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Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze Full E3 Interview
The folks from Nintendo and Retro Studios share the details on the Kong family's first high-definition adventure.
This year at E3, we met with Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze producer Kensuke Tanabe, director Risa Tabata, and Retro Studios' Michael Kelbaugh shortly after the announcement of the game to discuss their unexpected Donkey Kong sequel. Among our topics: Its secret Super Mario Bros. 2 connection, Shigeru Miyamoto's ever-present influence, and love for Stanley the Bugman. Â
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USG: Yeah. Ive seen the rotating camera style done in two- or two-and-a-half-dimensional platformers since the PlayStation days, with games like Klonoa. But Im curious about, as developers how have you felt this impacting your approach to the level design and the things you put into the game? Â
Risa Tabata: One thing we found thats bringing something completely different, although it may sound very simple For example, if youre going along side-scrolling, youve got the camera here, and youre aiming at something, all you have is this axis. Youre just aiming up or down. If you bring the camera back here, now you have the ability to hit targets moving left or right as well as up or down. The vertical and horizontal axes come into play. Thats something that, again, impacts everything in gameplay. Â
Michael Kelbaugh: We also had to fill more space with more stuff. Instead of just side-scrolling and shooting in the background and foreground, there are also elements in between them. From a level layout standpoint, its allowed us to introduce more elements and use that space. Its not just background and foreground gameplay. We also take advantage of the real estate between them. Its a bigger experience. We have more stuff to incorporate into it. Â
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USG: Speaking of legacy, how much involvement have you had with the previous Donkey Kong games, each of you? Â
MK: Well, Ive been with Nintendo for 25 years. I worked on DKC, DKC2, DKC3, DK Land I worked on every DK title. But by "worked on," I mean that I did a lot of different things. I managed the testing department, the localization department, the evaluation department. Compared to the development side, I was more on the support side for those. Ive been involved in development for many DK titles at different levels. Working on it here at Retro has been verysentimental for me. Especially working on it with Tanabe-san and Risa-san, because Tanabe-san worked on it Not to this degree, but back in the '80s and '90s, we worked together on it as well. Being able to bring it back to Retro and work on it again was a real special experience. Â
KT: For me, my first experience was working on localization of English to Japanese on the Rare titles. I actually went to Rares studio and worked there. One thing that surprised me is that their studio is basically a set of refurbished, reconstructed stables. Theyre barns. I was thinking, "Out here, this is where theyre making all these games?" I was a little surprised. Â
MK: Their address was 20 Manor Farmhouse, Twycross, England. It was an old farmhouse. Theyd turned the stables into workstations. The covenant wouldnt allow them to build a new building, so they had to refurbish old buildings into work spaces.
KT: From that to now, Ive worked directly on Donkey Kong Country, the revival of it. 15 years later, its an interesting feeling. Its a little like coming home. Â
RT: For myself, when the Super NES game came out, I was just a kid. My first development relationship with Donkey Kong comes from Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii. It felt super fresh and new. It was great. Â
MK: When people say, "How come Donkey Kong Country Returns is so difficult," to me, I think, "Youre crazy." You forget what the original Donkey Kong Country was like. It was a hard game. To us, we want to stay true to the franchise. The people that say, "This is really hard, this is really hard," they need to go back and play the original Donkey Kong Country, because the similarities as far as difficulty level is concerned are very close. Â
USG: Its interesting to hear about Mr. Miyamotos involvement in the Returns games, because of course he's the father of Donkey Kong. I guess I didnt realize that hes still involved in the series to some degree. Has he given any other advice or thought on, "This is Donkey Kong, this isnt Donkey Kong?" Â
RT: Well, not so much this time around. That story was from the making of Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii. I wonder if you remember, from that game, where Donkey Kong takes a deep breath and blows? Thats Mr. Miyamoto. That came from him. Â
MK: When we first started He didnt just give it to us. We had to earn it, right? We had to put together demos. We had to prove ourselves worthy of the Donkey Kong franchise. I remember him saying, "This is my baby. Youd better get it right." This was before we started the demo. He was exceptionally passionate about Donkey Kong. Along the way, hed give us tips and a little bit of advice. It was all about being able to prove whether or not Retro could handle continuing his vision. Â
USG: Ive actually been playing the older arcade Donkey Kong games lately, just to go back to the roots of platform gaming and get a feel for that. Something that I find interesting about the Donkey Kong series is that its so mutable. There are so many different interpretations of it. Even if you look at the first three games, you have a platformer, and then you have a game about crawling vines, and then you have a shooter. Theres this incredible variety within the series. And then, on the other hand, you have the Donkey Kong Country games, which are very consistent, reliable platformers. How do you incorporate some of that legacy of unpredictability and dynamism into something that is kind of running off a set template? Â
MK: [to Tanabe] Im glad youre answering that. [laughter] Â
KT: Mario is like Lets give Mario as an example of something thats very clear and defined. If you look at Mario here, you have a very clear distinction between 2D games and 3D games. The 2D side-scrollers are continuing in the New Super Mario series, and then you have games like Mario 64. You have Sunshine and Galaxy and Galaxy 2 and now 3D World. Those are the 3D world Marios, and then you have the 2D world Marios. Theres a very clear line between those two series. Â
Now, with Donkey Kong, its never been that clear throughout time. We went from 2D to 3D on the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube, and then back to 2D here. We had things like Jungle Beat, these experimental sorts of projects. Here, we said, "Lets go back to 2D. Lets try 2D," and set to reinventing the Donkey Kong Country franchise. In the end, its not like weve ever drawn a clear distinction between two types of games. Were really looking at, "Hey, what do we have with our hardware? What does the marketplace want?" Were adaptable. We can respond to those needs. Well come up with games that might incorporate elements from both sides. Â
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I shortened the post because the Interview was too big for one post; I originally tried two posts but that was too long of a read.
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