Hoping for as much fun as a barrel of monkeys! (Thoughts on Super Nintendo World expansion!)

    Hey friends! It's no surprise that I haven't talked about theme parks in a little while, even though I list that as one of my main tent-poles that this blog is held by, so it always makes me really happy when new information comes out about something that I'm really excited about! You may remember Super Nintendo World, the part of Universal Studios parks (specifically in Universal Studios Japan and Universal Studios Hollywood) based on Super Mario Bros, complete with a Mario Kart ride and all that. In the past few days, however, it has been announced that Universal Studios Japan is getting a new expansion to Super Nintendo World, based on Donkey Kong Country! I'm really excited to hear this announcement, not only because this has been highly speculated for a while based on screenshots that we've gotten of the Orlando area which will be opened sometime soon with their Epic Universes park, but also because it's Donkey Kong Country! Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze has to be one of the best 2D Platformers ever made, and that's a pedigree that goes with basically every entry of this series, even though it started back on the Super Nintendo, then took a break until the Wii. Today I'm going to talk a bit about this park and what it means to the overall structure of this area. It's time to get it on like Donkey Kong, friends. Let's get to monkeying around.

The promotional art for this new section, found on NBC Universal's site! Notice Rambi the Rhino and the Mine cart both being here!

No need to be K. Rool!

    When the series began back on the Super Nintendo, Rare handled development of the Donkey Kong Country games, creating Diddy Kong and all of the other original characters included in this trilogy of classic games, along with Donkey Kong 64, which was slightly different. The games all had the Kremlings and the evil King K. Rool as the main villains of the games, with their goal being to take over Donkey Kong Island and steal DK's Banana Hoard. The series took a break following the purchase of Rare by Microsoft towards the beginning of the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox era. That changed in 2010 when Retro Studios brought the series back with Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Nintendo Wii. Gone were the Kremlings and their crazed leader, replaced by the Tiki Tak tribe, a group of evil musical instruments/tiki things that hypnotized the animals of the jungle to steal DK's bananas. In DKC: Tropical Freeze, the villains were the S'Nomads: a group of animals on a flying ship that suddenly froze Donkey Kong Island and flung the Kongs far away. The question that this brings up is, will we see any of these groups or all of them? Based on the article in Eurogamer, they are including a rollercoaster called Mine Cart Madness, "...which will take riders through the jungle as Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong protect the Golden Banana from the Tiki Tak Tribe and will even contain a "leap across a collapsed track"." There you have it, the Tiki Tak Tribe is going to be included at the very least, though I have to wonder if the versions in Hollywood and Orlando will be the same versions of the ride, or if we'll see some variation in regards to the villain represented in the ride. I would imagine that it would have to be the same, especially when looking at Universal's track record with screen based rides being moved around, but who knows?

    I have to take a second here and just talk about how cool it is that they're getting a mine cart coaster. It's a really obvious concept, considering Donkey Kong Country games are famous (or infamous) for the mine cart sections, but I just really hope that they're able to do it well. Of course, in the games, the kart has to jump over enemies, obstacles, and of course gaps in the path, which this kart probably won't be able to do, but if they could emulate that somehow, that would be pretty amazing, especially when they detailed a "leap across a collapsed track". I'm really excited to see the ride vehicles for this ride, even if we see nothing else little while. We see them in the promo up at the top of this writing, but it's set to open in Spring of 2024 in Japan, so we probably won't have to wait very long to see how this all works out.

Oooooooh Banana!

    Now, with this being a Donkey Kong Country themed area, I think it's fair to imagine some banana flavored treats and bananas used in different recipes if they have a restaurant here, which I also won't want to eat, which will add onto the mushrooms on everything in the Super Mario Bros. area of this land. There is some cool merchandise that has already been announced for this area of the park though, and that is exciting for sure. They've announced a headband that has Donkey Kong and Diddy coming out of little Barrels, there's a Dixie Kong headband (which confirms Dixie Kong's involvement in the park in some way at least), and there are new Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong themed Power-up bands coming alongside the opening of the park. I'm really curious what the bands will do in this area, since in the Mario one, you use the band to hit "Question Blocks." Here, we may see some DK Barrels that you can touch with your band to do different activities. I wonder if we'll get to see any of Donkey Kong's companions like Rambi the Rhino (who is on the promo art up above), Squawks the Parrot, or Ellie the Elephant. I am so excited to see all of the little references to the original games as well as the Wii revitalization!

    There wasn't a ton of new information with the announcement, but it is nice to see something concrete after this area was first announced in 2021. I still haven't been to either of the Super Nintendo World areas, but I do hope to visit sometime soon. The theming looks amazing, and I can still hardly believe that this is a real area of a theme park that you can visit, with the Donkey Kong area coming really soon! I hope you're as excited as I am, and for one final request, I hope we'll be able to meet Cranky Kong and he'll just complain about how lazy people are today in his treehouse. I think that would be a funny touch to the overall experience.

    Thanks so much for reading this little post about the new stuff coming to Super Nintendo World Japan, friends! Of course, like the first area, we'll get another area like this a little closer to home sometime in the near future, with the Orlando version hopefully coming in 2025 or so, but it's nice to know that this is on the horizon at the very least! Are you excited for this area? Do you have any history with Donkey Kong Country as a series? Is this the first time that you've heard of any of these characters or setting? Let me know somewhere online and thanks again so much for your support! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a self-proclaimed DK Jungle Explorer, and I'll talk to you again very soon! Thanks for swinging by!