Donkey Kong Bananza has some SEC flare to it (+ extras)

Kate Higgins, though born in Virginia, attended the university of Auburn for her education in music.



Her career eventually morphed into voice acting and she became known as the voices of popular characters such as Sakura from Naruto and Tails from Sonic.

Slide over to Nintendo, who was storyboarding for Odyssey back in the mid 2010s and Yoshiaki Koizumi and his crew had an idea where you collect band members for a major part of the game, which would eventually end up being New Donk City. They eventually decided on Pauline from the original Donkey Kong game being the mayor of the city and lead singer of the band.



This of course was the OG until 1994 when the redesign that looks much more similar to the current one came out.



So you get all the way to Donkey Kong Bananza and Kate Higgins has reprised her role as Pauline, but just as the 13 year old version this time.




Ever since Odyssey came out, Pauline the character has seen a humongous rise in popularity, being in almost every major Mario spinoff title since, ranging from Mario Kart, to Mario Party and sports games. She had 2 singles in the 2017 hit Mario title and right out of the trailer from the DK Bananza direct there’s already 2 songs you can hear that will likely be the game’s main themes in one form or another.

More in depth sources:

Donkey Kong Bananza Direct

The History of Pauline’s Voice