Is Donkey Kong about to come back in a big way?

What do you expect to see during the Switch 2 generation?


  • Total voters
    84
It’s been almost a decade since the release of the last original Donkey Kong title; Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and, despite a couple of Switch remasters, the series has lay dormant.

However, there seems to be evidence that Donkey Kong is about to a big comeback.

Case 1: Super Nintendo World

Teaming up with Universal, Nintendo have gone big with theme park attractions with sites located in Osaka, Hollywood, Singapore and (coming soon) their biggest site yet, Orlando. While the Mario area takes up half of the space of these parks, the other half is taken up by none other than Donkey Kong.
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Case 2: Super Mario Bros: Movie

The second highest movie of 2023 features not only Donkey Kong himself, but the entire Kong family. Kong Island is heavily fleshed out in the movie leading people to believe that a full Donkey Kong movie starring Seth Rogan is also in the works.
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Case 3: Mario Kart 9 redesign

While the entire cast of Mario Kart has been given a nice polygon increase, which is to be expected of a next-gen title, only Donkey Kong has been given a full redesign, closer resembling his appearance in the Super Mario Movie

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So, GAF, is the great ape about to make another comeback as per Donkey Kong Country in 1994 and DKC Returns in 2010, or is Donkey Kong going to spend another generation on the sidelines?
 
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Miyazaki’s Slave

Gold Member
There will be a mainline DK3d game released for the switch 2. Probably several during the life time of the unit. **Guessing** mid 2026 for DK County Freedom.
 

Sebastian1295

Gold Member
Donkey kong and star fox are two of my favorite nintendo franchises so i wish that both of them would come back with new games. Preferably a 3d donkey kong and a star fox adventures sequel but that's wishful thinking on my part.
 

Kacho

Member
They can start by adding DK94 to the Gameboy library and DK64 to the N64 library.

Beyond that I'll take whatever as long as it doesn't have mini Mario's in it.
 

Sgt. Pinback

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
Nothing need 'come back' if it never went away.

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I feel sorry for you if you've never heard the words 'there's a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up' pass from between the chapped lips of a fat virgin.
 

Hudo

Member
The problem of Donkey Kong is, imho, that he has a limited appeal. He's a monkey and kinda brash in his behavior. Doesn't make for a good mascot or leading role in a movie.
 
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ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
given a full redesign, closer resembling his appearance in the Super Mario Movie
I'm not certain the redesign is strongly based on the movie -- if anything, it seems kind of a throwback to pre-Rare designs.

I also hope it isn't influenced by the movie, because they better not start porting those designs over and ruin Peach. Her standard dreamworksy-smirk-face look was the most retarded thing about that entire project.
 
The new design as seen the MK9 footage is absolutely a tease of a massive new DK game, involving a redesign. Draft your tweets, my guess is this is what EPD has been working on since Bowser's Fury.
 

Codes 208

Member
After dk64 I’d prefer if they stayed away from the sandbox collectathon route.

BUT…a semi-linear 3d platformer ala SM3DW, kirby and the forgotten land, or crash bandicoot would make for a fun DK game
 
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Juja

Member
Hang on - didn’t a Donkey Kong game come out this month and nobody gave a fuck!?
I bought a copy. I loved the original on Wii, and Costco had a big display of it for $7 off normal retail, so it was an easy impulse buy for me.

Having it available in portable mode is great; I ended up doing the whole first world/area in 1 sitting to 100%. I guess we'll see next month in the U.S. how much it sells
 
But is Do The Donkey Kong about to return in a big way? 🤔




It should, because it's a legitimate banger. Way better than Pac-Man Fever.
 
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It’s been almost a decade since the release of the last original Donkey Kong title; Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and, despite a couple of Switch remasters, the series has lay dormant.

However, there seems to be evidence that Donkey Kong is about to a big comeback.

It seems like Nintendo has been stuck with the Rare iteration of Donkey Kong since 1994. The Donkey Kong IP was basically rebooted with the original Donkey Kong Country, and those games ended up being some of the most successful 16-bit platformers of that era. Rare carried the DK IP up to the Microsoft buyout, and even after that Rare's redesign carried the Donkey Kong IP for multiple Nintendo console generations, and even the Retro Studio Donkey Kong Country Returns series was still based on Rare's DKC series.

Rare hasn't had any ties with Nintendo for decades, outside of the odd collaboration, here and there. I think Nintendo has been trying to move away from the Rare design for decades, but it has been a hard transition. Given how much rejuvenation the DKC series had on the franchise.

It seems like with Bananarama, Nintendo is finally just going for a straight reboot of Donkey Kong, even though we are still seeing elements of Rares DK show up. It's really hard to say how much of an impact that this game will have on the Donkey Kong franchise going forward. The new design is already inserted in Mario Kart World. It seems like this new Donkey Kong game is a collaboration between Nintendo of Japan and Treehouse. I have no hard info on that, it is my speculation.

There is a push to get this Donkey Kong back into the spotlight with the 'one last thing' announcement at the end of the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct.
 
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It seems like Nintendo has been stuck with the Rare iteration of Donkey Kong since 1994. The Donkey Kong IP was basically rebooted with the original Donkey Kong Country, and those games ended up being some of the most successful 16-bit platformers of that era. Rare carried the DK IP up to the Microsoft buyout, and even after that Rare's redesign carried the Donkey Kong IP for multiple Nintendo console generations, and even the Retro Studio Donkey Kong Country Returns series was still based on Rare's DKC series.

Given that Rare hasn't had any ties with Nintendo for decades, outside of the odd collaboration, here and there. I think Nintendo has been trying to move away from the Rare design for decades, but it has been a hard transition. Given how much rejuvenation the DKC series had on the franchise.

It seems like with Bananarama, Nintendo is finally just going for a straight reboot of Donkey Kong, even though we are still seeing elements of Rares DK show up. It's really hard to say how much of an impact that this game will have on the Donkey Kong franchise going forward. The new design is already inserted in Mario Kart World. It seems like this new Donkey Kong game is a collaboration between Nintendo of Japan and Treehouse. I have no hard info on that, it is my speculation.

There is a push to get this Donkey Kong into the spotlight. Given the 'one last thing' announcement at the end of the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct.

Despite all this, I hope David Wise is back for the soundtrack.
 

Hudo

Member
The only real ray of light in this presentation, tbh. The Switch 2 pricing is all kinds of crazy, 90€ for Mario Kart is just arrogant Nintendo being back in full force and charging money for better framerate and resolutions for the Zelda games (I do have the Switch 1 physical versions) is just all kinds of fucked. And that tech demo game should be free.

I do really like quite a few of Nintendo's games but I do hope Switch 2 "fails". These policies don't deserve to succeed.
 
He isn't. Already confirmed it himself on X.

Ah shame. Maybe it is part of Nintendo trying to move Donkey Kong into a new direction? Wise contributed a lot of 'classic' music to the DKC series. It all seems like an attempt to push Donkey Kong back to Miyamoto's original design.
 
The only real ray of light in this presentation, tbh. The Switch 2 pricing is all kinds of crazy, 90€ for Mario Kart is just arrogant Nintendo being back in full force and charging money for better framerate and resolutions for the Zelda games (I do have the Switch 1 physical versions) is just all kinds of fucked. And that tech demo game should be free.

I do really like quite a few of Nintendo's games but I do hope Switch 2 "fails". These policies don't deserve to succeed.
Yea the new dk is a dream come true for me. Donkey Kong 64-2 but like 30 years later, holy shit. Pure hype. IDC about Mario kart or any other game announced specially with how expensive the games are.
 
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