Nintendo has shown a lot of Donkey Kong Bananza ahead of its July 2025 launch – trailers, gameplay deep dives, co-op reveals – but one question keeps circling back through the fanbase: what exactly is Pauline doing in this game?
A Familiar Face With an Unfamiliar Role
Pauline’s presence in Donkey Kong Bananza was confirmed early enough to generate excitement, but the specifics have stayed frustratingly vague. Nintendo has shown her in cutscene snippets and promotional art, but the company has not explained whether she functions as a co-op partner, a narrative anchor, a collectible guide, or something else entirely. For a character who headlined Super Mario Odyssey‘s New Donk City and starred in the 1981 original as gaming’s first damsel-in-distress, that silence feels deliberate – and a lot of fans are treating it like a red flag.
The original Donkey Kong arcade game was Pauline’s debut. She was the one Mario was rescuing. Over the decades, she was largely sidelined while Peach became Nintendo’s go-to princess, before Odyssey gave her a genuine comeback as the charismatic Mayor of New Donk City. That revival built serious goodwill. Players responded to a version of Pauline who had agency, a singing career, and a city to run. The concern now is whether Bananza is bringing her back as that version – or sliding her into a decorative role that undercuts what Odyssey built.
Nintendo’s marketing has leaned hard into Donkey Kong himself – his destruction mechanics, his movement system, the underground world design. That focus makes sense for a gameplay showcase. But it also means Pauline has appeared in maybe a handful of seconds of total footage, usually standing near DK in what looks like story setups rather than active gameplay. Whether that reflects her actual in-game function or just Nintendo’s choice to keep certain things quiet is impossible to know right now.
The co-op angle adds another layer of uncertainty. Bananza does include two-player co-op, with a second player taking a supporting role during DK’s adventure. Whether Pauline is the character filling that seat – or whether she’s an NPC who exists only in cutscenes – has not been directly confirmed. That ambiguity is exactly what’s driving the debate.
Why the Fanbase Is Splitting
The Donkey Kong fandom and the broader Nintendo community are not landing in the same place on this. A chunk of fans, particularly those who came to Pauline through Odyssey, want confirmation that her role here is meaningful – that she’s a participant in the adventure rather than a bystander. For that group, Nintendo’s silence reads as evasion, the kind that usually precedes disappointment.
On the other side, there’s a vocal contingent arguing that the mystery is just Nintendo doing what Nintendo does: holding story details close to avoid spoilers. This camp points to the fact that Bananza is an entirely new DK game with a fresh narrative structure, and that Pauline being kept out of major promotional beats might mean her role is actually substantial enough to protect. The logic is that Nintendo wouldn’t keep a minor NPC secret – they’d just show her and move on.
There’s also a third group that doesn’t particularly care about Pauline’s role but is irritated by how long the conversation has dominated pre-release discussion. For fans focused on the gameplay itself – the voxel destruction, the underground biomes, DK’s moveset – debates about a supporting character’s narrative function feel like noise. That frustration is showing up in comment sections and forums, where the Pauline conversation has been running long enough to wear out its welcome with part of the audience. It’s a dynamic not entirely unlike the ongoing debate around Diddy Kong’s absence from co-op play, where unconfirmed details have split the community along very predictable lines.
What makes the split harder to resolve is that both interpretations are reasonable given the available evidence. Nintendo has been selective but not dismissive – Pauline is clearly present and clearly connected to the main story. The company just hasn’t explained the nature of that connection. Reading that as a sign of a strong role or a weak one says more about a fan’s trust in Nintendo’s current approach to character writing than about anything Nintendo has actually confirmed.
The gender dynamics of the original game hover over this discussion whether people acknowledge them or not. Pauline started as a rescue object. Watching Nintendo bring her back into the Donkey Kong world – the same franchise where her story began – without clarifying her function triggers a specific kind of anxiety in fans who’ve tracked how Nintendo handles its older female characters. That’s not just nostalgia talking; it’s a reasonable question about whether the company is building on what Odyssey established or treating it as a one-off.
What Nintendo Has Actually Confirmed
Stripping away speculation, the confirmed facts are thin. Pauline appears in Donkey Kong Bananza. She is connected to the game’s story in some capacity. She appears alongside DK in promotional material. That’s the full picture Nintendo has publicly outlined, and it has remained that way through multiple trailers and press releases.
With the game’s release set for July 17, 2025, Nintendo has enough time to clarify before launch – or to keep the mystery intact and let players find out on day one. Given the company’s general approach to story-heavy reveals, the latter is more likely. The frustrating reality is that the fanbase may be debating Pauline’s role right up until the moment the game is actually in their hands, and the answer could land anywhere on the spectrum from “central co-op partner” to “story character who appears in three cutscenes.” Both outcomes have precedent in Nintendo’s recent history, and neither would be especially surprising.
