The iconic sport has now reached over 30 years
Before the grand opening of the Super Nintendo World: Donkey Kong Country this week, members from the beloved Donkey Kong Country design team spoke to VGC about transforming the intellectual property into a complete theme park experience.
During a similar conversation, artist Steve Mayles – who co-founded Playtonic Games (Yooka-Laylee) and designed the Kong family – revealed that he would “really love” to contribute to another DKC game. It has now been “30 years” since he last worked on the series’ original installment. He also expressed his joy at seeing the characters he developed being “celebrated after all this time”.
Steven Mayles: “It’s quite surreal… Although we borrowed the DK IP from Nintendo, much of the park is themed around some of the latest DKC games by Retro, the core theme we created for DKC remains…And yes, I would very much love to work on another DKC game…”
Artist and graphic designer Kevin Bayliss, along with composer David Wise, also shared their astonishment at Nintendo’s recent theme park developments and expressed excitement about having their work showcased within the park.
Kevin Bayliss: “I only wish I’d known years ago that the models I had crafted were going to be scaled up to such enormous sizes, so that I could have designed them better – but in retrospect, it’s probably just as well I didn’t know. I might never have completed them!”
David Wise: “It’s very cool to hear my Donkey Kong Country theme in a different context. 30 years later and still going strong!”
The latest installments in the Donkey Kong franchise were developed by Retro Studios – with Donkey Kong Country Returns HD set to release on the Switch next month. Last week, Nintendo also added Donkey Kong Land 3 to the Switch Online Game Boy library.
The Super Nintendo World: Donkey Kong Country expansion officially opens in Japan tomorrow on December 11th, 2024.
Would you like to see more Donkey Kong Country adventures in the future? Let us know in the comments.
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Liam is a content writer and reviewer for Nintendo Life and Pure Xbox. He has been writing about video games for over 15 years and is a lifelong admirer of Mario and Master Chief.