Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze Was The Best-Selling Game For May In Japan

I would imagine worldwide DKCTF did some decent numbers, for a "pointless expensive port".... The formula of the game is perfect for on the go play as well.

Good stuff. Makes me happy to see DK at top, both because I love the character and games, and because of all the folks shouting it wouldnt sell.

This game deserves its time in the light.

Does the success of DKCTF highlight why ports to the Switch have been essential and justifiable? Seems a solid talking point, at least.

More shocked at how Splatoon still doesn't die, not to mention Mario Kart

DKC has historically been less loved in Japan than in the West. This is good news.

Go dk all the way.

@jswhitfield8 There are no explicit walls online between European and Japanese players in Splatoon 2, but the matchmaking system does seem to heavily prioritise matches with players closer to the user (for stability, apparently), which can make them rather rare.

It does seem that the higher up the rankings you go, the more likely you are to be matched with Japanese players - possibly because the pool available players shrinks and a high proportion of the top players are Japanese.

But yeah, it'd be cool to have more tournaments and stuff that drew the two regions closer together.

@Maxz I'm not actually sure if it matches you with Japanese players ever, specifically. There are a lot of players with Japanese user names that are not actually in Japan, plus it's not uncommon for the Japanese Splatoon hardcore to buy other region copies as well to play in all the Splatfests (unlike the West where everyone whines about Turf War, the Japanese love it...even use it in competitive play. Pretty much Turf and Zones is all the care about!) So some of the Japanese players you run into may not be region matched with Western players, but quite probably are just playing a Western copy of the game. Gotta' catch 'em all.

Tropical Freeze finally got the recognition it deserves. I'm extremely happy

From my understanding we're looking at DKCTF bringing more than just profit of the game on the Switch, it even covered what was essentially lost on the Wii U and then kept going.

Literally every port has done this so far. And many people are complaining? Dude this fuels new games down the road by making that profit simply exist. I may oppose to rereleased and ports personally, but even I cannot doubt how this practice is keeping even reckless companies afloat, let alone showing major profit like this.

Gives me hope that Captain Toad may sell well enough for a sequel!

Now... About that odd SMW remake rumor.

@Muddy_4_Ever
The original SNES DKC games are among the biggest selling games of all time in Japan.

The people who thought DKCTF wouldn’t sell must’ve also thought the various ports of GTAV, Last of Us, God of War, etc...wouldn’t sell either.

Hopefully they’ve learned their lesson. There’s a reason ports sell well...not everyone has played every game in each gen & new gens can offer new ways to experience an old game.

@jswhitfield8 The servers are open, it's only Splatfests that are different. I am in Japan right now and we could play together just fine. It is just that the game prioritizes players who are physically in your region in order to minimize lag and latency issues. But if we were Switch friends and you joined me, we'd get mostly Japanese players. If I joined you, we'd get mostly Europeans.

It's easy to be upset with Nintendo for porting the same Wii U games, but at the same time, sales figures like these make it hard to argue. A bit of an oxymoron, but it's true, nonetheless.

@Paraka Sold about 2 million, which is pretty respectable given the small install base. Tho I feel slightly burned as I supported Nintendo by purchasing nearly all the releases, I understand that they have to make a business decision and that this was a good move. My main complaint is that I think they should have given those of us who supported the Wii U a price break or added enough content to make it worthwhile as a repurchase.

@rockodoodle - I work within marketing and I can tell you one thing; the whole "Supported X should get Y discount" rarely, if ever, functions the way people think it should. The phrase about taking a foot when given an inch really resonates with the market, cause if one market share gets the discount, the next feels scorned cause they supported another action from the same company. So don't take it as an affront against you personally (I mean, I too bought all of Wii U's releases). It's just business to protect your brand from sullying itself.

The latter suggestion is a mileage problem, some see Funky Mode as an insult of content, others see it just worthy. Issue is as a company you don't have the foresight to know how well received what content will be. So, mileage may vary. And as a Funky Kong enthusiast, it was worth it to me.

@rockodoodle The problem with a discount for prior owners is, other than people sending in forms and proof of purchase slips, how would they know about physical buyers? For digital it's easy, anyone with a copy attached to their account, they geta discount on a (digital) copy of the update. Fair and easy. But if you do it for digital you can't not do it for physical. And for physical, there's no way for them to know you own the disc, still own the disc, or always owned the disc (instead of buying it for $5 at a flea market in which case why would they offer a discount?) So since physical breaks the discounts, they can't really do it.

@NEStalgia Well, they had Club Nintendo with the whole registration process. So, for at least some of us, they have a record of those who bought. And my WiiU account is linked to my Switch account.

@NEStalgia I'm fairly sure it's as @Heavyarms55 says. Splatoon 2 uses a ping-based matchmaking system which matches you with geographically closer players to minimise latency, but outside of SplatFests nothing is explicitly region locked. A British friend of mine took his Switch on a tour around Asia, and commented on the differences in players and play styles he came across compared to Britain.

From my own experience, I've been thrown into nearly all Japanese lobbies on a few occasions. Not very frequently at all, but I do have delicious evidence of at least three occurrences!

This is not to shoot down your point there there are a significant number of Western players with usernames written in kana (usually katakana). They're particularly easy to identify when there's some mistake in the transliteration of their names (for example 'Matt' becoming マツト instead of マット). On top of this, even more Western players like to decorate their usernames with bits of Japanese - I think sometimes to signify membership of a team, and possibly sometimes just because they can.

But there definitely are actual Japanese players online and (barely) accessible. They're just subject to a system which means you'll barely ever get to play against them.

So your Switch and your game will happily play against Japanese players online. But you'll have to actually move to the Far East is you want to have much of a chance of the matchmaking system taking advantage of this.

@rockodoodle True, I'd thought of that, but the problem is they don't know if you STILL have it. You could have bought it back then, sold it since, and are no longer the owner. No way for them to know.

@Maxz FWIW I've found it a lot more likely to find JP teams when playing leagues than in solo q. I've always presumed leagues were not region locked while solo was, if only due to low player base at the high end. I honestly miss the Japanese players everywhere, it ruined the game for me. My play style has always been inline with the JP playstyle. When we got the shared fest it was so much better!) Lag sucks, but their play style is more familiar.

(Edit:) I thought the "more correct of the correct ways" was:「マート」?

First 4 weeks sales comparison:
1. [NSW] Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 88,421 / 88,421
2. [NSW] Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 25,886 / 114,307
3. [NSW] Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 15.452 / 129.760
4. [NSW] Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 13.278 / 143.037

1. [WIIU] Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 35,717 / 35,717
2. [WIIU] Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 14,330 / 50,047
3. [WIIU] Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 10.056 / 60.103
4. [WIIU] Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze: 7.181 / 67.284 (LTD sales: <130,000)

@NEStalgia I think the lower player base in League significantly raises the chances of coming across Japanese players as the game would rather march you with someone further away than no one at all. But I'm pretty sure no mode (other than Splatfests) are strictly region locked.

マート would be used closer to 'mart'. I'm fact, the katakana spelling of the popular convenience store chain 'Family Mart' is 'ファミリー・マート'.

The 'ー' symbol lengthens the preceding vowel, and is often used to transliterate the 'ahh' sound in 'art' as opposed to the 'a' sound in 'bat' or 'cat' or 'Matt'. These would correspond to 'Bart', 'cart', and 'mart' with the inclusion of the ー.

The small ッ on the other hand causes you to basically 'sit' on the following consonant (rather than the preceding vowel), a little longer than you otherwise would, thereby emphasising it. This is apparently called 'geminating' the consonant.

It means rather than having just マ
(ma) and ト (to) stuck together to give マト (basically 'mato'), we have a slightly more emphasised 't' sound courtesy of the small ッ, giving マット, which is much closer to accurately sounding out 'Matt'. The risk is, while the small ッ is itself doesn't have its own sound (it simply augments the following consonant), if a full-size ツ is pronounced 'tsu'. So マツト with a full size ツ is basically 'matsuto' rather than 'Matt', and this probably isn't what the writer was going for.

I'm sorry if that's a bit of a clunky explanation!

Retro Studio's hard work has pay off then.

@NEStalgia what difference does it make if you still own it? Oh well, Guess it doesn't matter now. I double dipped bc of Funky Kong, but I will not do it for anything else.

@Maxz And just like that you've become my go-to resource for funky katakana questions.

I've seen ー used so inconsistently with ッ to the point that they both end up getting used for the same things so often. Katakana drives me crazy with trying to figure out what word it's actually trying to approximate. It's like a brain teaser puzzle. I can't see it, I can't see it, and then once I see it I can't unsee it. And it doesn't help that it's applied so darned inconsistently!

@electrolite77 @rockodoodle I can't recall how WiiU did it. Was there a one-time-use code in the box like the Wii? Or did you just use the disc to tie it to your account? If it was a one time use paper code, then rockodoodle has a point, only one of the owners would get the discount, but it still breaks the problem that two users then get a playable copy of DK for different platforms with one discounted, while digital owners would just have their own discounted copy on 2 platforms. It treats digital and physical differently which, either way, is bad. It's a "screw you" to those who buy one way or another, which is best avoided as they did. It's a shame though, because it would make sense, even as a marketing tool to discount people upgrading.....people not willing to double dip at $60 might be willing to double dip for 25% off.

@electrolite77 There was a one time use unique registration code.

I am so very happy to hear this again. Proof that quality will always wins. Now I'm excited to see what they'll do for the next Donkey Kong game!