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Rumour Vicarious Visions was working on an open-world 3D Donkey Kong game called 'Donkey Kong Freedom' for Nintendo Switch back in 2016

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Despite being a temporary waystation for Donkey Kong, Nintendo was suitably impressed with how he and the nonplayable Diddy Kong were portrayed in the game. So with Retro Studios fully occupied and desperately trying to salvage their current project, Nintendo gave Metroid Prime 4 to Bandai Namco and awarded the next Donkey Kong game to Vicarious Visions, SuperChargers having served as their quiet audition. The game's internal name would be Donkey Kong Freedom, a 3D open world adventure for the Nintendo Switch that would emphasize a style of gameplay replicating the kinetic energy of the Donkey Kong Country games but in 3D. Think less Donkey Kong 64 and more obstacles and vine swinging. One of the big features was something called "vine grinding," where Donkey Kong would slide down vines and ropes on his feet. Imagine the Tropical Freeze stage "Zip-Line Shrine" but with feet instead of hands. The Tony Hawk influence speaks for itself.
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Wow...
 


With January winding down and rumors of Nintendo's Switch successor accelerating, Donkey Kong fans are wearily glancing at their calendars towards February 21st. That date marks the tenth anniversary of the last new standalone Donkey Kong game: Retro Studio's 2014 Wii U masterpiece, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. While it would go on to receive a Switch port in 2018, and was followed later that year by a Donkey Kong DLC adventure in Ubisoft's Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, the lack of an all-new self-contained DK game on the Switch has many in the community frustrated. Folks are wondering not only what the future holds for Nintendo's great ape and his expansive family and friends, but also what happened behind-the-scenes to keep him in hibernation for an entire decade
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There is a lot in here to read.

DK Vine • News • The Story of Donkey Kong Freedom, the Scrapped 3D Donkey Kong Game for Nintendo Switch from Vicarious Visions

www.dkvine.com www.dkvine.com
 
There was some big insider that talked about this recently, forget who it was though.
 
f22.gif
 
Man, Switch getting both sandbox gameplay 3D Donkey Kong and Super Mario titles would have been incredible :)

This could have been an impressive late 2021 title.

Hopefully Nintendo translates these ideas for a future DK game.
 
Is the the major Donkey Kong game that’s been rumoured for years? I’ve heard people discussing a new DK with uncertainty about whether it would be 2D or 3D. Do we know if this is that project, or something else entirely?
 
The article also states that Nintendo took over(or may have taken over) development. I'm guessing it's not exactly true but maybe it is inspiration for the next DK game we've been speculating is happening for years now.
 
Unbelievable they stopped them from continuing working on the game. It wasn’t even some bad blood or bad development…fk man
 
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Skies said:
I'm sorry but I absolutely refuse to believe Miyamoto was concerned about Donkey Kong getting rope burn of the sole of his feet.
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This is what makes me believe the story is real.
During the Metroid Prime development, he told Retro "what if Samus had a bugs head" which led to them making the visor mechanic.
For Goldeneye he told Rare what if James Bond shook all the enemies hands in the hospital at the end, which led to them doing a credits sequence that featured a roll-call of the cast, to emphasis it wasn't real.

He usually suggests these things to spur developers' imagination
 
Pauline being the Kong crew's April O'Neil character is honestly a really fun idea

Especially if they allowed Cranky and her to butt heads... Cranky isn't as fun as he used to be back in the day. He really needs someone he can squabble with in an unhinged way

She coulda been the Aunt Esther to his Fred Sanford

But we'll never know now... sigh
 
Truno said:
Exactly my point. Why would a fansite be privy to development information? Especially of Nintendo
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The article also ends with a promotion of a Dreams fan project.

I know the Miyamoto thing is splitting hairs. It's okay if people disagree with me on that.

But I read the article in full and multiple things just seems off. A lot of detailed information for only a select few to be aware of, after all this time, seems odd. Activision is not exactly a company known for keeping secrets well.

Until I hear something from another reputable source confirming some of these details, this feels like Star Fox Grand Prix all over again. That's my two cents.
 
Hopefully the scrapped work by VV got picked up by another studio and has been worked on behind the scenes all this time. It happened with MP4, but we got to see that announced.
 
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Not sure weather or not this is real, but if it is this it the part that makes me the most mad...

"We know Nintendo did put the kibosh on Retro using K. Rool as a new secret final boss in the Switch port of Tropical Freeze, partially because they wanted to preserve the impact of him being in Smash."
 
None of this is really new. And the only source I've ever heard this from is DK Vine

So if it was real, why was it supposedly canceled anyway?
 
Truno said:
What's the source? Why are we treating a post from a site called, 'DK Vine' as gospel
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There isn't one. DK Vine and others (who I think are just piggybacking) have been passing these and associated rumors like the K. Rool Tropical Freeze one around for years. I've never found most of them to be very believable.

I don't think they're lying, necessarily, but it's all information from some guy they met at E3 or whatever, we don't know who that is so the source is essentially "trust me bro".
 
Christo750 said:
Maybe not Nintendo but of VV? A western studio? They’d be privy.

This rumor has been discussed in the Donkey Kong OT a lot.
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Yeah, what was (allegedly) leaked is from VV.

However, there are some parts which are IMHO too detailed

Retro's Twitter account cryptically tweeted a week before E3 2015, but rumors that Nintendo was reportedly unsatisfied with it and it failing to find a direction meant it never saw the light of day. The meaning behind "Can you dig it?" was thus never uncovered.
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We know nothing about the game from Retro, the super-secret developer studio, but we know it was going to be on E3 2015 and Nintendo pulled it out at the eleventh hour. Logically, the source should also know a bit about the game.
We know Nintendo did put the kibosh on Retro using K. Rool as a new secret final boss in the Switch port of Tropical Freeze, partially because they wanted to preserve the impact of him being in Smash.
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Again, nobody knows anything about Retro, and nobody knows anything about Smash characters. But we 100% know that Retro wanted K. Rool in the Switch port of Tropical Freeze, and that Nintendo wanted the character in Smash first. Assuming this is true, they could have released TF after Smash and banking on the character's popularity. But in order to assume it is true, we have to assume that we have a source with a deep knowledge not only of Retro (and at this point, shouldn't Retro's game has been laked as well?), but of the Japanese side of Nintendo as well. It's too much.

I believe the overal story is plausible, but these accidental details are too specific and cast a shadow on the whole leak. These details were also never mentioned by the only two reputable Retro leakers we have (Belmont and Emily) -- though, to be fair, they never talked about these topics specifically.

On this very message board, we have two user who I assume are both in good faith with conflicting opinion. @Professor Chops has reported the same story one year ago (but IIRC believe he didn't confirm the K Rool detail). @PikminSnezkov, who leaked TTYD remake, claimed the story has been fabricated, but he believes in a DK game by EPD.
 
Christo750 said:
Maybe not Nintendo but of VV? A western studio? They’d be privy.

This rumor has been discussed in the Donkey Kong OT a lot.
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They claim to know about changes in Nintendo EPD. Specifically that there's a team at EPD 8 dedicated to DK. How a fansite would know this, let alone any insider, is beyond me
 
Good, because now we're getting Jungle Beat 2, sequel to the best DK game of all time. Right? RIGHT?!
 
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Pretty sure this has been known about for a while; and i’ll trust it once anyone reports it other than DK vine.
 
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Skies said:
Miyamoto usually makes suggestions with gameplay implications. Banana feet protectors is not a gameplay solution.

Also the irony of your username and our discussion has me in stitches.
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He similarly expressed concern over DK using a shotgun in DK64, after which Rare came up with the coconut gun (that fires in spurts). That was a change rooted not in gameplay, but in the character.

Even if this whole story is untrue, Miyamoto being concerned about that seems extremely in character if you ask me.
 
Me on the outside: huh, interesting
Me on the inside: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
 
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ILikeFeet said:
this is exactly the kind of weird shit Miyamoto would ask about
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Right? Even the article points out how Miyamoto sparked the Blowing mechanic in Returns. It is completely in line with Miyamoto's vision. That, and DK is Miyamoto's friend, and he would want his feet to not get hurt.
 
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Well this certainly sounds awesome. Hoping we get an open world Mario or Donkey Kong game. Or both because let's dream BIG!!!
 
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there's some sketchy stuff in the rumor but i wanna be devil's advocate for some of the details

How does DK Vine know that Retro was going to show their game, that we know nothing about as of today, at E3 2015?
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my guess is that they truly don't know and they're just absent-mindedly speculating away on that, based on retro's suspicious tweet that they made circa E3, which they posted on the article

Why do they know EPD 8 is developing the game?
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the throughline here would be that nintendo told vicarious visions about this, and the insider, most likely from or related to the staff working on the game, told DK Vine about it

Why does DK Vine know any of this at all?
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for the exact same reason that pikminsnezkov knew about the TTYD remake; since DK Vine is the one and only donkey kong fan community there is, and you're eager to share all the details about the donkey kong game you were working on that got cancelled, where else would you go?

god knows about how they know all that stuff about k. rool in tropical freeze though
 
Gingerbread Man said:
We know nothing about the game from Retro, the super-secret developer studio, but we know it was going to be on E3 2015 and Nintendo pulled it out at the eleventh hour. Logically, the source should also know a bit about the game.

Again, nobody knows anything about Retro, and nobody knows anything about Smash characters. But we 100% know that Retro wanted K. Rool in the Switch port of Tropical Freeze, and that Nintendo wanted the character in Smash first. Assuming this is true, they could have released TF after Smash and banking on the character's popularity. But in order to assume it is true, we have to assume that we have a source with a deep knowledge not only of Retro (and at this point, shouldn't Retro's game has been laked as well?), but of the Japanese side of Nintendo as well. It's too much.

I believe the overal story is plausible, but these accidental details are too specific and cast a shadow on the whole leak. These details were also never mentioned by the only two reputable Retro leakers we have (Belmont and Emily) -- though, to be fair, they never talked about these topics specifically.
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It's not directly relevant since he doesn't really share any insider information as far as I know, but I believe there is someone on the DK Vine forum whose brother works at Retro, and he seems aware of some of the goings on there. Assuming he does know the truth, I'm not sure he would confirm or deny anything about these rumors though, he tries to be very very mum on the subject.

This article is actually the first time I remember hearing about David Wise being attached to the "can you dig it?" project. I also think it's interesting that the article doesn't mention the supposed second scrapped Retro project and the mysterious robot hand from the Reggie postcard at all. Was that rumor covering the timeline of what Retro has been doing between Tropical Freeze and Metroid Prime 4 from someone else? I can't keep track.

Truno said:
They claim to know about changes in Nintendo EPD. Specifically that there's a team at EPD 8 dedicated to DK. How would a fansite know this, let alone any insider, is beyond me
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This is just based on changes in merchandise branding and comments from the Mario + Rabbids guys I think, no actual leaks here. Though the rumor of EPD developing a Donkey Kong game has also been around for ages and I have no idea if it had any actual basis or was originally related to anything DK Vine said.

Superstarxalien said:
my guess is that they truly don't know and they're just absent-mindedly speculating away on that, based on retro's suspicious tweet that they made circa E3, which they posted on the article
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Pretty sure this one was indeed an actual leak and not speculation, they reported on it a while ago. Though I could have sworn I remembered the story being about a last minute substitution as the reason behind the infamous Nintendo Land fireworks, which was years earlier, so I might have my wires crossed.
 
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