General Donkey Kong Thread

Uh, I think you'll find Dixie was playable in Mario Super Sluggers and Mario Hoops 3-on-3, sir.

A consistent thorn in the DK fandom's side is that Nintendo only really promotes four games: the original arcade Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong 64 and Donkey Kong Country Returns. Except for (occasionally) Dixie, only the stuff from those four games gets to cameo in other games.

It sucks because everybody agrees that DKC2 and Tropical Freeze are the highlights of the series, but Nintendo keeps directing people to an extremely dated arcade game, two games that aren't on Switch, and DKC1.

Does Dk sell propane and propane accessories?

The newest Did You Know Gaming video tackles everything that went on at Vicarious Visions starting from their work on 2015's Skylanders: SuperChargers and ending with them becoming exclusively a support studio in 2022. This video includes confirmation that they were indeed working on a Donkey Kong game, while correcting some of the claims over the years. To sum up the DK stuff:

• Nintendo did not approach VV for the game due to Retro Studios being busy as previously claimed. Rather, VV gave a pitch to Nintendo.
• VV worked on the pitch for six months, consisting of a gameplay prototype and concept art, starting in late 2015. It was one of three projects they were trying to get off the ground at the time; the others being Skylanders 7 (which was scrapped even after they attempted to rework it into a non-Toys-to-Life original IP) and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (which Activision eventually agreed to after a lot of begging and Sony offering to take on some of the dev cost in exchange for it being a timed exclusive).
• The concept was indeed for an open-world platformer with vine grinding as part of DK's moveset; however, while DK did have banana peel skates to grind on vines, they couldn't find any proof that this was a result of Miyamoto having an issue with DK getting rope burns on his feet.
• They also found no proof that the game would have featured Pauline as a playable character, or that the game would have had a story about fighting back against an ecological disaster. The demo was purely an early prototype focused on nailing the feel of DK's movement and gameplay.
• Donkey Kong Freedom was not the name of the game. The demo didn't have a working title and was just referred to internally with the codename "Freedom".
• The art style experimented with was referred to as "Burton-esque".
• Despite Nintendo showing interest in the project, Activision scrapped it in Spring 2016 due to their plans to transition VV into a pure support studio, as part of the company's pivot into focusing on a small handful of their most popular franchises, like Call of Duty, as well as believing that working with Nintendo would be too risky.

Edited by RacattackForce on May 4th 2024 at 5:27:05 AM

So another reason to be disgusted with Activision. (I don't know if I should Pothole this as Joking Mode or not)

I dunno, sounds like we dodged a bullet. Well, it sounds like I dodged a bullet, since I don't like open-world games. The wait for DK is agonizing, but I look forward to a more traditional game when it's all over.

I don't know if it's coming. Nintendo probably doesn't think it needs DK when it has Mario.

DK and Mario have always coexisted without issue, and Nintendo is about to open a heavily advertised DK theme park. DK's not going anywhere.

Yeah, but that's not the same as having his own game.

A theme park is much more expensive and a riskier investment that a video game. Donkey Kong is one of Nintendo's most recognizable properties; there's no sensible reason they'd permanently or indefinitely retire him.

I dunno if you've seen, but the theme park is going to have merch of Professor Chops (apparently called Chops-sensei in Japan). If they think they can sell that, there's no way they don't think they can sell more DK games.

The video does include all the awful stuff that was going down at Activision.

You might be misunderstanding what they mean by open world. If anything, we missed out going by Vicarious Visions previous work.

Edited by Cortez on May 4th 2024 at 1:44:23 PM

But they aren't making them are they?

Nintendo is not in the habit of making games to make games. It is their general policy to make drastic changes or gimmicks between iterations. Even Mario games are made with that expectation in mind. It's the main reason the only new F-Zero game we ended up getting was F-Zero-99.

That we haven't had a Donkey Kong game in a while probably comes down to nobody having a concept that's different enough from the most recent ones.

I also wonder if there is some licensing deal going on with the park, so that as long as it's being constructed, DK games are embargoed. Kind of like how Mario news was comparedly scarce while the theme park and movie were in development, and once done, we got this flood of Mario gaming news.

-shrug-

We don't know that. They're making all kinds of stuff all the time. Hyle Russell, the guy that broke the "Freedom" story months before anyone else, also said Miyamoto opened a new in-house development studio specifically for Donkey Kong projects.

Look, DK is my absolute favorite gaming franchise, the decade-long wait is killing me too, but "Nintendo has FORGOTTEN about Mario!!!" style doomerism is just not warranted.

That too.

Edited by ThriceCharming on May 5th 2024 at 1:30:26 PM

I've been wondering exactly what kind of game a Donkey Kong game even is. Of all of Nintendo's ip, Donkey Kong's kind of the outlier in that there's no specific gameplay that immediately makes you think "oh yeah, that's Donkey Kong style".

I guess the most iconic DK game would be the original SNES one.

I want a sequel to DK 64 and I'm not even joking.

I've recently replayed and 103%ed DK 64. I've realized that it's a lot less painful to do that if you explore each area centered around a tag barrel thoroughly with each Kong rather than explore the entire level with one Kong at a time.

The five Country games are clearly the backbone of the series. Problem is, there's only been five of them in thirty years (seven if you count the mainline non-Country games, namely DK64 and Jungle Beat). The entire Splatoon franchise was born and flourished between Tropical Freeze and now.

And I actually think DKC1 has become something of a problem for the series, in that it's a good game but nothing really special. There is a massive spike in quality starting in DKC2, but most casual Nintendo just play the first one and think, "Well, I've had my fill of this."

Edited by ThriceCharming on May 14th 2024 at 8:33:16 AM

I've always considered DK 64 to be part of DKC, but maybe that's me.

An attempt was made to adapt the DKC style to 3D in DK64, just not a very good one. I did like their first-person take on Barrel Cannon gauntlets, though.

Future games should take DK64's few good ideas (Lanky and Chunky Kong, K. Lumsy, the Grant Kirkhope soundtrack, Diddy's jetpack and pop guns) and try to integrate them better. The excellent latter-day DKCs from Retro Studios and Mario + Rabbids already got the ball rolling.

Here's a question: is there anything from Jungle Beat you'd like to see in a future game? I'd love to see some of those animal buddies again, especially Orco.

Edited by ThriceCharming on May 6th 2024 at 1:55:35 PM

I really feel let down that we didn't get to see Vicarious Visions... vision for Donkey Kong. That whole video was depressing towards the end about how a studio gets subsumed into Activision and then gets all of it's problems.

Edited by jjjj2 on May 6th 2024 at 11:31:27 AM

Even if that game had potential (and I have my doubts), Vicarious Visions could only be yet another temporary home for DK. What he needs is a dedicated development house within Nintendo that can regularly make new games, like most other first-party IP do. Retro Studios really should've been it, but who knows how much longer they'll be stuck making Prime 4.

I remember several years ago when the Remake or Rebreak guy did a "Name a game I dislike and I'll say something good about it" thing where he said that Donkey Kong 64, for all its faults, captures the look, feel, tone, and charm of the Country trilogy better than either Returns or Tropical Freeze does.

I also saw DK 64 as part of the Country trilogy mainly cause it had K. Rool as the Big Bad.

DK’s been having issues with finding a permanent home ever since Rare left.