{"id":135680,"date":"2026-01-16T00:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/#article-196282"},"modified":"2026-01-16T00:55:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:55:00","slug":"donkey-kong-bananza-has-been-nominated-for-even-more-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2026\/01\/16\/donkey-kong-bananza-has-been-nominated-for-even-more-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Donkey Kong Bananza Has Been Nominated For Even More Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/db4bc3fbf468f\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/db4bc3fbf468f\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<figure class=\"picture\" data-uuid=\"db4bc3fbf468f\"><a class=\"scanlines\" title=\"Donkey Kong Bananza\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/db4bc3fbf468f\/donkey-kong-bananza.large.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/db4bc3fbf468f\/donkey-kong-bananza.900x.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"507\" alt=\"Donkey Kong Bananza\"><\/a><figcaption class=\"caption\"><em class=\"credit\"><span class><\/span> Image: Nintendo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Donkey Kong&#8217;s new outing for the Switch 2 has already won some awards, and it&#8217;s now in the running for even more.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8217;26th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards&#8217; is taking place on <strong>12th March 2026<\/strong> (during the GDC Festival of Gaming) and this week it&#8217;s been revealed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch-2\/donkey-kong-bananza\">Donkey Kong Bananza<\/a> is up for &#8216;Game of the Year&#8217; and multiple other awards.<\/p>\n<p>It will be going up against some tough competition including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pushsquare.com\/games\/ps5\/clair_obscur_expedition_33\" class=\"external\">Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/a>, which is a finalist across eight categories. Below are the awards Donkey Kong Bananza has been nominated for. It also got an &#8220;honorable mention&#8221; in the &#8216;Best Audio&#8217; category.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Best Design<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>BALL X PIT<\/em> (Kenny Sun &amp; Friends \/ Devolver Digital)<\/li>\n<li><em>Blue Prince<\/em> (Dogubomb \/ Raw Fury)<\/li>\n<li><em>Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em> (Sandfall Interactive \/ Kepler Interactive)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Donkey Kong Bananza<\/em> (Nintendo EPD \/ Nintendo)<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>Split Fiction<\/em> (Hazelight Studios \/ Electronic Arts)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Innovation Award<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>BALL X PIT<\/em> (Kenny Sun &amp; Friends \/ Devolver Digital)<\/li>\n<li><em>Baby Steps<\/em> (Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy \/ Devolver Digital)<\/li>\n<li><em>Blue Prince<\/em> (Dogubomb \/ Raw Fury)<\/li>\n<li><em>Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em> (Sandfall Interactive \/ Kepler Interactive)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Donkey Kong Bananza<\/em> (Nintendo EPD \/ Nintendo)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Best Technology<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em> (Sandfall Interactive \/ Kepler Interactive)<\/li>\n<li><em>Death Stranding 2: On the Beach<\/em> (Kojima Productions \/ Sony Interactive Entertainment)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Donkey Kong Bananza<\/em> (Nintendo EPD \/ Nintendo)<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>Ghost of Y\u014dtei<\/em> (Sucker Punch Productions \/ Sony Interactive Entertainment)<\/li>\n<li><em>Split Fiction<\/em> (Hazelight Studios \/ Electronic Arts)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Game of the Year<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Blue Prince<\/em> (Dogubomb \/ Raw Fury)<\/li>\n<li><em>Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em> (Sandfall Interactive \/ Kepler Interactive)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Donkey Kong Bananza<\/em> (Nintendo EPD \/ Nintendo)<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><em>Ghost of Y\u014dtei<\/em> (Sucker Punch Productions \/ Sony Interactive Entertainment)<\/li>\n<li><em>Hollow Knight: Silksong<\/em> (Team Cherry)<\/li>\n<li><em>Split Fiction<\/em> (Hazelight Studios \/ Electronic Arts)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once again, the winners of this &#8220;peer-based annual award show&#8221; will be announced at this year&#8217;s GDCA ceremony, taking place in March at the GDC Festival of Gaming. There&#8217;s also a public vote, where attendees of the GDC Festival of Gaming can vote on their favourite game of the year from all of this year&#8217;s GDCA finalists. Voting for this will open on 26th January 2026.<\/p>\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t already played Donkey Kong Bananza, be sure to check out our review here on Nintendo Life. There&#8217;s also some paid DLC now available for the title.<\/p>\n<p><!-- cache: html:nintendolife.com\/ssl\/nintendo-switch-2\/related-articles:184766,194187,195625,195214 @ 1768561606 --><\/p>\n<aside class=\"block object-related\"> <\/aside>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image: Nintendo Donkey Kong&#8217;s new outing for the Switch 2 has already won some awards, and it&#8217;s now in the running for even more. The &#8217;26th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards&#8217; is taking place on 12th March 2026 (during the GDC Festival of Gaming) and this week it&#8217;s been revealed Donkey Kong Bananza is up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}