When you look at a completed game, specifically one that isn’t a remake or a remaster, it’s a marvel to see how it all came together. Furthermore, if it’s a good game, you wonder at times about the various steps and ideas that went into each title and how it turned out the way it did. That’s why hearing from the development teams about their “processes” can be so much fun. In the case of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, you’d think that this game had a pretty simple and streamlined procedure for coming up with its enemies. However, you’d be wrong on that fact.
The second title featuring Donkey Kong from Retro Studios built off the idea of “new enemies for DK to fight” by bringing in the Snowmads. They literally froze DK’s island, and he had to beat them down so that everything would melt. It was simple and effective, and the game was a hit on both the Wii U and the Switch. However, in a chat with the Kiki Talkz podcast, artist Eric Kozlowsky revealed that early on, Retro Studios was open to the idea of having Martians as the enemies this time around:
“I think early on, it might have been discussed like were we going to do the snow theme or like a martian theme where because DK punched the moon at the end of Returns, the aliens living on the moon were going to be the invaders. “
For those who don’t recall, to defeat the “head Tiki” of the previous game, DK and Diddy straight-up got launched to the moon. They punched it down to DK Island on top of the Tiki’s head, and then the moon returned to the sky. Don’t question it.
So, them bringing in the “aliens from the moon” would’ve been an interesting continuity between the games. However, another artist from the team noted that while they thought up designs for the “Martians,” they were really nothing more than “doodles,” so thus it wasn’t considered that much.
What’s interesting, though, is that this isn’t the first time that aliens were almost brought into a series that doesn’t have that kind of “feel” to it. Breath of the Wild was famously a title that had concept art featuring aliens of a sort coming to Hyrule, complete with their ships!
Luckily, that was discarded too, and like Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, both games turned out pretty well without the aliens. Yet, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t “descend” in the future! There are rumors that a new title with DK and crew is coming…
