Nintendo’s Surprising Reveal: Pauline’s Age Shakes Up Mario Lore
The Nintendo rumor mill hasn’t stopped spinning since the official Japanese Donkey Kong Bananza website casually listed Pauline’s age as 13 years old. For longtime Mario fans, it was an instant double-take moment. Here’s someone we’ve seen in recent games as the powerful and confident mayor of New Donk City—clearly, an adult. Suddenly, she’s a young teenager again, running around with a similarly young Mario while the rest of the Donkey Kong cast appear full-grown. The cracks in the Mario timeline just got wider, and fans are scrambling to piece it all together.
This age reveal drops Pauline back to her childhood, alongside a 13-year-old Mario, in sharp contrast to the dynamic seen not only in Super Mario Odyssey but also in dozens of cameos, spinoffs, and side stories where both are clearly adults. The confusion starts to pile up even more when you consider that Donkey Kong, Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky are portrayed as adults in Bananza. Suddenly, there’s a generational mismatch: the human heroes are younger while the Kong family acts as if this is just another day in the jungle.
Fans Debate Continuity and Nintendo’s Freewheeling Canon
The fandom isn’t new to these timeline headaches. In the original Donkey Kong arcade classic, Pauline is the damsel in distress, held captive by Donkey Kong in a way that hinted at a grown-up rivalry. In Bananza, though, Pauline appears to be willingly carried by Donkey Kong, showing no signs of distress—a small but telling change that has people theorizing this could be a softer, friendlier reboot or even a storyline set before their famous feud gets serious. The imagery alone is enough to make Reddit boards light up with talk of alternate universes or lost prequels.
No matter where you look in the Mario canon, things rarely line up in a way that would make a strict timeline possible. Nintendo’s developers have a history of tossing continuity aside when it suits the gameplay, and Bananza looks like the latest example. The company hasn’t said if Pauline’s new age is a deliberate retcon—a change to the past story—or just a way to fit her into this particular adventure. There’s also radio silence from the development team about whether Donkey Kong Bananza is meant to fit before or after fan favorites like Mario vs. Donkey Kong or the Donkey Kong Country games.
This isn’t just a debate for diehards, either. The character relationships in Bananza feel different: Pauline and Mario are now the same age, but Donkey Kong isn’t the towering, menacing villain of old. With this creative leap, there’s no telling what the next Mario or Donkey Kong story might throw at us. For now, fans can only keep comparing notes, twisting timelines, and laughing at how seriously they take Nintendo’s famously flexible approach to its own history.
July 17 2025 0
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