UPDATE: The Expansion Of The (D)Kongs Begins.
There's been an awakening in the dong.
Have you felt it?
Oh, Nintendo.
They've once again got me. Here I am, just finishing up this nice, little DK article, when they just drop this megaton on us, on a quiet, September morning.
Well, a lot has happened in the last week, or so.
A direct, with many cool new announcements came directly to us, a number of which relate directly to the big ape himself.
Not only that, but I heard right before the Direct that Diddy Kong Racing is a title being planned for NSO. But wait. There's more. We need to talk about the expansion of the dong.
More re-releases:
Right after my article went up, two of my go-to contacts for Nintendo/DK information went and informed me of two more DK titles being planned for release on NSO, alongside Diddy Kong Racing, those being Donkey Kong 64 and Donkey Kong Land, which will land on Game Boy NSO at or sometime after launch. Nintendo and Microsoft's strong relationship continues. You love to see it.
The movie:
A new Nintendo Direct (Which I'll be covering very soon.) dropped on us, and with that, came the cast of characters appearing in the Super Mario movie, which, oh lookie there, that little scoop that I covered back in July was confirmed. DK and his cranky grandfather are starting in the movie, voiced by Seth Rogan and Fred Armisen respectively.
There's more to this. illumination's best animators are on this Mario film. So much so that the company has decided to indefinitely push back Despicable Me 4 in order to make sure Nintendo's golden boy and his friends get the royal treatment that they deserve. Additionally I've heard that Nintendo's top brass are so happy with the how the movie is turning out that they're actively discussing/in the early stages of planning a Donkey Kong spin-off film with Seth Rogan in the leading role as well as potential sequels to the Mario film. This is going to be big.
Things are still very early, so please keep that in mind.
If you're expecting this film to be an unmitigated disaster, you're probably going to be disappointed. Nintendo loves it and they're already talking about sequels.
What's that? Zippo doesn't do movie scoops? Psh!
The theme park:
As was announced this morning, Donkey Kong is officially next in line to get a theme park at Super Nintendo World. This has been in the works for a very long time. However, it's not expected to be finished until 2024, due to this still ungoing pandemic, which many people are still unfortunately being morons about. How I've heard the situation explained to me is that before everything went to crap, this expansion was projected to hit in 2022, somewhere close to the release date of the movie. Obviously things changed and this is the result. That said, it should be well worth the wait for the Donkey Kong faithful.
2022 game:
To finish off, I've gotten another update on this new 2D Donkey Kong game. This Koizumi-led DK game has been in development for a whooping four years now, and according to my sources, they estimate development on this new game will be finished by, and I quote: "End of the calendar year."
Nintendo will soon be sitting on yet another finished game. If that surprises you, it shouldn't. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Metroid Dread, and the Switch version of Super Mario 3D World are all games Nintendo just sat on for varying amounts of time. It's nothing new. Nintendo will announce it and release it once it's ready. Regardless of when it releases, expect an extremely high quality platformer. EPD Tokyo is Nintendo's most talented team, in this guy's humble opinion.
So yes, this expands dong. Very much.
Thank you for reading. Up next is a review/analysis of last week's Nintendo Direct. See you then!
Any new updates?
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