Retro Studios is a subsidiary of Nintendo that has produced many heavy hitters for the big N. Among those are the two most recent Donkey Kong Country games, Returns for the Wii and Tropical Freeze for the Wii U. The games itself are pretty for their original hardware’s standards, but the concept art made for those games are almost if not equally eye catching.
The concept art in both of those games is unlocked by collecting Puzzle Pieces, harder-to-find collectibles scattered around the normal stages. They can be even tricky to find without the help of Squawks the Parrot, who alerts you when you’re near a piece for a small fee, but the artwork makes it totally worth it.
The concept art describes potential characters, ideas and locations for the games, many of which got realized, but some were left to the drawing table. Today, we focus especially to the environmental concept art, as they tend to be the more detailed and interesting pieces among the available art.
On art pieces where the artist is known, I mention them alongside the art’s title. I also mention from which game each concept art is from. Please note that Tropical Freeze’s concept art doesn’t have official names, and they’re often referred to by the game’s world from which they’re unlocked in.
Tree Top Village (Returns)
This concept art gives a good look on what a Forest world’s stage set in a nighttime environment would’ve looked like. I’m a huge sucker for nighttime stages in any game (except horror games!). They’re often visually intriguing, having good use of contrasts and making one wonder what hides in the darkness. This art nails that aesthetic perfectly, and I could admire the details for a good moment.
Returns didn’t really have any traditional nighttime stages in that sense. All of the Volcano world’s stages take place during the night, but as you’re exploring the inner area of a huge active volcano, it isn’t the darkest environment.
Even though this concept never came to fruition in Returns, Tropical Freeze gladly had its fair share of nighttime stages to compensate.
Bright Savannah by Jay Epperson (Tropical Freeze)
I’d imagine the silhouette stages to be among the most memorable ones in the Retro Studios’ Donkey Kong Country games for many players. As there isn’t too many of them, they stand out for their unique visual style. Tropical Freeze’s third world Bright Savannah didn’t have any of silhouette stages, but this art piece gives a good idea on what its execution could’ve been.
Running by the outskirts of a huge valley, admiring the vast landscape, local vegetation and a long running river from a huge lake; this could’ve been as good if not better than the other silhouette stages. Maybe the concept gets its chance on an another title at some point.
You can find all of Jay Epperson’s Bright Savannah concept art here.
Jungle Waterfalls (Returns)
This beautiful piece displays a waterfall setting on a tropical jungle. This would’ve surely looked majestic in the Returns’ Jungle world, as we didn’t get any sections where you would run past by a bottom of a waterfall, even though different kinds of waterfalls are featured in the Jungle world and throughout the game.
Such a lush environment with roaring waterfalls and rainbows on the background would’ve made for an unforgettable stage. Judging by the platforms on the distance, there could’ve been moving between the fore- and background like on some other stages, meaning that maybe you would’ve moved closer to the waterfall to collect something or even ascend the waterfall. Makes me excited just thinking about the possibilities!
Juicy Jungle By Jay Epperson (Tropical Freeze)
Juicy Jungle, Tropical Freeze’s fifth world where you follow fruits’ path from harvesting to popsicles, is one of the more unique worlds in any Donkey Kong Country game. The core idea was already there on the concept stages, but the execution became quite different in the final version of the game. Originally looks like they would’ve made some nice lemonade with all of the juice they gathered.
But who ‘they’? The Snowmads, the antagonistic tribe consisting of wintery animals like walruses, owls and penguins, did everything in the production chain on the Juicy Jungle we got, but originally pigs much like the Professor Chop had the show running!
They even had a whole village for their pig kind. It could’ve been a stage of its own by the looks of the concept art.
If these plans would’ve come to fruition, pigs would’ve had a much bigger role in the game than just Professor Chop’s regular gameplay tips and checkpoints in stages. These ideas are very funny, but maybe they thought that the world was hard to fit inside the game’s narrative in this manner. Hence, The Snowmads got the fruit harvesting and processing business, and as they really like all things cold, of course they make some popsicles from all that juice. The original pig concept would’ve worked better as a bonus world, but they likely already had other ideas for that based on the final game’s vastly different bonus world.
One thing I still would’ve loved to see and experience in the release version: this slide down the stream on top of gigantic fruits.
This would’ve surely made for a challenging yet fun and fast-paced experience, avoiding hazards on small platforms made of fruits. The idea would’ve worked even on the current setting run by The Snowmads, but maybe they found the idea unfitting, too difficult to play or too difficult to execute well enough.
You can find all of Jay Epperson’s Juicy Jungle concept art here.
Banana Coaster (Returns)
This piece shows an idea for the ninth bonus world of the game, the Golden Temple. On the original Wii game, Golden Temple consists only of the one main stage where you jump through a path of floating platforms and gigantic fruits. There weren’t any minecart sections, but if there were, maybe they would’ve included an adventure through gigantic banana mountains and their caves.
The releases of Returns for the Nintendo 3DS and Switch had a bigger bonus world, rebranded as the Cloud, consisting of whopping nine stages. Only the original Golden Temple stage, now acting as the final stage on the Cloud world, has a matching aesthetic to the whole golden temple and gigantic fruits theme, therefore the concept of this art didn’t really fit any other of the world’s stages that well.
The original concept might never come to fruition, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar idea was implemented on a future Donkey Kong game, as minecarts and huge fruits have appeared on multiple DK adventures. The idea is so unique that it would be fun to experience it firsthand in some form.
Haunted Forest (Tropical Freeze)
Collecting the Puzzle Pieces in the secret seventh world of the game awards you with this spooky piece of concept art, therefore it’s hard to say on which world this could’ve been related to. None of the game’s areas quite match the forest depicted on this piece. Maybe it’s a really early concept or even a leftover from Returns, which’ Forest world could’ve more easily included a level for a haunted forest like this. There’s also spiders on Returns like in this concept art, so maybe there’s some truth to that.
The art itself is enchanting, depicting a normal forest transforming to a haunted one as you press onward. You face different kinds of ghosts, glowing in varying colours, illuminating the darkness. The path looks perilous, but you still want to know what lies deeper within.
Donkey Kong Country 2 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System had a whole world called Gloomy Gulch dedicated to the haunted forest theme, so it wouldn’t be an entirely new setting for the Donkey Kong Country games. Other DK games have also had similar areas, like Jungle Climber’s Ghost Island. I still wouldn’t mind a more modern revisit to the concept in a future title.
Thus concluded today’s overview to some of my favorite concept art from Retro Studios’ Donkey Kong Country games. There’s quite a lot more of art available from this duo of games, so I’ll likely revisit this topic in the future. If I manage to find other DK games’ concept art, I might make a similar post about those as well, but most of other games’ concept art isn’t as easily available than Returns’ and Tropical Freeze’s.
These concepts just make me want more adventures with DK and the crew. I’m glad that the series’ drought is over, and we likely get a new title a bit sooner than after another 10+ years of waiting. Time will tell what kind of escapade we’ll get to with the DK crew next.
Until next time,
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