DKC Atlas Forum

This is a topic what has interested me for a long time. I've always thought of DKC as a Rare franchise rather than Nintendo even though DK was created by Nintendo. Rare did a lot more work with the franchise than Nintendo ever did and I'm sick of the way Nintendo treat Rare as if they didn't exist. I was also very annoyed when I heard that no Rare staff get any credit whatsoever in DKC Returns. For me personally, Donkey Kong will always be more to Rare than to Nintendo despite his appearances in Mario Kart and Party games. I've not played any post-Rare DK games and I don't have a Wii not did I ever have a Gamcube. What are your thoughts on this?

Now that is an interesting question. If it wasn't for Rare, DK would still be throwin' around barrels for a living and we'd have never gotten Diddy or Dixie or Kiddy or.... The horror! D8

I'd just go with the facts that once it used to belong to Rare sans DK himself, but since the buyout, all rights to everything and anything DK stayed with Nintendo. Makes sense to me.

It's hard to say. I use to consider DKC more of a Rare franchise then a Nintendo franchise, but Donkey Kong Country Returns proved to me that we don't need Rare to get a good DKC game.

Well, you can't look at games a specifically one company. For example: there were six total developers for the Metroid games, but it seems that nobody ever really notices. I have to say that Rareware did make Donkey who he is today. If it wasn't for Rare, who knows where Donkey Kong would have gone? But, as a whole, Nintendo owns the franchise. There were only a few people working on DKCR that used to be Rareware staff. They did get credit, but they don't work for Rare anymore. I, also have not played any post-Rare DK games, but many people have and that's all they know. It disturbs me, but there was someone I knew that thought the original Donkey Kong game was Donkey Konga... sad. If I were to do a word-association game, Rareware and Donkey Kong would go hand-in-hand.

DKC isn't a franchise. It's a series from a franchise. The original three DKC games belong to Rareware. Rare created them, they have rights. Nintendo, however, always have and always will own the Donkey Kong franchise. Nintendo employed Rare to make the trilogy, Nintendo published them, it's still very much Nintendo's franchise.

Nobody still working at Rare worked on DKCR, so why would they be credited?