Rumor: Vicarious Visions Was Working on a 3D Donkey Kong Game

Despite his frequent appearances in recent Super Mario games, Donkey Kong hasn’t had much room in the spotlight since Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze released ten years ago on Wii U.

According to reports from DK Vine and DidYouKnowGaming, Vicarious Visions (now Blizzard Albany) was once working on a new Donkey Kong project, code-named “Freedom.” This game was planned as a 3D open-world experience where Donkey Kong could slide along vines, inspired by the studio’s experience with the Tony Hawk series of games. Interestingly, Shigeru Miyamoto was worried about Donkey Kong getting “rope burns” on his feet and decided to have him use banana peels as protection.

Vicarious Visions had even received development kits for Switch and set up a special section of their office for the game’s creation. However, the project was canceled after six months by Activision, the studio’s parent company, due to the declining success of the Skylanders series and a shift in focus away from single-player games.

Source: Nintendo Soup

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