Donkey Kong Bananza wins the praise of Donkey Kong Country artists who also had the job of redesigning the ape 31 years ago: "Reunited at last!"

While Nintendo has been killing off their characters in Donkey Kong Bananza, former Rare developers behind Donkey Kong Country seem really keen on his latest adventure.

Donkey Kong Bananza is the biggest shake-up for the series since 1994, when what was then Rareware rebooted the series into Donkey Kong Country, with the new design being the characters' first makeover since then. When the game was revealed, the designer of Donkey Kong Country's redesign, Kevin Bayliss, was a big fan of it – despite fans pitting the designs against each other- and has since praised the new look for Diddy Kong too.

Now that Bananza is out, Bayliss was quick to get his hands on it, posting on its release day with a copy of the game. "REUNITED AT LAST!" Bayliss tweeted, promising to stream "my first play with my ape-son for a looooong time!" And after actually getting his hands on the game, Bayliss added, "It's FANTASTIC! TOADALLY BANANAZ," joining in the praise that has landed the game a spot as the fourth highest rated game of 2025.

However, Bayliss isn't the only Donkey Kong Country alumni to hype up Bananza, with Playtonic co-founder Steve Mayles – who worked on first two SNES games as an artist, before going on to work on titles like Banjo Kazooie and Yooka Laylee tweeting, "The more I see of DK Bananza, the more I consider getting a Switch 2 just to play this game...looks like they've done a great job on it."

Donkey Kong Bananza player spends over 4 hours pushing its destruction to the absolute limit by smashing up an entire level: "Well, that took a while."