Is Nintendo trying to distance the Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario series?

YoshiCookie

YoshiCookie

Goomba
I remember something similar happened when Rare was still the co-owner of the Donkey Kong Country franchise. Nintendo tried to keep Rare's OCs out of the Super Mario spin-offs, with Donkey Kong himself as the only representative.

Then when the big Microsoft buyout happened, Rare gave all the Donkey Kong Country rights back to Nintendo and they started going wild with them. Diddy Kong and sometimes even the likes of Dixie Kong and the Kremlings started becoming Mario series mainstays. Super Smash Bros. Brawl even included a playable Diddy and trophies of all the major Donkey Kong Country characters, while the previous two games had zero representation outside of Donkey Kong himself and a Diddy Kong reference. Mario Super Sluggers had Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, Tiny Kong, Funky Kong, and King K. Rool and the Kremlings as playable characters. This continued even when Retro Studios became the new Donkey Kong Country co-owner, but then Tropical Freeze came out.

Then Nintendo's DKC representation started rolling back to what it was in the Rare era, with DK himself as the only representative. Diddy's appearances are now few and far in between, and the others are out of the question.

So what happened?
 
That's very likely what they're doing right now.

They're trying to establish Donkey Kong as a different series from Mario (which is not a bad thing at all imo), same as what they've done with warioware all this time. Of course, DK and Wario are still in every Mario spinoff because they are very much still relevant to the mario main series, while their respective OCs aren't.
 
Sadly, by keeping most of the Donkey Kong cast away from the Mario spin-offs, that makes it quite hard for them to make any kind of return. This is further evidenced in that the last two Donkey Kong Country titles have had completely different antagonists than the Kremling Krew, and never bothered to bring back most of the Kong family members; so far, only Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, Cranky Kong, and Funky Kong have managed to stick around.

And just to be clear, Nintendo has the rights to all the Donkey Kong characters.
 
I remember reading in a Donkey Kong Country Returns interview that the decision to phase out the Kremlings and the other Kongs in the Donkey Kong Country series was Retro's idea, not Nintendo's. Nintendo basically just gave them temporary rights to the franchise. Of course, it's Nintendo that's trying to phase out Diddy and the others from the Super Mario series.

Anyway, I can see both sides of the argument. I'd be lying if I didn't say that Donkey Kong is an essential character in the Mario franchise, but Diddy and the others are not. But then again, it's hard to believe that despite not introducing any more playable characters, Super Smash Bros. 4 had the best representation of the Donkey Kong Country series in a long, long while.

But who knows? With Diddy Kong being announced as a newcomer(!) to Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and Nintendo being quite unpredictable when it comes to character rosters, they might do a 180 and start representing them again.
 
I need to point out that the declining Donkey Kong Country character appearances within the Mario series may coincide with less Mario spinoffs in general in the Wii U generation. Diddy's recent exclusions are questionable, but he has still appeared occasionally in the Mario series. I suggest we wait for several more years' worth of Mario games, especially the spinoffs, before we come to conclusion of a disconnect of the two series.
 
Dr. Mario said:
I need to point out that the declining Donkey Kong Country character appearances within the Mario series may coincide with less Mario spinoffs in general in the Wii U generation. Diddy's recent exclusions are questionable, but he has still appeared occasionally in the Mario series. I suggest we wait for several more years' worth of Mario games, especially the spinoffs, before we come to conclusion of a disconnect of the two series.
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You have a point there, too. Sometimes I forget we're not in the spinoff heyday of the N64, GameCube, and early Wii eras. I remember in the spinoff-sparse latter half of the Wii era we thought Toadette, Rosalina, and the babies were retired because they hadn't appeared in the few spinoffs there were. Around 2013, when the spinoffs started picking up again, one by one they quietly reappeared. Now all of them appear to be series mainstays.

But yeah, I pointed out that Mario & Sonic Rio, or a later spinoff, might turn Diddy Kong around again.

And you're right about the theory being askewed by less spinoffs. Now that I think of it, there are only three recent spinoffs Diddy has missed, that being Mario Kart 8, Mario Party 10, and Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash.
 
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