A new Nintendo Entertainment System game is currently in development, with members of Elite Beat Agents studio iNiS among the team working on it.
Banana Bash is an action puzzle game in which a monkey named Ooki has to recover his stolen bananas from a group of crabs.
The game will be built on a 4-megabit cartridge, making it one of the larger NES games, inspired by single-screen action games like Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros.
The game is being developed by Work3 Studio, a small team of development veterans led by Brian Flanagan.
Flanagan – who has been developing since 1989 and whose credits include Godzilla Domination, DodonPachi Saidaioujou Exa Label and the GBA version of Street Fighter Alpha 3 – is in charge of the game’s direction, graphics, music and design.
He is accompanied by Robbie Dieterich – a former iNiS developer who worked on Ouendan 2, Elite Beat Agents and Gitaroo Man Lives – and a developer simply credited as ‘Jesse’, who has 14 years of experience in mobile and game development, having previously worked with Glu Mobile.
Another former iNiS programmer, who wishes to stay anonymous, is also contributing with “final programming and polish” to “help push Banana Bash across the finish line”.
An early version of Banana Bash won Best Gameplay at the MAGFest Indie Retro showcase, and features a “beat-matched sound effects system”, in which every action the player takes harmonises with the background music.
“Banana Bash has sparked intense discussions in retro gaming communities due to its unexpectedly rich colors and advanced graphical techniques,” the studio claims. “Some enthusiasts even speculated that it was designed for the Super Nintendo, but these stunning visuals were achieved entirely on the NES through careful programming and meticulous pixel art.”
A Kickstarter for Banana Bash will be launching around June 2025, with those interested able to sign up now to be notified. Although the game “will be 100% complete and fully functional on real NES hardware” before the Kickstarter is launched, Work3 wants to raise funds to produce “high-quality cartridges, boxes and manuals that will make Banana Bash a true collector’s gem”
