the switch 2 finally has a second first-party game — aka the main reason folks buy nintendo consoles — in donkey kong bananza. it’s a great game with just one glaring flaw: the default button layout is awkward and bad. and while you can easily change it to something more traditional, i still see the vision of the developers at nintendo epd.

if you’re like me, it took you a few seconds to find the jump button in donkey kong bananza. that’s because the starting control scheme maps this vital action to A on the switch 2 gamepad rather than B, as one would assume from years (and sometimes decades) of playing video games. the A button is instead meant for punching downward. this is really weird at first and, again, if you’re like me, you immediately went to the options and breathed a sigh of relief when the options menu let you switch them. it just feels better to have something as important as jump assigned diagonally to the punch button, which is on Y and can’t be changed, so both can be pressed at once with the right thumb.

after playing more of the game, however, i can see why the devs thought putting jump on A and punch downward on B was for the best. donkey kong‘s default state in bananza is punch. the moments when he’s not slamming his big ape fists into something are few and far between. gameplay allows for punching in various directions. as such, it makes sense B would be punch down, seeing as it’s the bottom-most face button on the right side of the switch 2 controller. similarly, X is punch up due to it being the top-most button. jumping, on the other hand, is far less important than one would expect from an action-adventure game because donkey kong can climb almost everything.

i’m all for experimenting with control schemes. demon’s souls mapping attacks to the shoulder buttons helped drive home home the fact developer from software was doing something new and special as soon as you picked up the gamepad. that said, i don’t really look for this kind of novelty from nintendo. i get what they were going for in donkey kong bananza, but a traditional platformer should follow certain norms. and let’s face it: i’m too old to learn new things.