Donkey Kong Country Returns - dev decisions explained, comments from Miyamoto, and yanked content

The following information comes from a Nintendo Power interview with Kensuke Tanabe (producer) and Risa Tabata (assistant producer)…

Character Discussion

- during development, they asked Mr. Miyamoto which previous characters should stay in the game. After these characters were chosen, the developers thought that they might as well make everything else new
- the Tiki Tak Tribe are musical creatures because “Retro said they’d like to put in games that use music and wondered if that could be worked into the scenario.”
- bringing back Cranky Kong to DKCR was one of Miyamoto’s suggestions
- Kensuke’s favorite boss was the Scurvy Crew, while Risa’s was Mugly

Silhouette Levels

- one of the original silhouette levels was set on a snow-covered mountain at night.
- Risa: “There was a full moon, alone in the sky. When Donkey Kong ran through that scene, it left a real impression. His red necktie was streaming behind him.”
- one difficulty with these stages was trying to differentiate between Super Guide mode and Normal mode.
- Risa: “The white Donkey Kong (Super Kong) in the Super Guide mode looked just like the ordinary brown Donkey Kong.”
- the developers solved this problem by making Super Kong’s necktie blue instead of red like the normal Donkey Kong.