Is Donkey Kong’s Bananza Emerald Rush DLC Worth the Bananas?
So, one of the surprise announcements for the Nintendo Direct was that Donkey Kong Bonanza, not Mario Kart World, the $80 game, Donkey Kong Bonanza was indeed getting DLC. And spoiler alert, kitties, the DLC was available on Friday. Now, Donkey Kong Bonanza was one of my favorite games thus far in 2025. It’s kind of like the Astrobot of 2025 to me. just a game that looks good, feels good to play, is fun, has cool references to stuff. So, I was very stoked to see this paid DLC because yes, this is indeed paid DLC. It costs $20 to pick up and I know a lot of people are probably wondering, well, is this worth picking up? And I haven’t been on the internet much the past couple of days, but I felt like not enough people were talking about it, so we’re going to talk about it. If you appreciate this video, hit that like button, leave me your thoughts in the comments, and hit subscribe if you are new. Now, this is kind of a twofold DLC. One of the main things is that Donkey Kong Island is now a place that you can go to. And as you could see, it looks great. Like, I I thoroughly thoroughly enjoy just kind of exploring Donkey Kong Island. You could see here, we’re going into Donkey Kong’s house. He’s got his stash of bananas. He’s got his little fap poster for Candy Kong. I mean, bro, let’s be real, man. Candy Candy Kong kind of bad. Like, like, I I understand what I understand what that man is doing with Candy Kong. I I fully understand it. But Donkey Kong Island is definitely kind of like the nostalgia place. Like, you’ll see things that you remember from like the Donkey Kong Country games, but now it’s fully realized in 3D. No, I’m not counting Donkey Kong 64. There’s also references to other Donkey Kong games as you’re exploring the island. You can see some bongos there in the distance. Just very cool. Essentially a fan service area, but there is functionality to it as well. There are some secrets that you can discover. There are bananas there. There’s exploration to do. Very cool. You can also talk to squawks and get statues that are put kind of all over the place and you can move them around and like make a make like a Stonehenge, I guess. I I don’t really know. Like I don’t know. The statues are cool. They only cost a 100 chips at least thus far. So, you know, it’s not it’s not that big of an investment, but you do want to save your chips. And I will explain why in just a moment. But here’s one of those glorious statues. I mean, that’s cool. But Donkey Kong Island is definitely very cool and a welcome addition to the game. And then you have the gameplay portion of this DLC, and that is a new mode called Emerald Rush. Now, the setup for Emerald Rush is actually pretty interesting because if you’ve played the main game, you would know that Void Kong, he’s not exactly like your friend, but now he is. and you’re like working for homeboy and stuff like that. And essentially what this does is it changes all of the gold into emerald in the levels and you have to get the gold or which is now emeralds in order to please void Kong because you are his employee. Now you only have access to select levels. It’s not every level that is applicable with this. Now, I’ve already beaten some of these levels, and I will show you guys the new level, but there’s also like a badge system that is the rewards. The more sort of emerald you get, the more rewards you get and the more unlockables you get. Um, I’m not sure if this fills out anymore. It does look a bit barren, but that is something worth noting. And then you have the perks list because when you do an Emerald Rush, all of the perks that you have from the main game are stripped from you. Now, you can pick up perks as you are playing the Emerald Rush mode in order to make Donkey Kong and by extension Pauline stronger, but that is something that is it almost gives it like I guess a roguelike element to it because and and not to say I’m a fan of rogue likes or anything like that, but it does play a role in like how much emerald you are getting. And then you essentially have the emerald rush and this is what you’re doing. And you could see on the right side of the screen there is a timer with a quota. Now I know what you’re saying to yourself. Well, RGT, the timer just started. And you’ve you’ve already reached the quota. And you’re correct. I I already have. It starts out slow and when you end up finishing a round, then Void Kong will then like take things from you. He’ll take away some emerald and then you have to get more emerald because he’s taking his cut of the quota of course. So that’s kind of a thing in and of itself. The fossils are how you get new perks. So you get three random perks to choose from along with two other things. You can refill your health or change the goal if there is a goal set whenever you get a fossil. So, collecting these fossils and collecting some of the bananas that have built-in abilities will kind of give you, you know, your strength, your powers, and and stuff like that in order to make Donkey Kong stronger in order to get more emerald because some of the things are like, well, if you hit, you know, a a stalk that’s growing out of the ground of emerald, then you have access to more emerald. There’s like bonus boosters and stuff like that. And then you also have the goals that are randomly generated throughout the level. You have one goal at a time. You can transport a limited amount of times to an area. You can also set up a barrel like wherever you want and transport a limited number of times. But you come across these little goals here. And as you can see, there are payment options for how much you will get for completing the goal. The goals themselves are pretty easy. And honestly, they they repeat pretty often. There’s like really there’s like four main goals and then there’s sometimes goals like ride a mine cart, go to a checkpoint area. So, it’s like, okay, that’s not too hard. All the chips that you pick up are then used to purchase different abilities. So, as you’re collecting chips, sometimes you want more chips. You have to get a certain amount of chips in order to level up a certain ability for Donkey Kong and Pauline. I kind of found myself just focusing on like more basic things, kind of like increasing my health just in case because you can get some bonuses if you get some certain perks from fossils and focusing more so on the destructible elements like your power punches and stuff like that and your collecting radius. To me, those felt like the most reasonable things. Like I don’t understand like why I would do the elephant or why I would do the ostrich because I haven’t had a situation where I felt like I really needed to have something like that. Now you can control the difficulty level. There are levels to the difficulty that you can choose from. You get bigger payouts, but you also have bigger quotas to hit. Now, you will get to a point though if you only play each level once that you have access to that you’ll actually have to replay a level in order to get a new rush going on in order to have enough stuff to unlock the next level. The one thing that I’ I’ve definitely noticed with this is that runs themselves, they can take a while. Like even this is just the the base run, the the lowest level one that you’re seeing here, but like once you crank it up just a little bit, like some of these runs are are actually quite long and I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re challenging or anything like that, but it just it takes a lot of time. It’s definitely a bit of a time sync. Now, as far as how the DLC performs and stuff like that, I mean, it performs exactly like Donkey Kong Bonanza does. you know, you sometimes do have camera issues, you sometimes do have frame rate issues, you sometimes do have popin issues, but it still does look very well done. It’s really aside from DK Island just essentially taking all of the gold and making an emerald. So, it’s not like they’re actually adding in new stuff to the levels that you’ve already been to. It’s just changing what was in there to make it match the gameplay mode. I do think it it is fun and it definitely sort of, you know, leans into the whole destruction element of Donkey Kong Bonanza, which of course is like really the main element of the game. But I also think it would have been nice if they would have like thrown in a little bit like more variety of of stuff like maybe maybe a couple new platforming levels and stuff like that like throwback stuff that was that was definitely very wellreceived in the main game because nothing has really become different. And this is a $20 paid DLC. Now bringing our base game if you want this plus the DLC to $90. And to me, I honestly feel like this should have been something that was a paid DLC but also included in the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack Plus, whatever the hell it’s called nowadays because of the fact that, you know, it it it it’s adding new content. But is it really like DK Island is awesome? Like I get it. It’s super cool and I am a target audience for someone who likes DK Island. But beyond that, the base game is still the same. You’re just kind of adding roguel like elements into it. And I think it would have been better off as both paid DLC, but also included in Nintendo Switch Online expansion pack. I don’t regret my $20 purchase because I really enjoy this game. But if you didn’t enjoy this game as much as I did, I I don’t think this is going to give you like a feeling of like, oh, this is so different. This is so new. This is so great. Because it’s really not. it. It’s still the exact same stuff, just changed a little bit. So, you know, I’m having fun with it. I don’t regret my purchase of it. And, you know, I think it’s pretty cool, but at the same time, like, if it didn’t exist, I I don’t really feel like I’d be missing out on much. Although, you know, DK Island would probably would probably be calling to me. But, let me know in the comments section down below. Have you picked this up already? If not, if you’re on the fence about it, what did this video kind of do to, you know, persuade you? Did it make you want to buy the DLC? Or are you good with the base game and you don’t really care about Donkey Kong Island or nostalgia? Because I won’t blame you either way. Like, I I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer with this. It just kind of comes down to what you dig and what you’re looking for with Donkey Kong Bonanza. You might be done with the game. You might have had your fix and now you’re waiting for the next thing. And as always guys, thank you for checking out this video. So, like I said at the start, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to hit the like button. Be sure to subscribe to the channel if you are new as well. And as always, I’ll catch you guys on the next video later.
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