Here me out.

Donkey Kong: Banana Wilds.

Open world. Encompassing the entire Kong Island.

***

I would love a remake of the original trilogy to be honest, with how great Nintendo pulls of materials, I think it's time for a 2D remake of those games in a 3D engine... Similar to what they achieved with Mario RPG.

Although it's probably impossible as I doubt any of the source material survives 30+ years later, remakes of the SNES trilogy using the uncompressed SGI renders would be a dream come true.

It's not just the improved clarity of sprites...

But the animation quality as well.
Many of the animations in Donkey Kong Country are only 2-5 frames... Which was acceptable for the time, but the fluidity that is achievable on a modern system is vastly superior as they aren't processing/memory/storage/bandwidth limited to the same extreme as the SNES era.

2D next although TF is a very high bar to follow.

I have waited ages for such a game!!

But Donkey Kong Banana Wilds should be a real game too. ^^

Yeah it'd be such a treat.

Sadly I can't see it happening due to so much of the source material for games back then being lost, and the nonsense narrative about that style of graphics "not ageing well".

Ah well, a man can dream.

And hey, while I'm dreaming, imagine a new DKC game made with modern pre-rendered graphics. Could look fantastic.

I mean they just put out a 3D DK for the first time in almost 30 years, so I wouldn't expect another one this gen certainly. I could see a 2D DK hitting Switch 2 late in the gen though. Though I think the Country series has been around long enough, it's time for a new take.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl2YybDiluQ

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2026/01/donkey-kong-country-returns-hd-gets-a-free-switch-2-update-and-adds-dixie-kong

Gonna be sometime until we get the next 2D version.

I mean, they released DKCR HD 6 months before Bananza. Pikmin 3 Deluxe came out 3 years before Pikmin 4.

I'm not saying it'll come this year, but I wouldn't take this to mean the next one is a long way off.

I'd be good with either. The action/smash mechanics of DK Bananza are too good to be restricted to one game, but oddly I'd like to see Nintendo make a beat 'em up using it.

A new 2D DKC would make some sense though too.