iiotenki

Tom

@iiotenki

The Tony Hawk of Tokimeki Memorial

A most of the time Japanese>English game translator and writer and all the time dating sim wonk.

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iiotenki
@iiotenki

Saw a Japanese ad on YouTube for the Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake that treats Donkey Kong being the villain like it's some wild new twist nobody could've ever seen coming and, like, I get it, I guess, your average person that started playing games in this century probably isn't all that likely to have played or even thought about OG arcade Donkey Kong, but man have I been feeling some Things ever since. 😩

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xdaniel
@xdaniel

That's something I hadn't even thought about before. Seeing the 20th, 25th anniversaries of games you remember releasing and feeling old is basically expected at this point, or at least to me. But remakes or the like having to remind current, very possibly younger players that hey, that character used to be a villian!, that seems like another, even stranger level of "feeling old"...

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iiotenki
@iiotenki

Yeah, it's like, even I'm technically too young to remember Donkey Kong pre-Country persona, but I was still born close enough to the arcade games to have picked up on all of that by osmosis even before I ever emulated them. It made me think about the last time Nintendo actually actively acknowledged that part of the series history and I think it might actually been when the arcade turned 25 and they did that re-release of the NES port that added the pie factory level back in? Which, that would've itself been 15 years ago now.

And doing all that math made me realize that the only Donkey Kong that most people in Gen Z know is just in his capacity as a Smash Bros. and Mario Kart player. Maybe the Retro-developed Country games, too, but probably to a lesser degree. Even if you can play NES Donkey Kong with Switch Online or buy the Arcade Archives version (I think?), that stuff probably appeals more to our end of the spectrum than theirs.

But yeah, just a really weird reckoning to have from such an innocuous ad, it's surreal ahaha.

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