A recent interview with Donkey Kong Bananza producer and Super Mario Odyssey director, Kenta Motokura, has revealed what happened when the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto got his hands on the 3D platformer. Miyamoto went hands on early in development and the team were extremely curious as to what he thought and what he would do. It turns out Mr. Miyamoto liked to stick to one single sub level and completely decimate as much of the terrain as he possibly could. Mr. Motokura said that that he and the team thought this was a good thing and it proved that everyone approaches Bananza differently.
Luckily, the team wasn’t going in blind – they had help from an all-star playtester. “We had Miyamoto-san check the game occasionally,” says Motokura. “But instead of progressing through the game, he just stuck to one point, smashing and digging around a lot. It was a good thing to see him playing that way … it proved that there are a lot of things that players could potentially be curious about in the game.”
