Nintendo’s Donkey Kong franchise is a household name for many generations of gamers. The series is lauded for the many platform games that were produced, with the most loved being the trilogy. Donkey Kong Country from Rare’s SNES era.
Even games restarted from Donkey Kong Country Returns and Retro Studios’ Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze have received a similar amount of praise, expanding on what made the game series so much fun to play. That said, the series has seen little activity in terms of new games.
The latest release under the brand of Donkey Kong outside of the Super Mario spin-offs was the aforementioned port of Tropical Freeze for switchwhich took place in 2018. Although rumors of a new Switch game in the series were active during Donkey Kong’s 40th anniversary, nothing was announced.
These rumors of something new for the series are making the rounds again, due to a recent trademark registration by Nintendo. Some fans have noticed that the trademark of Donkey Kong from Nintendo was recently updated in early July. While most might see Nintendo as protecting the rights to the franchise going forward, this isn’t just a simple renewal, but rather a new brand with updated wording.
More specifically, this mark mentions “downloadable programs for portable and electronic consoles”, which fits with the Switch or any console that succeeds it. What has made some fans speculate that Nintendo is going to announce a new game of Donkey Kong for Switch at some point in the future.
It’s also interesting that this updated brand appears, considering that Nintendo has also recently revamped the Donkey Konga brand, a series of rhythm games that involves DK playing the bongos to the beat of a song. That said, there’s nothing to suggest that a new Donkey Kong or Donkey Konga game could come out any time soon, and as mentioned above it could just be that Nintendo just refreshed the brand.