It feels like Donkey Kong is everywhere at the moment. With the lovable ape’s significant appearance in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the upcoming DK-themed expansion at Japan’s Super Nintendo World, and the safe, but enjoyable Mario vs. Donkey Kong Switch remake, you could say we’re in the midst of a Kong-aissance reawa-Kong-ing revitalisat-Kong... a return for DK. But something’s missing, right?
Yes, despite Nintendo’s renewed focus on Mario’s former nemesis, we’ve still yet to see the very thing that fans have been clamouring for since the 2014 release of Tropical Freeze: a brand-new Donkey Kong game. Of course, recent details surrounding the cancelled ‘Freedom’ project at Vicarious Visions have exacerbated an already-agonising wait, but it nevertheless feels like something might well be cooking within Nintendo’s iron-clad fortress.
The question, however, is what kind of game we’d like to see. Rumours from 2021 suggested that Nintendo EPD, the team behind the sublime Super Mario Odyssey, was working on a new Donkey Kong platformer, though specific details were (and still are) scarce.
The obvious choice would, of course, be a new entry in the Donkey Kong Country franchise. Once stewarded by Rare before Retro Studios took the reigns in 2010, the latter developer is currently hard at work on the upcoming Metroid Prime 4. Were a new ‘Country’ game to launch in the near future, it's likely that an entirely different team would handle development.
