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Joystiq Streams: Cranky takes it to the fridge in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze [UPDATE: Relive the stream!]
[UPDATE: Ludwig Kietzmann, fearing that his expert platforming skill would so incense viewers that they would riot, has yielded the stream to Richard Mitchell.] Were the Sesame Street gang to look upon the three major games released in the last week of February, they would surely sing "One Of These Things Is Not Like the Other." Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 and Thief both put denizens of the night in dense, dark urban landscapes. Then there's Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, which lets you hop and roll through an archipelago of flowing fruit juice and big-eyed penguins. Little different. Funny thing is, Tropical Freeze is the hardest of the three, with insanely difficult platforming and rage-inducing boss fights. That steep challenge is precisely why we're putting Ludwig Kietzmann, Joystiq's Editor in Chief, against its simian cruelties. Tune in to the Joystiq Twitch Channel at 4PM EST to join Ludwig as he attempts to retrieve all the bananas. Anthony John Agnello will be hanging in the chat, feeding your questions and derision directly to him. [Image: Nintendo]
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze trailer is cranky, probably needs a nap
Nintendo showed off a new trailer for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze during its Nintendo Direct presentation today. The video briefly spotlights the Wii U game's fourth playable character, Cranky Kong, who was first announced for the game during the VGX awards earlier this month. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was previously scheduled to launch this month, but was delayed to February 21 back in October. Our time with the game at E3 this year playing cooperative multiplayer was largely positive, and at some points "seemed really difficult, even by Donkey Kong standards."
Cranky Kong brandishes cane, joins Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze roster on February 21
Following Amazon Italy's slip up with its box art for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, as reported by Gematsu, Cranky Kong was confirmed to be the game's fourth playable character during Spike's VGX show. Demo footage depicted Cranky Kong attacking spiked enemies with his cane and bouncing across pointy sections of levels (hello, Bramble Scramble). Tropical Freeze's February release window has also been clarified - Donkey Kong and friends will start mauling wildlife for bananas on February 21.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze rolls down a Retro track
"Okay, where are the minecart levels?" That's a novel, ill-advised question when it comes to platformers, but Retro Studios achieved the improbable with 2010's Donkey Kong Country Returns (updated this year with a 3DS version). The side-scrolling platformer knew how to do a good minecart level, exhibiting creative design in a realm meant to be firmly on tracks – sometimes the whole track would curl up and break loose, rolling forward as you spun around a makeshift motorcycle cage. The rickety rail-jumping returns in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, along with some of the other special traits that rightly suit Nintendo's tie-wearing gorilla. I played a handful of levels set at various points of the game, getting a sense of its challenge and momentum. As before, Donkey Kong and an optional companion – the diminutive Dixie Kong joins this time – run from left to right, leaping and swinging to avoid flames, falls and the fury of nasty animals marching about. The backgrounds are a vivid mix of jungles, caverns and cloudy skies, and all benefit from Retro's graduation to HD on the Wii U.
Co-opinion: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (E3 2013)
This is Co-Opinion, where two Joystiq editors play a game and discuss their experience. .portal-left { padding: 10px; background: #CCC; margin: 20px 0; min-height: 85px; } .portal-right { padding: 10px; margin: 20px 0; min-height: 85px; } .portal-right img { padding-left: 5px; } .portal-left img { padding-right: 5px; } Dave Hinkle: As far as piggy back rides go, I think I've had the best one of my life in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Wii U. You made me feel safe during our E3 demo, Jordan. You protected me. Jordan Mallory: Well it's Donkey Kong's responsibility to protect the well-being of his little nephew Diddy, Dave. There are a lot of dangerous viking walruses and perilous pits around this tropical paradise. %Gallery-191105%
Deja Review: Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D
In our 2010 review of Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii, our own JC Fletcher admitted a terrible truth: He had used the Super Guide. Nintendo gave us the nefarious innovation a few years ago, ostensibly a tool to help less experienced players navigate the trickier parts of its games. Seasoned players recognized it for what it really was: A taunt, a gently whispering devil on your shoulder. Resisting the shiny, candy-like allure of the Super Guide is still a major component of Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, Monster Games' 3DS rendition of Retro Studios' Wii platformer. A new difficulty setting tries to soften the Wii version's sharp edges, but the brutal structure of its levels remains intact, and no amount of extra health is going to change that.%Gallery-184939%
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D being developed by Monster Games, not Retro Studios
It looks like Donkey Kong Country Returns developer Retro Studios isn't returning for the 3DS remake, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D. According to the Australian Classification Board, the game is being developed by Monster Games, the studio behind 3DS launch title Pilotwings Resort.That leaves us with the question of what exactly Retro Studios is up to these days. Last year, Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto sparked interest in the possibility of Retro handling a new Zelda game, though he later said that the studio is "too busy for that sort of thing." Apparently, it's also too busy to port Donkey Kong Country Returns to 3DS. So, in the hope that we can just will it into existence, we're going to assume Retro is hard at work on Metroid Dread for the Wii U.
Miyamoto: Retro-developed Zelda 'not out of the question,' but studio is 'too busy'
Retro Studios recently worked on 2010's Wii game Donkey Kong Country Returns, and last year's Mario Kart 7. For the studio's future, legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto said it isn't out of the question for Retro to work on the Zelda franchise; however, the Austin-based developer is currently too busy to take on the series."In terms of them working on a Zelda, it's not out of the question, certainly, for them to work on an entire Zelda game amongst themselves," Miyamoto told IGN when asked about the Austin-based studio's current project. Miyamoto has said Retro is capable in the past, but added that geography would be an issue."Traditionally I think that the Zelda team has always had a close contact with anyone who's working on a Zelda game. If you were going to have that happen in the US at Retro, that would be kind of difficult for them to be able to coordinate." Miyamoto added that Retro is "too busy for that sort of thing right now" anyway, joking that he'd likely have to move to Texas – where Retro Studios is located – since a Zelda game requires his involvement, as well.Retro Studios is capable, but coordinating overseas with Kyoto would obviously be a big hurdle. "Retro is very busy right now, but I'm afraid I can't say exactly what it is," Miyamoto added. So either way, it looks like we can rule out that game being called The Legend of Zelda.
Miyamoto: Retro could handle a Zelda game, smartphones aren't competition
The full transcript of Wired's interview with Shigeru Miyamoto -- in which the industry legend triggered some panic over his future -- has been posted. Surprisingly, that pseudo-retirement news isn't even the juiciest angle; Miyamoto also discussed the company's troubled recent past, as well as its potentially Miyamoto-less future. He explained that Nintendo's goals this generation have focused on "the expanding of the gaming population," a task which would seemingly put them at odds with the ever-increasing smartphone market. Miyamoto posits that his company isn't "directly competing" with phones; rather, both might just have increased the size of the gaming market, and "expanded the definition of videogames" themselves. In the more recent past (last week, in fact), Nintendo launched the Retro-developed Mario Kart 7 for 3DS, a project which Miyamoto said succeeded due to its multicultural development approach. "We were able to join forces in order to realize a variety of different courses, a variety of different tastes," he explained. "I think that's one reason how it worked out well between a Japanese development team and a Western development team." It seems Retro has earned the games industry maven's trust, as Miyamoto added, "As you know, we have already collaborated with Retro for the Metroid Prime series in the past. And I think when we talk about any other franchise, Zelda might be a possible franchise for that collaboration." We think we speak for everyone when we shout in support of this idea while doing fist pumps into the air. Check out the full interview for more on the future of Zelda, the 3DS, the Wii U and the other pies Miyamoto's got his fingers in.
Mario Kart 7 review: An exercise in fun/frustration
Mario Kart 7 is, as its predecessors always have been, an exceedingly hateful game. Three laps' worth of perfect corner negotiation, aggressive drafting and creating enough sparks to manufacture a small sun can be overturned instantly, sometimes in sight of the finish line. Who am I kidding? It is always in sight of the finish line, and it's always Toad, an innocuous-looking bastard who's caused me to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory more times than I could ever hope to count. (Estimated guess, though: A hundred billion.) Frustrating though they may be, those turnabouts are how the franchise skirts around recurring poxes of the racing genre. Last place racers get far more potent weaponry than the pace cars -- not rubber-banding in the traditional sense, but the result's the same. Mario Kart 7's changes and additions are few in number, but they're rich in the refinement of that concept. More than ever, it's a game about getting screwed over without getting too angry about it, a pair of goals it achieves with panache. %Gallery-135959%
Retro took Mario Kart 7 from 'emergency' to 2011 launch
In the latest Iwata Asks column, not yet translated into English by Nintendo, the CEO discusses development of December's high-profile 3DS release, Mario Kart 7, with not only recent series developer Nintendo EAD but also Austin-based Retro Studios. "But Retro Studios only worked on the Donkey Kong Country Returns level," you whimper. While that was true as of last E3, Hideki Konno, Manager and Producer at EAD Software Development Group No.1, tells Iwata that since several production designers were working to get Nintendogs + Cats ready for the 3DS launch, as well as other Nintendo projects, there was "an act of emergency" to get Mario Kart 7 finished by the end of the year. Retro was brought in to help on some courses, notably the aforementioned DKC-themed level, and to work on the game's 16 classic courses, while EAD ostensibly worked on the 16 new tracks. With the 3DS still recovering from a rough launch, plagued by pricing concerns and a paucity of premium software, we'd say it was a smart move to ensure Mario Kart 7 would find its way onto shelves this year.
Retro Studios helped to craft Donkey Kong course for Mario Kart 7
When Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that Donkey Kong Country Returns dev Retro Studios was collaborating with Nintendo on Mario Kart 7, he stopped himself there. "But wait," we wondered at the time, "What does that mean?" As it turns out, it means that the Texas-based dev house helped to develop the game's Donkey Kong Country Returns-themed level. I played through the level this morning during a preview event at Nintendo of America's upper Manhattan offices, and can back up its Donkey Kong-ness. There were rotund wooden barrels with "DK" in capital letters on the side, some bats, plenty of palm trees -- what you'd expect to see in a level based around Mr. Kong. Unfortunately, it's unclear whether MK7 will feature other levels that were co-developed by teams outside of Nintendo, as company reps told me it's not something they're speaking about just yet, but we're hopeful for more when Mario Kart 7 launches on December 4.%Gallery-129866%
Mario Kart 3DS preview: By land, by sea, by air
The highlight moment of my time with Mario Kart 3DS didn't involve blue sparks, bananas or any sort of weaponized carapace; though, naturally, all of those elements make a reappearance in the colorful racer. The key moment was the first time I hit a rather innocuous-looking ramp and, once airborne, produced a hang glider from my vehicle's undercarriage. It wasn't a particularly surprising moment -- your car's new utilities were revealed in the trailer showed during Nintendo's E3 press conference -- but it was certainly an interesting one. The new aerial and underwater portions of each track aren't just fresh new obstacles for you to dodge using the series' tried-and-true system of drifting, boosting and item-firing. They represent challenges for you to navigate using entirely new methods of control. %Gallery-125669%
Retro Studios assisting with Mario Kart 3DS
During the annual Nintendo developer roundtable, Shigeru Miyamoto casually let it drop that Metroid Prime/Donkey Kong Country Returns developer Retro Studio is helping Nintendo out with the 3DS Mario Kart game -- which, incidentally, runs at 60 frames per second. According to Miyamoto, Retro is collaborating on tracks, among other things. And then he joked that he wanted to call it "Super Mario Kite" because of the gliding vehicles.
Donkey Kong Country Returns in papercraft form
This Donkey Kong Country Returns diorama perfectly captures the essence of the game: DK and Diddy are bravely attempting to grab a puzzle piece, and are about to be killed by an annoying enemy.
Retro reflects on Donkey Kong Country Returns, denies sequel plans
If Nintendo is following up Donkey Kong Country Returns with sequels like it did the original Donkey Kong Country, it's not doing so right now. Nintendo producer Kensuke Tanabe, who works with DKCR developer Retro Studios, told Game Informer, "I wouldn't say we won't do a sequel, but we don't have anything planned at this time." In a postmortem panel at GDC on the development of last year's sucessful DKCR, Retro revealed the difficulties of making the side-scroller. The team attempted to adapt the Metroid Prime morph ball camera to the side-scrolling, but found it unable to handle the quick and complex movements of the DK characters -- especially once Tanabe insisted that two-player simultaneous play be added. There are over 2000 animations for the player character, a number inflated by the second character -- and by the late-stage suggestion from Shigeru Miyamoto that Donkey Kong be able to blow on background items to reveal secrets. Miyamoto was testing the game, running back and forth for about ten minutes, when he declared that Donkey Kong appeared to be exhaling when he turned around. And then, he said that "it might be fun to make Donkey Kong blow on things," causing extensive damage to Retro's metaphorical tea table. And the Super Guide -- "oh, jeez," one of the team exclaimed when that subject came up. It turns out that Retro had to rewrite the engine to make it deterministic -- make it that all the inputs would result in the same output every time, essentially eliminating randomness. This turned out to be a boon, however, as the same mechanic that allowed the team to record playthroughs also made it easy to reproduce bugs in testing. Retro ended its panel by joking that it would like to refresh the Doki Doki Panic (Super Mario Bros. 2) series next, along with making a "Pokemon Prime." "We've been looking at Tingle a lot," as well.
Rumor: Metroid Prime 1.5 design doc surfaces from Retro Studios
Given the sheer size and detail of the recently surfaced design document said to be for a Retro Studios-developed Metro Prime title, it's hard to outright dismiss as a fake. Then again, a nearly 7,000-word design document for an unannounced Metroid Prime game appearing on the internet out of thin air is hard to believe, to say the least. But that's just what one Neogaf forum member claims to have found, supposedly on the now-locked Google Sites page of former Retro Studios level designer Tony Giovannini. The document is titled "Metroid 1.5 Design Concept," referencing the project's place in the Prime series' timeline -- between Metroid Prime 1 and 2 -- and has a completion date of November 18, 2002. The first Metroid Prime hit store shelves in North America just one day earlier.
3DS, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Bleszinski talks at GDC
We're guessing Satoru Iwata will talk about the 3DS during his Game Developers Conference keynote. But it's even safer to assume that Nintendo's Hideki Konno will mention the system during his newly-announced GDC talk, called "The Development Process of the Nintendo 3DS". Konno works as producer for Nintendo hardware, and is also producing Nintendogs + Cats, so he should have at least a passing familiarity with the hardware. A third high-profile Nintendo talk has also been announced: Nintendo's Kensuke Tanabe and Retro Studios' Michael Kelbaugh and Bryan Walker will present "We Hate You: Why Donkey Kong Country Returns was So Hard". Okay, it's actually called "Donkey Kong: Swinging Across Oceans" and it's about developing the game across continents. GDC also announced one more marquee presentation: Cliff Bleszinski's "Industry Lessons Learned and Applying Them to the Road Ahead", a wide-ranging talk about "Bleszinski's thoughts on AAA gaming, social gaming, and the connected future" as well as the importance of PR and marketing to game design.
Nintendo UK promotion offered Donkey Kong Country Returns in exchange for bananas
Nintendo offered a strange promotional deal for Donkey Kong Country Returns at UK video game stores recently. All fans were asked to do is bring in real bananas; the first 20 who did would get a copy of Retro Studios' brilliantly tough platformer. And, sure enough, it worked -- fans handing over bananas got a copy of the game, as well as a photo opportunity with ... the store employees. The promotion worked so well, according to Nintendo, that the company is planning some similar giveaways in the future. Soon, by bringing in real-life psychadelic mushrooms, you'll be able to get a copy of the trippy Super Mario Galaxy 2. A fully knitted sweater will net you a copy of Kirby's Epic Yarn and 20 lucky game store shoppers will be able to get a copy of Metroid: Other M by bringing in a real extraterrestrial being. Good luck with that one.
Billy Mitchell's tie makes cameo in Donkey Kong Country Returns
Donkey Kong Country Returns developer Retro Studios doesn't just have a knack for successfully rebooting beloved Nintendo franchises, it's also got a wicked eye for bold fashion statements. For instance, the star-spangled signature necktie of Donkey Kong high-score contender Billy Mitchell (pictured right; from The King of Kong film) must have ensnared the attention of somebody at Retro, as the familiar pattern managed to sneak its way into DKC Returns, hidden in the backdrop of World 3-2 (pictured left). Now, if only the developer could have found a way to sneak in Mitchell's undying admiration of hot sauce, or, you know, his overall winning personality.
