Guide: Donkey Kong Bananza’s Full Control Scheme

Donkey Kong Bananza, the first 3D action platformer starring Donkey Kong in decades, is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on July 17.

In this guide, we will introduce the game’s control scheme.

Supported controllers

Donkey Kong Bananza can be played with a pair of Joy-Con 2 controllers or Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller.

The control scheme is the same regardless of the type of controller you use.

Character Movement and Camera Movement

To move Donkey Kong, you have to use the left analog stick, and to control the camera, you have to use the right analog stick.

You can invert camera movement and disable camera shake by going to Options in the pause menu.

Basic actions

There are four basic actions you can perform with the ABXY buttons:

• A button – Jump
• B button – Punch Down
• X button – Punch Up
• Y button – Punch

Punching is one of the most important actions in Donkey Kong Bananza – you can use this ability to destroy rocks, obstacles, and enemies.

Other actions

The shoulder buttons give you access to a couple of other actions:

• ZL button – Roll / Turf Surf (when holding terrain)
• ZR button – Grab/Throw
• L button – (Press and hold) Whistle
• R button – Hand Slap
• L button + R button – (Press and hold) Drum Chest

You can roll and turf surf on certain terrain with the ZL button, and grab and throw enemies and objects with the ZR button.

Other types of actions can be performed with the L and R buttons during gameplay.

Map and Pause

Open the map by pressing the – (minus) button, and the pause menu by pressing the + (plus) button.

Full control scheme diagram

Here is the full diagram for reference: