There’s no other way to say this.
The Donkey Kong canon is weird.
What started as an arcade staple where a giant ape kidnapped a woman at a construction site
has morphed into it a series of platformers with more Kongs than Cranky could shake his
stick at.
And yet, despite the modern love for Cranky, Diddy, Dixie, and Funky, there’s one Kong
that precedes them all that just doesn’t get mentioned all that much anymore, Donkey
Kong Jr.
And while the common conceit is that Junior is actually the modern DK, that’s not quite
true.
So it’s time to cast the searchlight on this lost Kong to see exactly how--or perhaps
why-- he’s disappeared.
Welcome to Missing in Action where we take a look back at game elements that have mysteriously
gone missing.
Donkey Kong Junior first appeared in the 1982 game that bore his name, acting as a sequel
to the original Donkey Kong.
But this time, players were instead cast as Junior himself, out to rescue his dad from...Mario.
It was a reversal of roles right up there with the likes of Terminator 2...okay, maybe
not, but it lead to a different sort of gameplay that was focused more on the ape’s natural
penchant for climbing vines, rather than jumping.
And there was a certain strategy to that too, such as how grabbing two vines allowed you
to ascend faster, but grasping just one is the faster way down.
It led to players needing to figure what the best technique was at any one moment in order
to evade enemies, reach fruit that could be dropped onto them, and of course eventually
reach Mario at the top.
Junior returned a year later on the Famicom in Donkey Kong Jr.
Math where old DK decided to home school his son, for whatever reason.
I guess DK isn’t a huge proponent of the public education system?
In the game, Junior had to climb vines to gather numbers and mathematical symbols in
order to equal the number his father’s holding up.
When it was released stateside for the NES in 1985, it was actually under the “Educational
Series” label and sold so poorly that it was also the only game with that label.
It’s too bad Junior just couldn’t find dollar signs among all those symbols, though
that poor reception never stopped Nintendo from re-releasing the game on the Wii and
Wii U’s Virtual Consoles.
And for the better part of the next decade, Junior was relegated to little more than cameos
or re-releases of his arcade game.
During that time, he could be seen in the audience alongside Mario, Luigi, and Donkey
Kong in the arcade versions of both Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out.
These cameos make it more than a little appropriate that Donkey Kong himself eventually jumped
into the ring in Punch-Out for the Wii.
It wasn't until 1992 that Junior would become playable again, and as the only Kong to appear
in Super Mario Kart.
His father didn’t appear at all leaving DK...Missing in Action.
(“I get it!”
called from the background) Despite his youth, Junior was still considered a heavyweight
though along with Bowser, and his preferred item was, what else, a Banana.
Even though bananas had appeared in Junior’s arcade game, alongside other fruit, this was
arguably the game that began the Kongs obsession with bananas.
But after this first appearance, Donkey Kong Jr vanished from the Mario Kart roster, and
was never to be seen again, with Donkey Kong himself taking the reins in every subsequent
Mario Kart game.
Although, Junior did make a small cameo in the audience of Waluigi Stadium in 2003’s
Mario Kart: Double Dash, which...complicates things a bit, but we’ll get into that soon
enough.
Despite his absence from Mario Kart, Junior still made occasional cameos in the Mario
games throughout 1993, first appearing in Mario’s Time Machine as a picture hung in
Bowser’s Museum, and then again in the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros.
3, where the King of Giant Land was transformed to look like Junior.
1994 was a turning point for Junior though.
He first appeared in Donkey Kong for the Game Boy where he helped his father keep Pauline
away from Mario’s rescue attempts by flipping switches or throwing poisonous mushrooms at
him.
It was the most we had ever seen the father and son interact.
So things were looking up for Junior, that is until the other 1994 Donkey Kong game hit--the
800lb gorilla if you will, in the form of Donkey Kong Country.
Suddenly Donkey Kong was back in the spotlight in a way not seen since his arcade debut nearly
15 years earlier.
And he wasn’t alone, as he brought along an entire Kong crew--with one notable exception:
Junior was nowhere to be seen.
And that’s because the conceit of Donkey Kong Country was that Cranky Kong was the
original Donkey Kong, just older and grumpier, while the “new” Donkey Kong was his grandson,
leaving Junior out of the game altogether.
However, this wasn’t Rare’s original plan, because according to the game’s lead designer,
Gregg Mayles, in an interview with Retro Gamer Magazine, Diddy Kong’s role was originally
meant to go to a redesigned Junior.
But Nintendo wasn’t a fan of Junior’s new look and asked Rare to either stick to
the original or make the redesign a completely new character.
Obviously Rare went with the latter option, which for all intents and purposes, cut Junior
out of the picture.
And it’s probably a good thing too, because can you imagine what that would do to the
Donkey Kong timeline?
Without some serious retcons, Junior would technically be the son of two different Donkey
Kong’s.
Or would they have changed Cranky’s origin completely?
However, as is, with Cranky being the grandfather of DK, and Junior being Cranky’s son, the
implication would then be that Junior is the father of the “new” Donkey Kong--even
if he’s never explicitly mentioned.
That said, even though Junior was cut from Country, he continued to appear in other Nintendo
titles, and not just as cameos.
In 1995, he returned as a playable character in Mario’s Tennis for the Virtual Boy, showing
that he was still in Nintendo’s minds at the time.
In fact, just like Super Mario Kart, Donkey Kong was not playable at all in the Virtual
Boy title.
From that point on, he mainly appeared in the Game & Watch Gallery collections where
he took a role in various games that updated Nintendo’s classic Game & Watch line.
It was all minor in the grand scheme of things, but Junior was still there, monkeying around
with the Mario crew.
And then Rare decided to upend the cart for Junior again.
In 1999, they released Donkey Kong 64 and rather than imply that Cranky Kong was Donkey
Kong’s grandfather, they instead made it seem like he was his father with lines like,
“[Candy is] always willing to offer her musical help to that undeserving son of mine
and his fancy polygonal friends.”
shown in the game’s manual.
This would mean that Junior was the modern DK all along.
And sure, that’s fine.
It provides a role for Junior and shows a legacy of the Kongs.
It makes sense, even if it is a retcon of Donkey Kong Country.
But then there’s 2000’s Mario Tennis on the Nintendo 64.
In that game, both Donkey Kong and Junior were featured as playable characters, and
it’s still the only time where DK was playable alongside Junior.
Now at face value, this makes complete sense as most people would view these two as separate
characters.
You have Donkey Kong, and his son, Junior, just like in the original Arcade game.
DK even has the tie that he first wore in Donkey Kong ‘94.
But when you look at the actual design of Donkey Kong, it’s obvious that it’s based
on the modern version from Donkey Kong Country.
And this is also the case for every one of his appearances moving forward from that SNES
game.
So knowing this, and when combined with DK64’s retcon from the previous year, this actually
means that modern DK and Junior are the same character.
It’s kinda weird...but not that weird since this is the same game that also has Baby Mario
playing alongside his older self.
The question is, was this Nintendo’s intent?
Were they treating this Donkey Kong as the one from the arcade game, just with the modern
design?
Or did they just not care about these relationships and simply preferred to use their own character
rather than bringing in Diddy?
It really is quite kongfounding...wait one second, Andre have you been messing with my
scripts again?!
But despite this dual appearance, Junior’s original design never again returned in a
playable role.
And that would be fine if the modern DK were just a grown up version of Junior.
It just kinda means that we wasted our time making this video since he never technically
disappeared, except Nintendo changed DK’s parentage again!
While it wasn’t specifically mentioned in any of the Donkey Kong games from 2000 to
2010, Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii claimed that Cranky Kong was the modern
DK’s grandfather once again, just like in the original Donkey Kong Country.
And in every subsequent appearance of Cranky Kong, that has remained the case.
Still, this confusion led to the widespread belief that Junior was the modern DK instead
of being the modern DK’s father.
Don’t worry though.
It gets weirder.
Since Mario Tennis, the original incarnation of Junior has gone almost completely missing,
only used as cameos where his original game is mentioned like in Super Smash Bros. Melee
as a Trophy, Brawl as a Sticker, and in one of Warioware Twisted’s microgames, and even
as a costume in Super Mario Maker.
But it was Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze that finally allowed him to be in a Donkey
Kong Country game, albeit just within a Wii U that a statue of the arcade Donkey Kong
holds above his head in the background of Aqueduct Assault.
It’s something though, right?
What was most damning for Junior though seems to be 2003’s Mario Kart: Double Dash.
Even though he cameoed in Waluigi Stadium, it seems Junior was originally supposed to
have a bigger role.
Thanks to an early demo of Double Dash, data miners discovered that Junior was intended
to be a playable character and the partner to Donkey Kong.
However, it was ultimately decided that Diddy Kong should have the spot, a decision that,
in retrospect, put an end to Junior as a viable character.
From that point on, Diddy Kong was the one to get the playable roles in Nintendo games,
from Super Smash Bros to the Mario Sports titles, including the sequel to Mario Tennis
on the GameCube.
Poor guy, Mario Tennis was the one thing he had!
But Diddy is simply more popular and recognizable among the fanbase.
So it seems that Junior is simply the father of the modern DK, something made even more
apparent thanks to Yoshi’s Island DS, where this DK appeared as a baby with a bib rather
than show him as Junior, a design that carried over into Mario Super Sluggers.
That baby is definitely not Junior, but a younger modern Donkey Kong.
It all makes sense, right?
Well, not really.
After all, Baby Mario was featured in Yoshi’s Island DS too which would make Mario the same
age as the modern DK, which is impossible if he fought with the original Donkey Kong,
who we remind you is Cranky Kong.
So unless Mario and Luigi’s father also fought the original Donkey Kong...oh dear,
I think I’ve gone cross-eyed.
Yeah, it’s weird and confusing OR KONGFUSING (really Andre?), but yes, especially since
if Junior ever does appear again, it will always be in his standard design.
And that likely explains why we probably won’t see much of Junior in the future.
For one, he’s been effectively replaced by Diddy Kong as a partner.
For another, we’ll never see him acting as the modern DK’s father, as they’ll
want to keep Junior is his younger form, which makes him redundant outside of cameos meant
to reference his arcade game.
He’s simply a memory of Nintendo’s arcade origins that helped set the foundation of
the Donkey Kong clan.
But there’s so many Kongs now that he’s not really needed.
But what do you think?
Will Junior remain missing in action from any meaningful Nintendo appearance?
Could he return to a Mario sports title?
And is there anything else that’s gone missing that you want found?
Let us know by posting in the comments below and we may feature it in a future episode.
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Action episodes and even more from GameXplain!