English
Gamereactor
news
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Why is Donkey Kong missing in Mario + Rabbids?

Apparently, the geeky collector is to blame...

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle released four months ago and just recently got both free and paid-for DLC, and with the game being one of the surprises of 2017, we sat down with Ubisoft Milan's associate producer and narrative designer Cristina Nava at Fun & Serious Game Festival in Bilbao to take a look back at the development and the successful reception of the Nintendo Switch exclusive.

Nava and her team enjoyed creating Beep-0 and the new Rabbid characters, admitting "Rabbid Peach is one of the most beloved ones," however, as we found a prominent boss in the form of Rabbid Kong, but no sign of DK himself, we asked Nava why this happened, as the other protagonists had both original and Rabbid forms in the game.

"Rabbid Kong, the giant, white, gorilla-like character is not really a fusion of Donkey Kong, but a fusion of [some] elements of it," explains Nava in the interview below. "Everything in the Mario + Rabbids story comes a geeky girl's basement (there's the basement's incident). This girl in an inventor, but also a great Nintendo fan. So she has action figures, elements of all the Nintendo games... and so Rabbid Kong is a creation by spoiling the little white Rabbid who gets stressed and then creates that powerful ray beam of energy which fuses things together. So Rabbid Kong is not properly a fusion with Donkey Kong, because we didn't mix the Mushroom Kingdom lore with the Donkey Kong lore, so Rabbid Kong has the tie of Donkey Kong and yes, [the music], (laughs), so yeah we put many hints and many Easter eggs for the Nintendo fans. We wanted this game to be the perfect day for a Nintendo fan because it's full of Nintendo elements."

So there you have it, the girl in the intro sequence is to blame. Of course this also happens to another couple of characters we won't spoil here, and you have to save something for the now inevitable sequel, right?

In the full in-depth interview the associate producer talks more in terms of production and collaboration (Ubisoft studios ecosystem, licensed Nintendo brand), the usage of the Snowdrop Engine, the new free versus mode DLC, and the balance between depth and difficulty, so check all that out down below.

HQ
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Related texts



Loading next content