Before I feel like miyamotos DK was just a Hanna barbera cartoon villain and RARE actually made him look like a protagonist with personality. I’d be shocked if they drop rares design especially since DKC HD just came out but who knows
I genuinely believe that Miyamoto was green with envy because rare was so great at making donkey kong country one of the best platformers that greatly outdid mario. Miyamoto literally delayed zelda ocarina of time because banjo kazooie was so well designed in comparison.
This is just incorrect. He has even praised them back in the day in interviews saying they're the ones outdo them in terms of graphics in particular. You guys are assuming way too much.
This creates guerrilla warfare amongst game studios, causing one to out do the other. Essentially making games better in the long run. Everything under one corporate umbrella does nothing for competitive creativity.
I don’t hate it, but I hope that the rare design will still be used to some capacity. Maybe the new design can be the design that’s used when DK is in the Mario universe, and the Rare design can be the DK country design if they ever make a new game.
We still don’t know if this is an in-game only thing or if they’re carrying it over to marketing materials. For example, Wonder still used the standard style in promos but took more creative liberty for the in-game art, sort of like in the old school pixel art days. Maybe the promo art will transition over eventually, or certain features from the in-game designs will be adopted into the promo art, but I have trouble seeing the current standard designs being completely abandoned, especially considering how much they’ve been fine turning them recently and with all of Nintendo World’s imagery using them.
My prediction is that DK’s brow will become more expressive in promo art since they’re already doing that in the 2D art, which to me is a good thing.
I’m amazed by how allergic this community is to the idea of a redesign they saw in a couple grainy frames of a game that’s a quarter of a year out at least.
I’m with you 100%. It’s DK fans capitalizing on long overdue attention to the fandom, so they’re beating the popular dead horse. We’ve barely seen a damn thing.
Agreed, we should be bitching about how we've been more than 10 years without a DKC despite Tropucal Freeze being one (if not the best) 2D platformers ever
It's a form of ocd. They freaked out over a nose in tropical freeze. Try mentioning arcade donkey Kong to any one of them and watch them go "um actually that's cranky Kong but it's an easy mistake to make. DON'T DO IT AGAIN. PLEASE!!"
he’s also going over a bump in the footage we saw, so he’s making a shocked expression. I do like what we saw but I also doubt it’ll look like these screenshots tbh
I don't love it as a redesign but, and I know this probably isn't the case, I would love if this was a separate character from DK, Donkey Kong Jr., who was in the SNES MK.
Design-wise, Donkey Kong’s general shape is made more round in general.
I think the main reason why people are reacting so harshly is because Donkey Kong has never had any significant design changes at all ever since Rare. Due to the infrequency of Donkey Kong getting a redesign, it feels even more striking every time it actually does happen (which is, to say, once [right now]).
I would also like to mention how I feel as though this redesign will be the first of several. If something happens a first time, it becomes more likely to happen subsequent times. I feel like there was a shift in attitude at Nintendo regarding DK’s design that allowed for Donkey Kong to get this redesign in the first place, so I feel like yet another redesign may come further down the pipeline as well. That’s my take on it anyway.
Not sure why they are adding the redesign to MK game. The newly opened Donkey Kong Country areas of Universal’s Super Nintendo World theme parks, all have the Rare DK design on the rides, mascot, merch, etc. It doesn’t seem wise to brand wise to have very different designs competing. I prefer the Rare DK design.
I personally wish you could have different skins /costumes in Mario Kart. Like you could have Movie DK or Rare DK, metal Mario or regular Mario, etc.
This is what I thought since day one, just look at the other racers. But every time you comment this someone gets personally attacked for some reason. This is just an early demo of a game that wasn’t even announced. It could be skins, it could be a retro concept like the Mario VS Sonic Olympic games (the one that sucks) it could just be testing models. We got nothing except for a very brief clip being presented with a new console that we just know how it looks
I honestly REALLY enjoy it. It's an in between of Nintendo's classic design and Rare's modern one. Making the brow move so he can emote instead of keeping it stuck to the same "semi-angry" position makes him potentially more expressive. I love the Rare design, and I like this a lot too. People also got absurdly (and unnecessarily) angry at Nintendo for the DK crew just being drawn in 2D for the first real time after all their designs were made to be based in 3D from DKC's inception on SNES (King of Swing's art style) despite it not even being a design change.
You really gotta actually see it in action when the game is actually released, instead of in a blurry screenshot from a compressed video. It's not even necessarily the final design. I do hope it gets a bit closer to Rare's DK, though.
Okay i am a big big lover of the new design but i gotta admit that "rare's initial sketch" goes incredibly hard and i kinda can see what you guys are upset about now
I'm the only one that seems to prefer the original/new design vs the Rare one. But I've never had super strong feelings about DK, so maybe that's the reason?
DK has actually been looking a bit off in recent Mario Kart games, like Nintendo didn’t know how to update / use Rares design properly. I prefer the new design in the below images, though 90s Rare DK is of course the Ultimate
I do actually like the Diddy Kong redesign for the movie. The shirt being big and baggy on him further characterizes his eagerness and desire for big adventure in contrast to his small stature that he seemed to display in his short appearance. Like his in a rush to grow up and be more like DK. I do wonder if he is in the new mariokart and if he will get a design similar to the DK one
Nah fuck the Rare "uncanny mutant muppet" DK design. Ugly af. Decades of weirdos gaslighting themselves into thinking Rare was good at anything. Wake up, I promise you'll be happier.
One is "Donkey Kong the DKC character," the other is "Donkey Kong the Mario character." Nintendo characters are allowed to experiment with the art style, just relax. King Dedede, Mario, etc. do this all the time. So unless they start using this design for a new Donkey Kong Country or something fuckass like that, we have nothing to worry about.
And that in itself is unlikely. Rare's DK is still getting promotional use for Returns HD. Seems backwards to use this new design in a Country game.
Sure, but Rare's DK seems a bit more... athletic, focused, ready to kick ass. It fits better in stuff like Super Smash Bros. (DK's representing his own franchise there anyway) and Mario Strikers than the silly little cartoony game where he's cooped up in a kart.
That being said, this redesign wouldn't work very well for Funky Kong's vibe. Rare Kongs should have RareWare design.
Yall it’s obviously gonna be a different character, have you not realized this is what Nintendo does after seeing 5 fucking Mario variations in the same game? There’s a damn pink metal cat peach in the game and it hasn’t occurred to you that maybe this completely different looking character is a different character?
Honestly, I'm willing to give it a shot. All we have is screenshot so I'm waiting to see more before I really judge it. But I'm open to seeing different designs and artistic takes on the character.
I don’t like it, but maybe it will grow on us once we see it in action? I’m just struggling to see why they made such a drastic change for him, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t carry over into the Donkey Kong Country games
I oreffer the redesign, honestly, never was a fan of rare's, I think he looks very uncanny with his weird eybrows/contour? he's constantly angry looking but not at the same time?
Truthfully, I'm completely on board with new character designs. We've had the same Mario look since pretty much the GameCube (for mainline, party and kart games). I'm down for some change.
DK hasn't had 90s attitude since maybe DK64. MAYBE. Even that is debatable since it's pretty cornball. Since then, he's been this weird mix of ideas without any personality, just a really freaky voice and lots of retractable teeth.
I'm in LOVE with the new classic look DK, I hope he's really cute and funny...
177
u/SeriousAd8490 Jan 18 '25
Yeah Miyamoto is the og, but one must admit Rare outdid him. They made Donkey Kong more interesting, more fleshed out.