The DKU, or Donkey Kong Universe, is a concept that was invented by some dorky teenagers to describe a shared universe created by Rare starting with Donkey Kong Country. Diddy Kong Racing introduced Banjo and Conker, who had their own games which had their own spinoffs. This is the basis of the website DKVine, where I am a forum member and occasional contributor.
Despite having a wide variety of games to cover, there are still a lot that almost were included the description of the DKU but couldn’t be covered, according to the Rools. The community still appreciates these and so I created a thread discussing these “Honourable Mentions”.
The staff liked it, and reached out to incorporate it into the main site. After much time and effort spent writing and gathering screenshots on my part, and on their end much technical jiggery-pokery and behind the scenes obstacles, the overall games list and first chunk of content has finally been published.
I’m quite happy with how it turned out, so if you’re interested in the sort of video game enthusiasm I trade in please check it out here. More updates will come as I write them.
My pickz for the DK Vine Hall of Fame 2015. Keep in mind the heavy hitters like Roysten the goldfish and Shabunga from off of Starfox Adventures have already been inducted.
I decided to pick some rare art to illustrate each pick. We were allowed one vote per DKU franchise. Naturally my Donkey Kong series pick was Parry the Parallel Bird, as facetiously mentioned to be seen in the E3 2011 Wii U demonstration. For the Banjo series I want Sabreman, Rare’s classic character who you help in Hailfire Peaks, seen here on the cover of the Famicom Disk System version of Knight Lore. Veteran comedian Ryan Stiles appeared in a promotional video for Conker: Live and Reloaded and has recently been lauded on the forum for his collaboration with Conker on the stand-up circuit, which is totally canon. That’s a flashback from the Drew Carey show.
Krystal is an awesome Star Fox character, and would have been more awesome had Dinosaur Planet come to fruition in its original form, as seen in concept art, leaked story notes, and sound files. “You” are a character who’s appeared in any video game where the player is referred to directly as a participant, including It’s Mr. Pants!. Finally, Waluigi is… Waluigi. He almost destabilised the whole DKU, and here he is in a rare non-lanky form, in Mario Party-e for e-Readers.
Maybe next year Lanky Kong or the WarpStone will be recognised. Unfortunately, the Googly Eyed Sweet Corn from Conker’s Bad Fur Day is ineligible.
I’ve been working on a rather large article for a while now, and it’s finally ready! I’m not posting it here though, because it’s hosted over at my favourite Donkey Kong fansite, DKVine. It’s a rundown of all the printed comics ever published that are DKU (provided they are available on the Internet, otherwise I don’t know about them). It’s got descriptions and highlights and then, you can even view the whole comics themselves under each paragraph! It’s amazing!
I should take a step back though. First, anyone who’s read this blog for a while will know I like video game comics. They’re a great way to expand on a game world, and while I like comics fine, they’re way better when they involve the established characters and worlds of video games that I’ve played. They also are an easy form of merchandise to collect and appreciate digitally.
Second, I like lists, spreadsheets, categorising and organising things. This article started as a rough list in TextEdit and a series of links to where you could find these comics on the Internet. I decided to expand it inot a hopefully-interesting to read article, in the hopes of helping anyone else who like me was on the hunt for DKU comics.
Third, some background if you are unfamiliar with the DKU. It’s a concept that describes a shared universe of video game characters, starting with the Donkey Kong Country series. Diddy Kong Racing expanded the Universe to include Banjo Bear (and all subsequent Banjo games), Conker the Squirrel (and etc), and Tricky the Triceratops (who makes all following Star Fox games DKU because it’s the same guy in Dinosaur Planet and DKR). That’s the basic gist of it but it makes for some interesting hypothetical interactions as it expands. The DKU is the guiding principle of the site DKVine (which even used to be called DKU itself, and before that Donkey Kong’s Jungle Vine).
The article really became a thing though when Matt (Waddle Dedede on the forums) asked me to follow through on a suggestion I made in a comic thread. It’s thanks to him that it got published and that it looks so damn sexy. Seriously, check it out, it’s got flippy tags and subheadings and expandable images and everything! He made it all happen and I am very grateful to him for what seemed like a lot of work.
Why are you still reading this? Have you read the article? I’m really happy with it, I’d like for you to read it. It’s got a wide range of crazy and weird comics, most of them in English. Yep so that’s that.
There’s a few things in the backlog right now but I’m pushing this to the front because it’s DKR’s 15th anniversary! Link! DKVine sprang a surprise forum skin redesign, and I decided to get back to this little gem and push on a bit.
When I last set it down, I’d just figured out where Dragon Forest was, having finished the other 3 worlds, so it didn’t take long to get through that and a few tries to beat Wizpig’s foot race. This got me the credits, although there is another world and many more challenges that I’m doing now. But my rule is I can review a game when I see the credits, so here we are.
I first played DKR many years ago, maybe even 15, on my friend’s N64. The hovercrafts impressed me, if I recall, though I mainly played battle mode at that time and it didn’t stand out so much from Mario Kart 64, its main competitor and comparison. The interface did stand out though (better), and the bright colours and kiddy feel also set it apart. That’s what I remember at the time, but also for a long time I’ve had a bias against games I don’t own so that I don’t feel bad about not owning them. And I love most things I do own.
Anyway, I digress. What I didn’t realise was how important DKR was to the shared universe concept of the DKU, an idea I was not cognisant of. I made up my own shared universes in my head, with no regard for explicit crossovers and shared game worlds. I used to imagine space ships filled with different video game protagonists, with stockpiles of their respective collectibles; or Fox, Yoshi and Diddy (my 3 favourite characters at the time, due to DKC2, Yoshi’s Island and Lylat Wars) teaming up and having adventures.
Of course, officially sanctioned shared universes are exciting in their own way, especially as we grow older and lose our imaginations. Plus, DKR was widely regarded as one of the best mascot racers, and I love Rare. So I bought it, wanting to experience this classic and also the last Rare game on a Nintendo platform, and the only Rare DS game (the Viva Pinata DS port being the exception to both these statements…shh).
So yes, DKR is a great game. But DKRDS is a bad port of a good game. Firstly, the interface is just janky and off-putting. Having seen the credits now, the handheld team was apparently very small and it shows. The whole thing feels rushed or watered down. I guess the interface is the main sticking point, but there were arbitrary changes that didn’t improve the game too. The touch-screen challenges which are now a big part are just plain not that good. And they made Taj’s voice less hilariously stereotypical.
What it comes down to (generalising here) is the Rare handheld team makes much less polished games than the console team. That would broadly cover all the great, smooth console Rare games I’ve played versus the somewhat awkward handheld games (mainly just the Donkey Kong Lands and Country Advance remakes). That is a gross simplification, but it’s the way I think for whatever reason. I’m not going to give up on Rare games and I’d like Grunty’s Revenge, Sabre Wulf 2004 and Conker’s Pocket Tales to prove me wrong when I get around to them.
Well, I guess I’ve been influenced by a lot of people’s opinions on DKVine. I actually had a lot of fun with this game, and not having experienced the original too much, I’m not that fussed about what I’m missing, especially with the handheld convenience. Plus I like some of the things they added, like the vehicle customisation, currency for unlockables, the admittedly weak icon designer mode, a few extra tracks (on DK Island!) and most importantly Dixie Kong! She makes up for any flaws I’ve perceived. And much of the presentation is so charming, you can’t stay mad at it.
Sure, they removed Banjo and Conker. Sad. But it’s still a great game, and I am very glad it exists. Because emulating N64 is tricky, it’s not on the VC and my 64 is at my parents’ house. So I can play it! It’s good because it’s cute, it has loads of character, the racing takes real skill, the mechanics are interesting, and heck it gave birth to the DKU. Don’t listen to the haters, the DS port is not as bad as they say. But that’s just me talking, and I’ll love any video game. Especially if I’ve decided to buy it.
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.
