All due respect to developer Rare — I really enjoyed my time with Diddy Kong Racing, team! — I’m choosing to willfully ignore almost the entirety of its work on the Donkey Kong franchise, because there’s a bunch of very confusing ape lore I’d prefer not to think about while I play Donkey Kong Bananza next week.
And, yeah, Candy Kong is a big part of that. I never want to think about Candy Kong in particular.
As a longtime fan of games Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and 1994 Game Boy game Donkey Kong, I’m going to approach the events of Bananza as the next major milestone in that franchise — a legacyquel, if you will. I’m positively buzzing at seeing how the events of Bananza lead directly into Donkey Kong, a story about Mario climbing a building to save a woman — if that is indeed how the Super Mario Odyssey team has decided to handle this potential prequel.
Nintendo is, of course, withholding those important story details in the lead up to Bananza. The company hasn’t explained why the modern-day Donkey Kong is buddying up with a 13-year-old Pauline, a person he seemingly kidnapped some 44 years ago. I’m both excited to see where this story goes and therefore earnestly avoiding spoilers for the upcoming Switch 2 game in a way I never thought I would. Who cares about Donkey Kong spoilers? Me, apparently!
While it’s been made clear in last month’s Donkey Kong Bananza Nintendo Direct that Country-era Kongs like Cranky, Diddy, and Dixie Kong will show up in DK’s new adventure, I’m going to recanonize those apes to suit my own selfish needs. There will be dozens of named and unnamed simians in Bananza, and I’ll recognize their existence with fresh eyes.
Why do I choose to ignore those Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Land games? Largely for their dated humor and Saturday-morning-cartoon-approach to extending the Donkey Kong universe in careless, corny ways. Also, the character designs are simply atrocious (see Swanky Kong, Candy Kong, Kiddy Kong, Chunky Kong, etc.). As previously mentioned, I have a real issue with the design of Candy Kong, an alarmingly sexed-up ape who feels like a barely disguised fetish and thus probably scarred impressionable children for life. (Funky Kong is OK.)
Donkey Kong Bananza, however, looks to flesh out Kong lore and ape variety in more visually intriguing ways. The game’s giant animal Elders and the menacing apes of VoidCo are a leap forward in design, and they give the world of Bananza a mystical, lived-in world feel. Bonanza’s bad guys look to be an evolution of the antagonists of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, albeit much more creative.
None of my planned willful ignorance of the Donkey Kong Country games (and by extension the Donkey Kong Country Returns games) should be interpreted as a slight against how those games play. They are fine. Some of them are good! Some of them are Donkey Kong 64. But as a Nintendo enthusiast turned off by the Rare-era planet of apes, I’m perfectly fine to let them all live in the past and move on to a brave new Donkey Kong world.
