Donkey Kong Bananza has released to rave reviews, holding an average critic score on review aggregation site OpenCritic. It's another first-party success story for Nintendo, which has been consistently putting out high-quality games for years.
An interesting thing about the eponymous Donkey Kong is that he's voiced by Kouji Takeda in the Japanese version of the game. 'Voiced' is a strong word in this case, as Donkey Kong's vocabulary is limited to a series of grunts in Bananza.
The weird part is... Takeda voiced Donkey Kong in the Super Mario Bros. Movie as well (well spotted, IGN). As you probably know, the movie role is actually voiced. Takeda's English-speaking counterpart is Seth Rogen. Takeda also "voices" Donkey Kong in Mario Kart: World, replacing Takashi Nagasako who had performed the role for over two decades.
Takeda has performed other roles in Nintendo games in the past, such as Daruk in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He also played the Prince of Oceana in Metaphor: ReFantazio and 1-0FF in Concord.
Nintendo's new era has been accompanied by a lot of recasting, including that of Charles Martinet's Mario and Samantha Kelly's Peach. Donkey Kong Bananza...
