In an IGN interview, the developers behind Donkey Kong Bananza and Super Mario Odyssey provided some differences between both games.

While both games were made by the same team, they have several differences. For instance, the entire world in Donkey Kong Bananza is made up of voxel technology, unlike Super Mario Odyssey which didn’t make such extensive use of it.

Another thing to note is that there is continuity of destruction in Donkey Kong Bananza, as well as a different game cycle.

Here are their full comments:

I know a lot of people identified very quickly that your team, the Super Mario Odyssey team, was behind Donkey Kong Bananza because of certain elements like the menus and the open world design. What do you feel distinguishes Donkey Kong Bananza the most from Super Mario Odyssey?

Motokura: I think one of the biggest differences is that in the case of Donkey Kong Bananza, the entire world is made up of this voxel technology. And the reason for that is we wanted to create an arena that would make the best use of Donkey Kong’s physical strength as a character. So I think for me, that’s the biggest difference.

Takahashi: And I think you can see this come across in the level design where we had to consider the importance of the continuity of destruction. And on one level, similar to Super Mario Odyssey, each level has to be fun just if you’re playing through it the normal way without doing a lot of destruction. But the makeup of this game also allows for the kind of destruction that keeps connecting to new discoveries. If you see something in front of you and you pick it up and you throw it and it brings down a wall and there’s something interesting behind it, but then you also start to destroy the wall in that back area and it leads to another new item or area. That’s what we mean by the continuity of destruction.

Also, you may even encounter a Banandium Gem, which is different from the Power Moons in Super Mario Odyssey. In Donkey Kong Bananza, Donkey Kong actually eats the Banandium and gets a skill point that he can use to power up his skills. So you also might have different playstyles where experienced gamers are using these skill points to enhance or embellish their skills, whereas relatively new players or less experienced, might want to add to their life bar, for example, for survivability. We also have a gameplay cycle that I think differs from Super Mario Odyssey in that you can also go collect a lot of gold through your various explorations and use these to buy things which then allows you to experience different things in the game, creating a virtuous cycle that is different from what you would see in Super Mario Odyssey.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.