
A man once said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” The intent of that meaning is simple: Sometimes we look for deeper meaning in things that truly don’t mean anything beyond their intended purpose. The problem that many will have with that phrase is that there are times when you’re looking at something, or you’re seeing multiple things happening at once, and you can’t help but think, “That’s not a coincidence, right?” We see this all the time in the gaming space, and we’re apparently seeing it right now via Nintendo and Diddy Kong! How so? We’ll break it down for you.
You might recall that not too long ago, Nintendo dropped an “official render” for Donkey Kong alongside his best pal Diddy Kong. While DK’s new look was fully on display, Diddy’s was a bit more reserved in the “changes” department. There were some small tweaks to the design, but it was overall the same, and many were fine with that.
The reason no one called out “That means something!” at first was because Nintendo dropped other renders of their characters to showcase how they will be in the Nintendo Switch 2 era. Mystery solved. Moving on. Heck, even the creator of Diddy thanked Nintendo for not changing the design:
So, yeah, end of story. Or, at least, that was the intent. Except, now, a few more Diddy Kong renders have shown up in two different places, and they are images that are much different from the render we saw before.
First, we have the Licensing Expo that’s going on right now in Las Vegas. As you’ll see from the social media post below, the image features the Kongs swinging from vines in a new piece of art, versus the piece they used for Link and his franchise, which is very much from the last game he starred in:
Then, if you head to Nintendo’s official website, you’ll see yet another new render of Donkey and Diddy, this time with the latter “riding” on the former. Once is explainable, two is odd, and three is a pattern. So, what is Nintendo trying to tease here?
The biggest explanation might be the simplest. That explanation is that either Diddy will get his own game soon, or he’ll be revealed in the next trailer for Donkey Kong Bananza. We know at least one of the Kongs will be there via Cranky, and it’d make sense to bring Diddy into the mix, too!