Donkey Kong Country Returns HD dashes Retro from the credits

Forever Entertainment has been confirmed as the developer behind Donkey Kong Country Returns HD. Also of note, Nintendo omits to mention the former developer, Retro Studios.

Unveiled by Nintendo Life, the classic DK platformer was brought over, but its credits appeared a bit light. Looking a bit further, all it has in terms of crediting the original developers behind the 2010 platformer is a simple sentence reading “Based on the work of the original development staff.” Obviously, this will likely rub people the wrong way, but it seems to be standard practice for Nintendo’s remasters, remakes, and ports.

Linking back to Retro Studios, back when Metroid Prime Remastered back in 2023, it caused a bit of dust to be kicked up as it also omitted the original studio, with vocal employees being engineer Zoid Kirsch who was “let down” and technical lead engineer Jack Mathews calling it “a travesty.”

It’s a rather dismissive way of nodding to the original developers and we question why it even mentions it in the first place if it will be that low-effort.

Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger Editor-in-Chief

Gabe has been a gamer since he was young, playing games like Pajama Sam, Freddi Fish, Guitar Hero, and whatever looked cool on GameFly. Ever since 2018, he's been infatuated with the inner workings of the gaming and entertainment industries, covering a wide range of topics from video games to TV and film. Starting as a contributor for PSX Extreme, he's worked his way up to its Managing Editor. Using what's he learned over the years, he founded Smash Jump to remind everyone to smash jump.