The Nintendo Switch has been a boon for numerous Nintendo franchises, and not just the ones you would expect, given its past. Multiple franchises have sold record numbers on the console, solidifying them for the future more than likely. A great example is Fire Emblem, which had multiple million sellers on the system. Or Animal Crossing New Horizons, which is one of the best-selling games of the entire software roster. Given that, you’d think franchises like Donkey Kong would get multiple games on the platform, but that isn’t the case. Or at least, not yet, as a report says a game is in the works.
You might recall that a port of the Wii U title did come to the Switch in its early days, and it sold very well. As of the end of 2021, the game sold over 4 million units! That’s just for the Switch version, not including the Wii U game sales. So you’d think Nintendo would see that and go, “let’s make another game in this line!”
But no word has been given that such a game is coming. Or at least, nothing official. Unofficially, there have been many reports that a DK title is coming and potentially has been in the works for years. Enter Nintendo Prime, a YouTuber and “insider” who claims to have seen a build of the title and notes on a recent episode that the game is still in the works despite a tumultuous development cycle.
That cycle included first being worked on by Vicarious Visions, which means that Activision would’ve technically headed up the game. The game was set to be open-world and feature new moves for DK, including grinding across vines like Tarzan.
Shigeru Miyamoto was a part of this “early build” and liked where it was going. However, Vicarious Visions broke away from the project for unknown reasons.
Despite that, Nintendo Prime states that the Donkey Kong title is in the works now within Nintendo and is being worked on by the same people who helped make Super Mario Odyssey. If that is true, that could explain why it’s taking so long. The new team had to start over in certain ways, and if it’s an open world, they needed to make sure everything was fun, meaningful and controlled well.
Doug Bowser of Nintendo recently said that he felt the Nintendo Switch still had a strong lineup coming out in its waning years. Perhaps this may be one of the titles to punctuate that thought.