Donkey Kong Country Returns HD removes original developer from credits

Summary

  • Nintendo has excluded the individual developers Retro Studios from the Donkey Kong Country Returns HD credits.

  • Nintendo's tradition of cutting credits in remastered games has been criticized by developers in the past.

The upcoming release of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD has confirmed that the game's original developers at Retro Studios were omitted from the full credits of the remastered version. Release is scheduled for January 16, 2025. Donkey Kong Country Returns HD presents a remastered version of the 2010 Wii platformer for Nintendo Switch owners.

Thanks in part to its portability and Nintendo's large library of classic titles, the Nintendo Switch is a strong contender for one of the best contemporary retro gaming platforms. Nintendo itself has also followed the trend of remastering and remaking beloved classics, adding new content and graphical flourishes to freshen them up for fans and newcomers alike. In recent years there have been things like the expanded remake of Super Mario RPG and the remasters of classic series like Advance Wars. Even underrated narrative games like this Famicom Detective Club Titles have experienced a renaissance on the Switch.

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This board contains the Donkey Kong Country Series. With the Donkey Kong Country Returns HD As the release date approaches, early access news outlets have confirmed that Nintendo has omitted the employees of Retro Studios, developers of the 2010 Wii original, from the full credits of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD. As Nintendo Life reports, the credits screen only shows credits for the employees of developer Forever Entertainment, which ported and improved the original game for the Switch along with the content from the 3DS version. Instead of showing the full credits for Retro Studios, the credits screen displays a line stating that the remastered game is “based on the work of the original development team.”

Nintendo leaves Retro Studios out of Donkey Kong Country and returns HD credits

The decision to condense the credits of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is in line with Nintendo's treatment of other Switch-based re-releases. In 2023, developer Zoid Kirsch arrived, who worked on the first two as a programmer and lead gameplay engineer at Retro Studios Metroid Prime Games, criticized Nintendo for excluding the full original credits Metroid Prime Remastered on the switch. At the time, he said he felt “disappointed” that Nintendo chose to omit the names of members who no longer worked at Retro Studios during the remaster's development. Fellow developers weighed in, saying excluding original teams from the credits of remasters and remakes was “bad practice.”

Credits are a hot topic in the gaming industry because credits are important in building careers for game developers. Even in the realm of remastered titles, crediting the original developers is also a gesture of appreciation and recognition of the efforts of teams that have put years of their time into popular titles. Nintendo is also accused of failing to credit translators or of imposing restrictive non-disclosure agreements on translators and translation partners that prevent them from disclosing that they have worked on key series The Legend of Zelda. As more developers and fans publicly denounce unfair lending practices across the industry, the time may come when publishers, including Nintendo, will have to change their ways.

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