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Discussion Is Donkey Kong an iconic Mario villain?

What do you think?

  • Yes

    Votes: 27 41.5%

  • No

    Votes: 38 58.5%
  • Total voters
    65
JoshuaJSlone said:
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I may have underestimated this games significance for older folks however I challenge y'all to go find the closest person to you under the age of 20 and show them this image and see if they can identify what it is.
 
GenOneCam said:
I may have underestimated this games significance for older folks however I challenge y'all to go find the closest person to you under the age of 20 and show them this image and see if they can identify what it is.
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It how they introduced Donkey Kong in the Mario Movie
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GenOneCam said:
I may have underestimated this games significance for older folks however I challenge y'all to go find the closest person to you under the age of 20 and show them this image and see if they can identify what it is.
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A huge chunk of people should be able to identify both Mario and Donkey Kong. I'm sure a good chunk of people would say that's Peach and not know it's Pauline.

In addition to the Mario movie using the imagery not to mention a returning Smash Ultimate level for more recent examples, Mario Odyssey sold 20 million plus copies or something and one of the biggest if not the biggest setpiece in the game, the New Donk Festival, is a gigantic tribute to arcade Donkey Kong. I think people generally can identify Donkey Kong's arcade roots. Nintendo regularly does a great job of honoring and highlighting it.
 
xghost777 said:
A huge chunk of people should be able to identify both Mario and Donkey Kong. I'm sure a good chunk of people would say that's Peach and not know it's Pauline.

In addition to the Mario movie using the imagery not to mention a returning Smash Ultimate level for more recent examples, Mario Odyssey sold 20 million plus copies or something and one of the biggest if not the biggest setpiece in the game, the New Donk Festival, is a gigantic tribute to arcade Donkey Kong. I think people generally can identify Donkey Kong's arcade roots. Nintendo regularly does a great job of honoring and highlighting it.
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Fair enough. I think I am just wrong on this due to the specific times they have highlighted it happen to be blind spots for me (didn’t watch the movie, don’t play smash, and never got that far into Odyssey). So to me it seems like an obscure thing from 20 years before I was born and I assumed most people would be far more familiar with DK from the country series and Mario Kart where he is definitely not a villain and they don’t tend to call back to the arcade game.
 
GenOneCam said:
Fair enough. I think I am just wrong on this due to the specific times they have highlighted it happen to be blind spots for me (didn’t watch the movie, don’t play smash, and never got that far into Odyssey). So to me it seems like an obscure thing from 20 years before I was born and I assumed most people would be far more familiar with DK from the country series and Mario Kart where he is definitely not a villain and they don’t tend to call back to the arcade game.
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The last Donkey Kong Country game was 5 years ago and was a port of a 9 year old game. In the time since then not only have things like Smash and the Mario movie happened, but we actually had Donkey Kong Jr. return to Mario Kart.
 
0
While he’s arguably more known through the arcade game, it doesn’t fit at all to call him a villain. On top of being the hero of his own series he’s a good guy in all spinoffs. Sure, he happens to be the antagonist in the arcade game + sequels, but what does he do. He throws barrels at Mario and runs away with the princess. I can’t really speak on how the sequels present it but basically no other game featuring DK expands upon that, basically they don’t really consider his rivalry with Mario or portray him as anything close to a bad guy. Meanwhile a character like Bowser wasn’t only a villain in his first game, but had his “villainous actions” evolve throughout multiple games as tech progressed and stories and cutscenes became a thing. People just don’t intuitively put the word “villain” next to Donkey Kong
 
GenOneCam said:
I may have underestimated this games significance for older folks however I challenge y'all to go find the closest person to you under the age of 20 and show them this image and see if they can identify what it is.
Click to expand...
as someone in that general age group, trust me they both know what donkey kong is and the arcade game
its like sonic where it weaved itself a place into normal pop culture simply for being so significant at the time

If I recall kit and kyrsta of former noa marketing fame even said that donkey king was the 3rd most recognized nintendo character or smth
 
On the contrary, Mario "Jumpman" Mario is the villain of the titular Donkey Kong's story. Thematically, the construction site and Mario represent industrialization encroaching upon and tearing a scar into nature. Donkey Kong is simply a natural force in opposition to this destruction.

Intertextually, it might even be inferred that DK was captured and abducted from his home to be put on display for the perverse enjoyment of this menacing society and that this is why he is present in the first place. It was humanity's hubris and indiscriminate wanton attempts at apotheosis that wrought this outcome.

This could be an opportunity for introspection, for Mario to reflect upon society's actions in the world and his role in that process, but Mario has no care to consider the deeper elements of life. He simply continues to enforce the will of society as it oppresses the natural world.

Beyond that, it seems a stretch to cast Donkey Kong as a villain for this role. He's more an antagonist to Mario's role as protagonist, given he's never ascribed particular villainous intent, and this then transitions to something better described as the two characters sharing a rivalry than as one being a villain.
 
VegiHam said:
Cannot believe the poll. I'm not even 30 yet, but everyone knows Donkey Kong from, you know, Donkey Kong. With the barrels and the hammer?

How young does this forum skew
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Young enough that we've realised there are dozens of games between donkey Kong and now, and he's not a villain in basically any of them.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
Young enough that we've realised there are dozens of games between donkey Kong and now, and he's not a villain in basically any of them.
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Sure, I know that. But you think my grandma knows about tropical freeze? No, obviously, but she knows the Arcade Game.
 
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VegiHam said:
Cannot believe the poll. I'm not even 30 yet, but everyone knows Donkey Kong from, you know, Donkey Kong. With the barrels and the hammer?

How young does this forum skew
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everyone knows donkey kong from donkey kong? no, not at all
everyone knows donkey kong from mario kart
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
It doesn't have to be just one or the other. And regardless of how old it is I'd be pretty surprised if most people weren't still somewhat familiar with the original Donkey Kong. It's like Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, one of those things even a non-gaming audience knows about.
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Eh not really but sure. Dk is proabaly more iconic as that monkey in Mario kart more than anything.

But definitely not as a Mario villain, that was a one off thing aside from a niche spin off.
 
My father who doesn't give a shit about videogames got the Donkey Kong reference in the Mario movie, so I will bet on that role of his being iconic, yeah. He's always been my meter for the general population awareness of stuff.
 
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