I spent a long time today writing up a monster of a post, so I thought I’d chuck a link here with my other monster posts about gaming. It’s in a Donkey Kong fansite called the DKVine.

To understand the post though, you need a bit of context about the DKU. The central concept of DKVine is the DKU, a shared universe of game characters that is built on the foundation of the Donkey Kong Country trilogy. Thanks to Rare’s admirable devotion to building a shared universe around all their characters, the site has a broad range of covered games, not just DK ones. Many companies have cameos and the occasional crossover game, but Rare implicitly linked many of their series together which is part of the reason they had a devoted fandom that they have now all but abandoned. (Many Internet commenters would leave it at that, but I will add that the company still has the saving grace of Leigh Loveday, who wrote much of the in-game and extra-game plot, instruction manuals, etc. and now manages the company’s Twitter and irregular Q&As. He, at least, still cares for the company’s IPs and the DKU—the problem is Microsoft doesn’t.)

Anyway, the DKU really took off with Diddy Kong Racing, where among the characters introduced, Banjo the bear and Conker the Squirrel (capitalised cause that’s his name) went on to star in their own game series. Therefore, since the Donkey Kong series was important, these were also important. It gets a little trickier when you want to ask why Star Fox is in it, or Viva Pinata, but the answer is it’s mostly because of Rare. Some people wish the site covered the Rare Cartoon Animals Universe instead as that would be less complicated, but then it may have gone the way of other Rare fansites such as MundoRare which shut down with the decline of the company.

Ok, so the DKU as presented by the DKVine has a set of rules, rules that include many games we wish it didn’t (such as Mario Party 9 or Star Fox Command), include games we are thankful for (such as Mario Golf Advance Tour or It’s Mr. Pants!), games that are a little unexpected (such as Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition or Punch-Out!! Wii), and unfortunately excludes games we wish it didn’t (such as Sabre Wulf or Kameo: Elements of Power). It is this latter category my post addresses, for while at least some attention is given on the main site to the Mario & Sonic at the Olympics games of the world, there is nary a mention of what Sabreman did after making his first major appearance in almost 15 years in Banjo-Tooie or why Greenwood Village of Diddy Kong Racing is available in Jet Force Gemini’s multiplayer.

While my post doesn’t actually attempt to go in depth about these issues, it seeks to compile a comprehensive list of small DKU aspects of non-DKU games, or games that were almost DKU but then weren’t. Games we wish were DKU but aren’t. Games that most likely are somewhere in the shared universe of our favourite talking animals, maybe even on the next island over from the DK Isles or Willow Woods, but don’t quite fall within the formal DKU structure.

DKU Honourable Mentions. I love the DKU. I just want to get the ball rolling on expanding its boundaries a little. It’s always been a subjective matter, so a few grey areas will let us delve deeper into games we love, while everyone continues to ignore Fortune Street.

Well, if all this means very little to you, you may not get so much out of my post, but it is at least interesting as a study of the depths obsessive fans can go to. Every fan has to be a little bit obsessive though, it’s kind of the definition of a fan.