Donkey Kong Bonanza Fans Shatter Records with Infinite Flight Exploit

There’s this whole thing with Donkey Kong Bananza that’s just wild. I mean, Nintendo’s Switch 2 game lets you pick your path like some kind of choose-your-own-adventure book, right? You could just hop around like a normal person or, I don’t know, take a detour underground. Sounds straightforward, but no. Speedrunners, they’re always doing something out of left field.

They’ve figured out this thing called “IFAT.” No clue who named it, but it stands for “Infinite fast aerial surf turf” — which, yeah, sounds bonkers, and it totally is. Basically, you grab a piece of the ground, leap, surf on it like it’s totally normal, cancel that, then do it again. Attack + Jump, ZL, ZL. Simple, huh? (Not really.) Check out this YouTuber, Nicro. He explains it all — with a video, thankfully, because I sure needed to see it about fifty times before I got it.

Nicro kicks things off with, “I’ve found the secret to flight and messed up Donkey Kong Bananza speedruns for good.” Quite the opener, right? And yeah, IFAT lets players zoom through a bunch of the game, skipping straight to bosses. But, of course, there are bits you can’t bypass, like needing to recruit Pauline at the start. That’s locked down tight.

Oh, but here’s the kicker. Mess up in the middle of a jump, and BAM! Donkey Kong’s toast. The game’s kind of chill about dying, which is nice if you’re just goofing off. But for speedrunners, it’s a stress thing because, you know, time’s ticking. Nicro even suggests some tunes to keep the right rhythm — which, side note, I find hilarious. Like, who knew music could help you fly in a game?

The speedrunning community’s all over the place because of IFAT. Just today, a new top-10 record popped up six times. They’re chatting about maybe spinning IFAT runs into their own special category. Some runners still want to experience the game instead of just blitzing through it with button-mashing wizardry. However it goes, DK Bananza is wide open now — and, honestly, kind of nuts.