Donkey Kong Bananza's Mario DLC costumes are time-limited and you'll miss them if you blink

Nintendo Direct brought news that Donkey Kong Bananza's paid DLC – DK Island and Emerald Rush – is getting Super Mario Bros. 40th anniversary costumes. The catch: they're time-limited, and if you miss the windows, they're gone for good.

Donkey Kong gets Mario's red cap and blue overalls, while Pauline can rock Luigi's green hat and a stick-on mustache. It's a cute fit for the crossover, but Nintendo has split access across four separate windows: June 9–30, July 14–21, August 4–11, and August 25 – September 1, 2026. Miss all of them and the costumes simply aren't available to you anymore – no permanent unlock, no second chance.

It's a baffling way to celebrate the company's biggest franchise, though Nintendo pulling this kind of move is, at this point, hardly shocking. The more straightforwardly good news for DK fans is a new achievements system rolling out for classic Donkey Kong games. Donkey Kong 64 – recently added to the Switch 2's N64 library – now has in-game challenges tied to digital card rewards. It's essentially Nintendo's own take on RetroAchievements, built directly into the console's backwards-compatible catalogue, and it sounds like a genuinely compelling reason to revisit the classics.