 Today we're diving into something that makes my mind spin in wonderment. We're talking about Donkey Kong. You guys remember the Donkey Kong rumors we had a couple years ago. I believe they started in 2021. Correct me if I'm wrong on that of course because this hasn't been a consistent rumor that's been coming up a lot because the rumors never really stated when we would get a new Donkey Kong game. Just that one was being made. It wasn't clear if it was 2D or 3D. Maybe the Super Mario Odyssey team was involved. But that was about it. We didn't really know anything else. So we've had a number of insiders from Emily Rogers and Nate the Hate back this sort of rumor. But we don't have any exact details except maybe we now do. Now before I dive into this because guys what if I were to tell you this was originally a 3D Donkey Kong game that Miyamoto was extremely excited about. That is if these rumors are true I will find out. That being said before we dive into Donkey Kong I just want to remind you that hey we are on our road to 100,000 subscribers. I would really appreciate if you guys would drop a like and subscribe. And if we somehow get there before, before Tears of the Kingdom comes out we'll give away collector's edition of Tears of the Kingdom. So I don't know. You guys don't have to subscribe for that collector's edition. There's only one being given away but I would appreciate you guys helping us drive on forward to our goal of 100k before Zelda. Alright so I'm getting all this information over on FAMI boards. And some of it is also sort of collected from DK Vine. For those who don't know what those places are, DK Vine is a dedicated Donkey Kong fan forum. And then obviously FAMI boards is another forum for Nintendo fans based off the Famicon that spun off I think from Reset Era which originally spun off from NeoGaff. So I'm not going to dive into all the history of these places. And it's fine if you don't like these communities. I really don't care. That's not the point of the video. The point of the video is to go over the information. And it turns out that there's a couple people claiming that they have some knowledge or at least are summarizing knowledge that they have heard about a Donkey Kong game. I want to emphasize 100% that these are rumors. These are the sort of rumors you probably should put a tinfoil hat on for just because it's impossible to confirm any of this. And most of it may never be confirmed outside of the fact that I guess if the Donkey Kong game comes out and it's a 3D Donkey Kong game maybe this has some stuff involved in it. It would explain why there's some confusion on whether it would be a 2D or 3D game. So without further ado, let's just read into this stuff. The first comes from a user called Professor Chops. And he hopped into a thread where they were talking about the original Donkey Kong rumors. And it said greetings, family boards. I hope everyone is having a nice week. The reason Donkey Kong has been on hiatus for so long isn't because Nintendo doesn't know what to do with Donkey Kong. On the contrary, Donkey Kong's big combat game has been in development since at least 2016. Vicarious Visions, the developers of the Crash Bandicoot insane trilogy, were working on an open world 3D Donkey Kong game following the release of Skylander's Superchargers. Miyamoto was contributing design ideas and loved what he saw. But for various reasons, the project was shelved and the development shifted over to EPD Tokyo in 2018. EPD Tokyo, by the way, is the Mario team. Sometime after the release of Super Mario Odyssey. Now this is where the confusion stems from. Everybody assumes that the new Donkey Kong game is going to be a 2D platformer. And it very well could be due to job listings and because they refuse to entertain the thought of Nintendo investing the resources into an ambitious Donkey Kong game when they could just make a new 3D Mario instead. However, the game was in development prior to the shift that was most definitely not 2D. Other than a few minor details such as Pauline being playable character, this is all I know about the cancelled DK project. Then he goes on to speculation, which I think merits some weight just because of the emphasis Nintendo is putting on Donkey Kong. So we're going to go over the speculation quick. So he said this is speculation to my part, but I think the real reason why we haven't seen this new game yet is because Nintendo is going to surprise the world by announcing the first 3D Donkey Kong game really since 1999. I believe it's going to be a launch title for the next system and serve as the big ape's breath of the wild moment. A complete rethinking of the franchise and its conventions. Behind the scenes, Miyamoto has been champion for a major Donkey Kong brand revitalization. Hence the theme park expansion which has already been announced and rumored spin-off film. He wants Donkey Kong to be an A tier franchise again and he was reportedly behind the push to bring the franchise home and develop it internally. Now you're free to disregard my post as wishful thinking and accuse me of peddling fake news or whatever this cancelled Donkey Kong game has been common knowledge in certain circles for years. I am not revealing anything new other than questioning why they would cancel an ambitious 3D game that everybody at EPD loved including Miyamoto himself and make a 2D platformer instead. However, no matter what the genre of the new game is, I'm confident Nintendo has DK's best interests at heart and it won't be long before we hear about it. Now this other person comes in from Kremling Cutthroat who is bringing in stuff from the DK Vine forum that people have been talking about and here's what he had to add. I've been lurking on this thread and I'm a regular at DK Vine and registered on Familyboard just to share a few details that I'm privy to. First of all, Hyal has mentioned multiple times that his sources on the EPD game mentioned that the development of this EPD game began around late 2017 to early 2018. So that lines up with what's being said here. The whole Nintendo making a Donkey Kong game with the Mario Odyssey team is a misnomer. This is a new EPD team allegedly, meaning this team isn't taking away from the mainline Mario games and vice versa for Donkey Kong. It's not a DK or Mario situation. The clickbaity articles titled the Mario Odyssey team is working on Donkey Kong is what is causing the confusion. Too long didn't read, rest easy Mario fans, no one's taking away or postponing 3D Mario. With that said, allegedly this new team is younger EPD staff that are huge fans of Donkey Kong and we're excited about the opportunity to work on Donkey Kong. The devs behind this game probably worked on Mario Odyssey, hence all the references to Donkey Kong in that game, especially in New Donk City. Some members of the Donkey Kong Vine forum corroborated that Vicarious Visions was working on a 3D Donkey Kong game before it got cancelled and they mentioned Pauline having a bigger role. So I'm going to believe these rumors since I heard it from so many people. Lastly, with Donkey Kong and Cruise major presence in the Mario film, a rumored spin-off film and a massive theme park expansion, it's obvious Nintendo is positioning Donkey Kong to be an A-list franchise again. You don't invest hundreds of millions of dollars into a dead IP. The only thing missing is the game announcement. It's possible they're holding off the game reveal until they announce their next platform, but I'm so over speculating about the next Nintendo Switch, etc. goes into his opinions on that. Donkey Kong's next adventure will most likely be announced in the next 6-12 months in my opinion. It's harder to be patient, but we're going to have to be. I think another thing to keep in mind is that I'm pretty convinced the cancel Vicarious Visions game was a 3D platformer. I've heard from multiple sources that it was definitely 3D, so I safely assumed that there was a 3D Donkey Kong game that was canned, and apparently Miyamoto loved a lot of aspects about it. The project moving to EPD in 2017-2018 sounds about right. My hunch is that a good portion of the Mario Odyssey team switched to this DK team after Odyssey released and Nintendo restaffed the Odyssey team once it began working in the next 3D Mario. Since the game has been in development this long, I simply find it hard to believe that it's a 2D platformer, especially if they're using assets from the cancelled Vicarious Visions game. This game is approaching a Breath of the Wild length development cycle, so I think it's very ambitious and I know COVID slowed down development. Also, it'd be really weird to me for Nintendo to abandon this 3D platformer concept if Nintendo staff really liked it and made a side scroller like Tropical Freeze already. Regarding the job postings, I don't think it's safe to assume what those games could be, could it be for a DK game, sure, and they're just talking about various things that Nintendo's hired for over the years. So look, what we kinda get out of this, the exciting part, is that we might have a 3D Donkey Kong platforming open world game on our hands here, and it could explain why nobody knows when this game is coming, why it's been in development for so long. By the way, there was another point in this thread, talked about how there was an idea at Vicarious Visions about Donkey Kong grinding on vines, and Miyamoto was like, oh I don't think he would do that with his bare feet, and so then they threw some bananas on his feet, and Miyamoto apparently absolutely loved the idea of DK somehow attaching bananas to his feet and sliding on vines. I don't know if that's something that we would actually see in the game, but that was an interesting gameplay mechanic that did come up. Look, all of this is just rumors. You can call it speculation. You can call it whatever you want. I can't verify any of this. I did talk to, very, very briefly, the person who made the original post bringing this stuff up, Professor Chops. But look, I don't really know much about what's happening. I don't have any insider knowledge. I don't have any direct evidence or screenshots or anything. So I just thought I'd talk about this today because this is an amazing concept for a game, isn't it? I'm sitting here almost dreaming of a Breath of the Wild-esque Donkey Kong game. Like we're not talking about Breath of the Wild-esque in terms of, oh it's this massive world that's fully explorable. But it is one of those things where a massive rethinking of what this game is and what Donkey Kong can be, making it relevant, trying to make this as big as possible and making it just the most ambitious Donkey Kong game ever made. I love the idea of that. And as for it being a launch title for the next system, look, if it really is this ambitious, hot damn. Like Donkey Kong is outside of the OG arcade game and all that. Donkey Kong has never really been this massive selling IP. But if they're this dedicated to it, then I guess it makes sense. Also one thing to point out, and I wanted to mention this before the end, this is not the first time we've heard that Nintendo's emphasizing Donkey Kong. Obviously we know about the theme parks and the potential movie spinoff and all that. Even now Donkey Kong Lego, so they have a Lego thing happening. But Mike Odyssey, a good friend of the channel, actually came on a live stream we did on a podcast. I mean it was a podcast. Anyways, and he had this to say, there's three properties that they're going to focus on is Mario, Donkey Kong, and Pokemon. But yeah, but when it comes to world building, what I've heard is Mario, Pokemon, Pokemon, and Donkey Kong. I haven't heard anything else. But I'm pretty sure that Zelda's on its way as well. And basically what he was just talking about in summary is that he has a buddy that works construction at Super Nintendo World and according to him, Nintendo's planning to have Donkey Kong become one of their pillar franchises. Well to do that, you're going to need to have not just the movie, not just the theme park, you're going to have to have a major game. And not just a side scroller in my opinion, because Donkey Kong side scrollers seem to have a ceiling for their success. What if Nintendo wants to completely smash through that ceiling and try to get a game selling Mario Odyssey like numbers? It will be interesting to see if Nintendo pulls that off. That would be an IP revitalization of the nth degree. It also makes some people wonder, hey, why can't we get the same thing for Kid Icarus? Why can't we get the same thing for F-Zero? Why can't we get the same thing for Star Fox? But you know what? Donkey Kong is Miyamoto's baby. He literally predates Mario. So I could see where this is a big deal. Plus they have a lot of obviously outside of gaming things happening with Donkey Kong. They might think now is the time to strike because Nintendo is forcing the iron to be hot. Anyways guys, thank you so much for tuning in. Let me know what you think about these rumors. Down in the comments below. Is this what you want to happen with Donkey Kong? Do you want no more Donkey Kong? Do you just hate the DK franchise? That would be really weird. Who could hate the Kongs? Or would you like to see more side scrolling mayhem? Or somewhere in between 2.5 did it? Metroid Other Amid? No, well okay. Maybe don't Metroid Other Amid, but you know what I mean. I'll catch you guys in that next video.