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Discussion 10 years ago we were in the middle of arguing about Retro making "****ing Donkey Kong"

Lugia667

Lugia667

Gerudo
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While now about 2 months removed from when it was actually revealed, eh screw it.

10 years ago, the Wii U was struggling out of the gate. No one wanted the system and it was getting outsold by last gen. BUT there was hope. And that hope was

EfZj2V7WAAAZVev



If anyone, ANYONE could save the Wii U it must be them surely! They made the amazing Prime Trilogy and also made a great new DK platformers after almost 2 generations of just spinoffs. If anyone had something BIG and EPIC for the Wii U, the first HD system, it would surely be them. Perhaps after Other M they would go back to Metroid to help right the ship! After all a new hardcore title would be just what the Wii U needed to get back in the game. Or maybe it wouldn't even be Metroid, but a new MATURE IP like Uncharted! Some rumors went even crazier saying they were going to revive STARTROPICS!!!!!!!!!......no not the topics on the websites. That uhhhhh....series on the NES that had 2 games. Apparently it was possible we were going to get a new RETRO STARTROPICS REBOOT. It got even crazier when rumors were floating around at e3 2012 that the game was going to be shown but wasn't due to unforseen bugs. This must mean the game was so epic that they needed more time to iron things out.


Then E3 2013 comes around and Nintendo has the GALL to not to a big live stage conference! This is a MASSIVE mistake and another out of touch decisions. Can you imagine if everyone just did online presentatons instead of big live shows? Ridiculous! It will never happen.

Nevertheless they will techically still be there so this is where we will get the new epic retro title. The presentation starts and we get looks at Pokemon, 3d World, Mario Kart, Wind Waker HD and other stuff and then Iwata says to look at this



A plane drops out with DK esq music and out pops.....THE BIG APE HIMSELF. It seems what we have here is a....DKC Returns sequel.........with underwater being back and viking artic fauna as the villains.

People are enraged at this. How could Retro be working on JUST a Donkey Kong game! Some believe it isn't really Retro's next game but farmed out to another studio but alas...it's quickly confirmed it's them


Gaming sites quickly pick up with threads like this:

kotaku.com

Retro's Next Big Game Is Another Damn Donkey Kong Country

Donkey Kong Island is overrun by Vikings in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, which will be a retail release and a Wii U eShop download when it arrives later this year.
kotaku.com kotaku.com

and

www.gamespot.com

Wrestling With Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is a fun and beautiful platformer that seems to lack the special something that Retro Studios is capable of.
www.gamespot.com www.gamespot.com

this article in particular had a paragraph that kinda illuminated the general feeling

It's a situation that only the most talented developers would ever have to face. For many studios out there, making something uniformly excellent and undeniably fun would be a huge achievement, something worthy of celebration. But there are only a few large development teams who have proven they have what it takes to do something that truly matters, that causes everyone to take notice--and take notes!--by creating something previously unseen. We're talking about a studio that, with Metroid Prime, took one of the most venerable franchises around and not only transcribed its greatness into a 3D space, but trumped the original design in too many ways to count. In my mind, Retro has no limitations, at least the Retro that revitalized Metroid with three inventive games that took plenty of risks. Years have passed since their heyday, but I still believe that they're better than mere fun. They're better than this.
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and who can forget the announcement thread on NeoGaf where the title is

"Retro Studios working on fucking Donkey Kong", the topic reached 33 pages and had to be locked. In it despite arguments about how it made sense that they would want to expand on what they did in Returns and the sales numbers made sense, it didn't matter to man others. This was not a game worthy of Retro's talent to many. It was just a goofy platformer, we have too many of them already! This is Just New Donkey Kong Country U.

And yet when people finally played it, it turned out to be....good? With superb gameplay, level design, music and graphics. Perhaps this game WAS worthy after all. Yet it turned out to be too late....it was doomed to be on the Wii U after all and that was that......


oh and uhhh 4 years later it got a Switch Port or something I dunno....also we are still waiting on Retro's next big game which ironically IS the fabled Metroid that many demanded then. We did get an excellent Prime Remaster this year and there are rumors of the other two games remasters hat may or may not be coming soon.


so were any of you guys there at the time. What was it like for you? Did they game deserve the hate it got at the time? Where gamers simply ungrateful or was the disappointment justified?
 
To me, who was never much into DK and was hard thirsting for more Metroid, it felt like a monumental waste of talent.

Happy to have been proven wrong.
 
Tropical Freeze was not what Nintendo and the Wii U needed at that point, although it swiftly became one of my favorite platformers of all time, if not my favorite. If someone back then told me that after TF we wouldn't see a (original) game from my favorite developer for more than a decade, I would have laughed in their face :( to say I am thirsty for Prime 4 would be an understatement.
 
Tropical Freeze is a fantastic game but I still don't think it was the best choice for that time.

Also I don't think the primary concern was that this game would be bad.
 
T.Rygra said:
Tropical Freeze was not what Nintendo and the Wii U needed at that point, although it swiftly became one of my favorite platformers of all time, if not my favorite. If someone back then told me that after TF we wouldn't see a (original) game from my favorite developer for more than a decade, I would have laughed in their face :( to say I am thirsty for Prime 4 would be an understatement.
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Rooster said:
Tropical Freeze is a fantastic game but I still don't think it was the best choice for that time.

Also I don't think the primary concern was that this game would be bad.
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Glad neither of you are making decisions at Nintendo
 
Apparently the Startropics rumor started out as a joke that people eventually took semi-serious as well
 
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I think it's fair to say that the negative reactions to the TF announcement were the reason why we haven't seen a new Retro Studios game in a decade.
 
Mekanos said:
Glad neither of you are making decisions at Nintendo
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Yeah but people would say that literally regardless of whatever game it was. If it'd been Metroid instead, people would say it too.

I'd take the reality in which they did do Metroid or something else, then went back to DK, then continued on this current course - because that would give us one more game than this reality provides, and would've prevented both IPs from drying up, which each, at some point, sorta did.
 
I wasn't part of either fandom back then. Glad Tropical Freeze ended up being loved by many but I just don't like Retro's DK that much
 
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I love Tropical Freeze but it was the right game at the wrong time. People were hyped to see a game which really pushed the Wii U's capabilities and they were hoping Retro Studios would be the studio to do this. When Tropical Freeze was first shown, to the untrained eye, it looked exactly the same as Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii. Nintendo had done similar with New Super Mario Bros U at the systems launch, where they had shown a game which to most people looked no different than it's predecessor on the system previous. Nintendo just weren't putting out games which made people think this hardware was a must have, a generational leap, and could offer experiences which weren't possible on the tired Wii - which itself was a generation behind graphically from its competition. This was why '****ing Donkey Kong' became a thing because Nintendo was already making so many mistakes and this felt like another one even if the quality of the software itself was of a high standard.
 
Look, I love both DK and Metroid, but DK Country returns sold more than the whole Metroid prime saga, so it was the right decision to bring dk back for another journey. The thing is that the WiiU was such a flop, in the end it didn't matter as Metroid would have probably been a much bigger loss for the studio.
I have to say that the reveal trailer for dk tropical Freeze was also so boring, they should have shown the launch trailer instead, which was just epic.

For me personally it was the right choice and I just think the dk haters/Metroid fans were very vocal but it would have sold way less. Even now on switch the Metroid games couldn't beat the tropical freeze port in terms of sales.
Dardan Sandiego said:
I think it's fair to say that the negative reactions to the TF announcement were the reason why we haven't seen a new Retro Studios game in a decade.
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I don't think it had something to do with that. They just struggled with their projects and Nintendo wasn't content with anything. Retro unfortunately is not able to do it's own thing as every original ip they tried to make was not green-lit by Nintendo. That's the reason they now can do Metroid again, even though they said they don't want work on it again after prime 3.

But the Metroid haters got what they wanted. We have no dk right now, but plenty of Metroid....
 
Never cared about Retro studios before but the 2.5D DK game was an amazing news for me. Did not question studio's capability of making a Rare styled game, honestly did not care at all. It's brand new DK game without any silly gimmicks. No silly drums as controls, no L-R buttons only gameplay. Just your good old 2D platformer.

Tropical freeze was another piece of amazing news as Returns totally deserved a followup. But I did get disappointed by the game's unnecessary focus on nostalgia. I get it, cart levels are fun, but I hoped to have moved on for the 5th game in the franchise. Gimmick ran its course in Returns already.
 
9-Volt said:
Never cared about Retro studios before but the 2.5D DK game was an amazing news for me. Did not question studio's capability of making a Rare styled game, honestly did not care at all. It's brand new DK game without any silly gimmicks. No silly drums as controls, no L-R buttons only gameplay. Just your good old 2D platformer.

Tropical freeze was another piece of amazing news as Returns totally deserved a followup. But I did get disappointed by the game's unnecessary focus on nostalgia. I get it, cart levels are fun, but I hoped to have moved on for the 5th game in the franchise. Gimmick ran its course in Returns already.
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Why is everything Nintendo do considered a 'gimmick'?

There's absolutely nothing 'gimmicky' about a mine cart level in a Donkey Kong Country game. They're a big part of the experience and don't really fit the concept of nostalgia either unless you also think having a swimming level in a Mario game is nostalgia and a gimmick because they were in Super Mario Bros on the NES.
 
Kingdra91 said:
I don't think it had something to do with that. They just struggled with their projects and Nintendo wasn't content with anything. Retro unfortunately is not able to do it's own thing as every original ip they tried to make was not green-lit by Nintendo. That's the reason they now can do Metroid again, even though they said they don't want work on it again after prime 3.

But the Metroid haters got what they wanted. We have no dk right now, but plenty of Metroid....
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Well we will never know better be on the safe side and blame and publicly shun them so it doesn't happen again.
 
This was also in the middle of the Naughty Dog crazy hype era, I think the Last of Us came out 4 days after the direct. There seemed to be a feeling that Nintendo NEEDED to answer to them and I guess Retro was the best fit for that I guess


I also forgot to mention Cranky Kong at the VGX lol that was something too
 
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It was bad timing. I love the game and it didn’t matter what they made because nothing was helping the Wii U lol.
 
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The Wii U was too good for this world, nothing was going to save it.

Tropical Freeze is the GOAT 2D platformer and better than any Metroid Prime game, but it was not the game the gaming audience wanted to hype themselves up at that time.
 
Dark Cloud said:
We’ll probably get a DK game from them again, but that might not happen until 2030’s or later
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Probably no rush for that if EPD is gonna be handling the IP and Nintendo doesn't want to risk trying to give Prime to someone new again.
 
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YolkFolk said:
Why is everything Nintendo do considered a 'gimmick'?

There's absolutely nothing 'gimmicky' about a mine cart level in a Donkey Kong Country game. They're a big part of the experience and don't really fit the concept of nostalgia either unless you also think having a swimming level in a Mario game is nostalgia and a gimmick because they were in Super Mario Bros on the NES.
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It's not about Nintendo doing things, I consider auto runner platforming as a whole gimmick. Like the golden age of mobile gaming titles Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride, they were nothing but gimmicks. Gimmicks get old, like auto runner, once a big fad on mobile platforms and now... it's kinda gone.

Few levels in DKCR as an homage to original trilogy was fine but got bored with the cart/rhino levels in DKTF. They were not fun, for me the worst part of the whole game. Especially the way letters and puzzle pieces are easily missable in such levels.
 
I didn't like Returns in Wii, felt too hard and hated the motion rolling. So I was pretty cold on another 2D DK. But Tropical Freeze proved me wrong, it's my favourite 2d platformer and Wii U game. I also went back in Returns after that and enjoyed it more.

Anyway I don't think any game Retro would do could save Wii U. It was bound to fail due to its concept and name. It was branded as another Wii while trying to be the total opposite, a console targeting the old school fans of Nintendo.

Wii U managed to save face with games like MK8, 3d world, luigi u, Splatoon, Mario maker and tropical freeze. But commercially was a lost cause since its inception imo.
 
If I had my way, anyone who was negative about us getting a second mainline Donkey Kong game since 1999(!) deserves to be banned from videogames for life. I don't care if that's mean. They are bad people and deserve to be punished.
 
Lugia667 said:
Or maybe it wouldn't even be Metroid, but a new MATURE IP like Uncharted! Some rumors went even crazier saying they were going to revive STARTROPICS!!!!!!!!!......no not the topics on the websites. That uhhhhh....series on the NES that had 2 games. Apparently it was possible we were going to get a new RETRO STARTROPICS REBOOT.
Click to expand...
I feel called out. I was one of those weirdos who bought into the rumors that a new StarTropics was happening. 🤣
 
That was 10 years ago? You're kidding me, right?

That was a wild era. I mean, I get it, as a Metroid fan I was starving for something new back then too, but the fact people were ripping a DK game apart because of that hunger is crazy. And that game turned out to be one of the best 2-D platformers ever, which in hindsight only makes the whole debacle crazier.
 
I remember the outrage. As a fan of both franchises I kinda felt embarrassed by the Metroid fanbase, and I've distanced myself from it ever since. Fanbases can be truly the worst.
 
Rhythm Shift said:
I remember the outrage. As a fan of both franchises I kinda felt embarrassed by the Metroid fanbase, and I've distanced myself from it ever since. Fanbases can be truly the worst.
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I felt really strange as a Metroid fan during the 2010s, because I don't think I was ever really worried about the state of the series, which put me out of major lockstep with everyone else.

Other M? Well, that happened. Story was rubbish, but the gameplay was fun enough, I guess. There's always the next one.
Everyone thinking the series was dead because Other M underperformed? Eh, it has two producers. It'll come back eventually. Chill, fam.
Retro making another ****ing Donkey Kong? Sweet, I loved Returns. I can wait for Prime 4. Chill, fam.
Federation Force? Multiplayer spin-offs aren't my thing, but I'm sure it'll be fine. Plus, Tanabe says it's preamble to an actual Prime 4! Chill, fam.
Prime 4 announcement? ...Wait, they're announcing it now? This is just a PNG image. Thanks for confirming development has already started, though.
Samus Returns? Hell yeah, Metroid II remak-- wait, why does half the fandom think Nintendo is making it to spite AM2R? Boycott??? But we finally got a game!?!?
 
It was a disappointing announcement in the moment for me with the thought that they could have made a Metroid game instead after taking a great break with Donkey Kong. I was excited to pick up the game at launch, but I ultimately vastly preferred Donkey Kong Country Returns over Tropical Freeze so 🙃. Going to be great when we get both Prime 4 and DK next year.
 
Yeah, to understand FDK you need to understand the emotional context of the time. Of course in retrospect it's silly, but we're in a very different era of Nintendo in 2023 then we were a decade ago
 
It was a bit of a rough time. I think it’s difficult to seperate Metroid fans wondering what Retro was up to and where the next Metroid Prime was, only to find that they were working on DK, from Nintendo fans in general looking at Nintendo really starting to struggle in the post-Wii years. 3DS needed a huge amount of help to recover from launch (that led to a large price drop and the ambassador programme), and the WiiU itself was a concept where even Nintendo’s best developers struggled to sell the concept. Meanwhile, Sony was going great guns in the closing years of the PS3 and launch of the PS4. It was a mix of fan frustration and warz that overshadowed that TF was a really good game.
 
VegiHam said:
Yeah, to understand FDK you need to understand the emotional context of the time. Of course in retrospect it's silly, but we're in a very different era of Nintendo in 2023 then we were a decade ago
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Yeah it's easy to look back and laugh now, surrounded as we are by an abundance of games and a thriving platform, but Wii U era Nintendo was a very different time; morale was at rock bottom and the prevailing vibe was one of overwhelming doom and gloom.
The first HD game from the makers of Metroid Prime was looked to as a beacon of hope, and Tropical Freeze just wasn't what people were looking for.
Thankfully, it was still a great game, the circumstances were just terrible.
 
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Absolutely no game was capable of saving the Wii U but I guess Nintendo fans at the time really wanted the company to save face as a "see? we can still make big AAA games too!" on their shiny new gen machine. So gamers were pissed when neither the next 3D Mario or Retro Studios game provided that feeling.

Anyways I was in that infamous GAF thread at the time and remembered being really salty about how absolutely unfair this backlash was to poor DK. Turns out Tropical Freeze is hailed as one of the best games in the series now.

I love the Metroid series but this episode really made me bitter towards the Metroid community for how they acted like absolute babies for smearing another game series. They had gone without a new Metroid for like 3 years at the time of DKCTF's reveal? Meanwhile DK fans have had to go on a 10 year hiatus since the release of a game people argued didn't need to exist.
 
Rooster said:
Tropical Freeze is a fantastic game but I still don't think it was the best choice for that time.

Also I don't think the primary concern was that this game would be bad.
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As much as DKTF isn’t really on the level of a Prime game for me, after Prime 3 I wouldn’t have blamed Nintendo for feeling like they needed to pivot. It wasn’t that strong of a title when it launched - it felt a bit like it was (poorly) chasing some of that narrative focused trend at times, and at others, when it was as “Metroid” as it could be, it didn’t quite feel as strong as the previous entries. Totally subjective, but those were my lasting impressions to this day. The way I see it, if Metroid has seen massive success on Wii, you can bet they’d have found a way to keep making them.

That said, it’s been a very long time, and I’m sure Retro has cooked up something special with 4. I’m still waiting for Retro to actually become that “multiple titles simultaneously” studio that Miyamoto proposed.
 
karmitt said:
As much as DKTF isn’t really on the level of a Prime game for me, after Prime 3 I wouldn’t have blamed Nintendo for feeling like they needed to pivot. It wasn’t that strong of a title when it launched - it felt a bit like it was (poorly) chasing some of that narrative focused trend at times, and at others, when it was as “Metroid” as it could be, it didn’t quite feel as strong as the previous entries. Totally subjective, but those were my lasting impressions to this day. The way I see it, if Metroid has seen massive success on Wii, you can bet they’d have found a way to keep making them.

That said, it’s been a very long time, and I’m sure Retro has cooked up something special.
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Prime 3 was still very well recieved (90 on metacritic), but they felt like they wanted to try something new at the time


That reminds me though there were also some eyerolling comments at the time about how Retro didn't have the talent to make Prime games anymore as all the "Real talent" had left. Armature proceeded to make nothing of note and is now in Zuckerberg hell
 
Lugia667 said:
Prime 3 was still very well recieved (90 on metacritic), but they felt like they wanted to try something new at the time
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Who is “they”? I thought people left due to the shift. I’m sure some wanted something new, but more likely that Nintendo wanted something new.
 
karmitt said:
Who is “they”? I thought people left due to the shift. I’m sure some wanted something new, but more likely that Nintendo wanted something new.
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by they I meant Retro studios, I just assmued that after 3 straight games they would naturally wanna do a new thing. We do know by now of alot of scrapped concepts (Granted most never really got far to begin with)
 
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karmitt said:
Who is “they”? I thought people left due to the shift. I’m sure some wanted something new, but more likely that Nintendo wanted something new.
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Employees at Retro didn’t want to do another Metroid Prime game. This is on record. Some wanted to do something else and some felt like their ideas weren’t heard because the ideas came from the top, so they left. Also, Nintendo had a weaker system compared to the competition and some left because of that.
 
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was the hero the Wii U deserved, but not the one it needed then.

It was an iterative sequel to a Wii game that had been released less than three years earlier at that point. The announcement came at a time when people were waiting for a revolutionary killer app - especially after a disappointing launch with a 2D Mario game that was also heavily based on its recent Wii predecessor.

Retro Studios felt like they would have to be the studio to deliver the goods with something on the level of Metroid Prime - a true marvel for the system. When that turned out to not be the case, it felt like yet another blow to the Wii U in a time where it was already struggling.
 
How dare Nintendo/Retro to make a second mainline Donkey Kong game in a gap of 4 years, after a semi-hiatus of nothing but spinoffs for 6 years; Poor Metroid was just in a streak for a while of consistent big budget games year after year 😭 /s ;

No, I don't think any context justify the reaction of GAMERS ™️ ; Especially given how Retro made 3 Metroid games in a row. You will never convince me that was not just an embarrassing tantrum over nothing.
 
CyberWolfJV said:
How dare Nintendo/Retro to make a second mainline Donkey Kong game in a gap of 4 years, after a semi-hiatus of nothing but spinoffs for 6 years; Poor Metroid was just in a streak for a while of consistent big budget games year after year 😭 /s ;

No, I don't think any context justify the reaction of GAMERS ™️ ; Especially given how Retro made 3 Metroid games in a row. You will never convince me that was not just an embarrassing tantrum over nothing.
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'Justify' is the wrong word. Nobody is saying the reaction was logically correct, or that it was mature or sensible. But as @TheMindOfThomas explained in the post above yours, if you want to understand what that reaction was actually about, you need to understand the context it happened in. If you interpret it as just Metroid fans not liking Donkey Kong, you're missing important information. A huge chunk of the disappointment was really about the sadness of realizing that E3 2013, which many hoped would change the fortune of the WiiU by showing the console in a new light, wasn't actually going to do that.
 
The thing about this whole drama that still gets to me is that it really recontextualized the worth of Donkey Kong as a Nintendo IP in the Nintendo community afterwards. It no longer was seen as an important IP for Nintendo to keep around cause hey he's "just" a Mario character so go play Mario games instead. Even though Donkey Kong does deserve more respect (from fans and from Nintendo themselves) since it was a landmark series in Nintendo becoming a video game powerhouse at all.

People forget that Donkey Kong was in a really rough spot after Rare was sold to Microsoft. The franchise direction was aimless with tons of different spinoffs for the IP but none of them were clicking with audiences like a new DKC would (even though Jungle Beat is a great game) to the point that DK was losing its place as a popular series. Then we got DKC Returns which felt like a life line to save the series and it was incredibly well received on the Wii to where it felt like DK was finally back. So to see its immediate sequel get trashed as unimportant and then the franchise is discarded by Nintendo yet again is terribly frustrating.
 
10 years later and some people still believe Retro doing Metroid would’ve changed anything lmao.

Really the worst fanbase for such a good franchise.
 
I'm pretty convinced that a large part of the outrage at the announcement didn't even come from the Metroid fanbase per se, more like insecure Nintendo fans who wanted a "mature" big boy game rather than a silly ape game.
 
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