Alright its been the dream of every Nintendo Donkey Kong fan. Anyone who grew up pounding Kremlings and dogging barrels a Donkey Kong 4. The legendary game that would make every other Donkey Kong Country game look like crap. So far Nintendo has tried (With RareWare once) to bring back the glory of Donkey Kong Country.
Nintendo Tried already once to make a true Donkey Kong Country style platformer in the form of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. Jungle Beat was a great alround platformer with pretty sharp gameplay. However the bosses were repetitive and their just weren't enough levels in my opinion. The Bongo controller also made the game more awkward to play. The bongo's through many Donkey Kong fans off of buying it and the game ended up bombing with a little over 30,000 copies selling in the launch month.
Many people have suggested that Nintendo will be ditching the Donkey Kong franchise. The last 4-console games from the franchise have all bombed with none making it much higher then the 200,000 copies mark. Infact I bought JungleBeat during a clearance sale the month after it was released for 9.99$ bongo's included. But Wii Ware could be the answer to Nintendo's problems and ours.
Why is Wii Ware the answer?
Donkey Kong Country 1+2+3 have all been selling exceptionally well, how do I know this. Well when Nintendo Power gave the top VC list top five. Donkey Kong Country made it into the top five. Not only did Country do well but Diddy Kongs Quest did as well, how do I know that? Well if Diddy Kongs Quest hadn't done well Donkey Kong Country 3 wouldn't have been released as quickly as it was. Other then Mario Donkey Kong is the second most popular franchise on VC I mean more DK games have been released then Zelda or Metroid or any of Nintendo's other heavy hitters. Meaning Country is very popular.
Now your still wondering what this has to do with Wii Ware. Well if the Donkey Kong Country series is so popular and fans flock to the label (DKC) rather then DKJB or any other Donkey Kong game. Then wouldn't it make sense for Nintendo to return to what it knows works and sells?
We have all seen the beautiful graphics developers can pull off using Wii Ware. My bet is that Nintendo could easily develope a new Donkey Kong Country with low over head that looks like Jungle Beat for the Virtual Console really quickly.
Why not just make a full blown new Donkey Kong game for the Wii on a disk. First off Nintendo would have to make the game sizably bigger meaning larger budget and longer developement time. Nintendo hasn't had much success lately with the Donkey Kong franchise and won't want to risk manufacturing 100K of disks just to have a repeat of Jungle Beat.
Using Wii Ware Nintendo can make a decent Donkey Kong game with little risk of loosing money. Worst comes to worst they would at least break even. Less manufacturing costs , less developement costs and shorter developement times with smaller development teams.
Hopefully we will see a new Donkey Kong Country, a mix of the new Nintendo (Jungle Beat) and the old Nintendo (Country). And WiiEWare would appear to be the best way to deliver such a game!
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer
