Donkey Kong Bananza Broken: Speedrunners Unlock Infinite Flight With IFAT, Leaderboards Explode
Speedrunners on Switch 2 have found a way to push Donkey Kong Bananza into surprising territory with a new movement trick called IFAT, which lets players essentially fly across levels and skip large sections of the game.
- What IFAT is and how it works.
- How players perform the inputs and common controller layouts.
- Immediate effects on leaderboards and the speedrunning community.
- Risks, exceptions, and practical limits within the game.
What IFAT actually is
IFAT stands for Infinite fast aerial surf turf. In practice, the technique involves grabbing a chunk of ground, jumping, entering a turf-surf state, canceling that state, and then re-entering it repeatedly. In short: Attack + Jump, ZL, ZL. Because of the looped canceling, players can maintain long periods of airtime and move directly toward objectives instead of taking normal platforming routes.
Players have reported that timing and rhythm are important, and that the sequence can take several attempts to nail consistently. Additionally, some runners remap buttons—commonly to shoulder buttons on the Switch Pro Controller—to make the inputs easier to perform. However, the community has not settled on a single standard layout yet.
Watch the breakdown
The technique was demonstrated and explained in detail by YouTuber Nicro. You can also find Nicro’s channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/@nicroveda
Near the start of the video, Nicro says, “I have discovered flight and ruined Donkey Kong Bananza speedrunning forever,” which sums up the immediate impact IFAT has had on runs.
Records and community reaction
Because IFAT lets players bypass whole sections and go straight to bosses, it has already produced rapid leaderboard movement. For example, a single day saw the top-10 on the Donkey Kong Bananza leaderboard change multiple times. Specifically, a new top-10 record was set six times in one day, according to the official leaderboard.
See the leaderboard here: https://www.speedrun.com/dkb?h=any-1p&x=q25ngqj2-6njpjj5n.qvvwjk6q.
Consequently, the community is discussing whether runs that use IFAT should be placed into their own category. Some runners prefer routes that play through more of the game’s content, while others will use IFAT to optimize pure time.
Limits, risks, and exceptions
There are concrete limits. For instance, some sections are hard-coded to require specific progression — you cannot move forward at the very start without recruiting Pauline. Moreover, IFAT is risky: if a player misses an input, Donkey Kong can fall to his death. The game is relatively forgiving with deaths for casual players, but for speedrunners a restart costs precious seconds and can lose a run.
Finally, Nicro includes some songs in his video that players can use to learn the rhythm needed to maintain IFAT airtime, and he recommends remapping buttons for consistency.
Short takeaway
In short, IFAT is a repeatable input loop that grants extended flight, it changes routing options dramatically, and it has already altered leaderboards and split opinion among runners.
