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I love Rare, but they created two of the most repulsive characters in Donkey Kong 64.

Don't they just get fat and fart?
Yeah, I don't like those characters either.

Glad you were not talking about the main characters though or I would have to hurt you.
 
Rare didn't make Xenoblade Chronicles X though
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Arkeband

Banned
I like K. Rool, but I do think Rare set out to make him sort of unappealing and ugly...after all, he was a villain, and unlike Japanese media which tends to make good-looking or cute villains, Western media tends to be more willing to make them ugly.

kJFH3HJ.png


I mean, he's got a really weird eye that's pulsing red, a comically fat and disproportionate body with moobs and an outie-belly button, and I always thought as this pose demonstrates he was also intended to come across as a bit effeminate (the television show played this up even more), which is a common othering element applied to a lot of villains since the average heteronormative audience finds that an undesirable trait. Of course, disliking K. Rool doesn't mean you hate fat people or are homophobic---Rare designed the character using stereotypical elements in mind to be off-putting, and finding that off-putting doesn't mean you think the groups it stereotypes are off-putting themselves. It's actually why I don't get Gonzo why you think people disliking K. Rool means they hate fat people, since it doesn't seem like Rare intended him to be a body-positive character. Troff and Scoff seems to suggest they just see "fat" as an easy off-putting characteristic to give to a villain, or use as a comedic element, which happens often throughout their games.

I'm mixed on some of Nintendo's post-Rare designs of the DK crew, but I think they actually made K. Rool far more aesthetically pleasing without totally betraying the original design. I forgot where this design comes from...his appearance in Mario Baseball wasn't this one, and I found that one actually pretty poor, but this one is good and I'll be pleased to see something like this in possibly Retro Donkey Kong or Smash in the future:

QiiL67c.jpg


His eye has been toned down, and overall he's still round without being grotesquely disproportionate and awkward looking. Also a far more inviting color-scheme.

This is a pretty descriptive breakdown of King K. Rool, but do you have any specific examples of them making King K. Rool effeminate? I do remember the show on TV, but I remember him just having a proclivity to break into song, which is obviously contradictory to his gross/mean appearance... and to better appeal to children.
 
Kiddy Kong is the worst character. He ruined Donkey Kong Country 3

Kiddy was designed to be unappealing on purpose because they didn't want Dixie to be overshadowed. DK's sidekick got his own game, Diddy's sidekick got her own game, and the joke was supposed to be that Kiddy would never get his own game or sidekick. Adding DK instead, like many people have suggested, would have just trivialized Dixie's starring role. It would be like making a Mario platformer where Luigi is the star and Mario is player two. Rare was a lot smarter than people give them credit for.
 

butalala

Member
Kiddy was designed to be unappealing on purpose because they didn't want Dixie to be overshadowed. DK's sidekick got his own game, Diddy's sidekick got her own game, and the joke was supposed to be that Kiddy would never get his own game or sidekick. Adding DK instead, like many people have suggested, would have just trivialized Dixie's starring role. It would be like making a Mario platformer where Luigi is the star and Mario is player two. Rare was a lot smarter than people give them credit for.

I'm over my Kiddy hate years ago, but this is a point that I never considered. Good thinking.
 
I've got to say Birdie, feels like your reaching with underlying weird feeder fetish, dang, I just thought it was a silly way to use collectable bananas to involve unlocking a door in a typically Rare like fashion, I think the internet has exposed you to more "awesome" fanart than the law should allow.
But what do I know, I've always enjoyed that banana chomping sound Scoff makes after all.

That said I never felt like these two fit in with the DK series, well very few of the NPCs in DK64 do, effectively the leftovers of Banjo Kazooie much like the game itself with but a fraction of the charm.
 
I'm not kidding when I say that lanky kong actually gave me nightmares as a kid, of our time....the true old God of night terrors...is known by lanky.
 
I've taken dumps that look more appealing than most of Rare's designs. To this day I'm convinced that the designer of K. Rool must have saved Yamauchi's life or something because there's no way someone looked at this

MqCiIr9.jpg
fiRSuzn.png


and said "yea fam that's fine
dZ70JjE.png
." Truly the worst.
 
What? K Rool is the only good character that came out from Rare among Cranky and Funky. He's got a GOLDEN BELLY man. Always looked like Bowser's parody to me.
 

brinstar

Member
Yeah I can get down with the pirate K. Rool with the blunderbuss. If they put that in Smash I'd be cool. Just not that aggressively naked gold-plated one from DKC1.
 

Lijik

Member
really thought this was going to be about B Locker
i mean look at this thing

latest

This looks like what you'd make to make fun of Rare's "slap googly eyes on it!" designs
 

Pizza

Member
Kiddy was designed to be unappealing on purpose because they didn't want Dixie to be overshadowed. DK's sidekick got his own game, Diddy's sidekick got her own game, and the joke was supposed to be that Kiddy would never get his own game or sidekick. Adding DK instead, like many people have suggested, would have just trivialized Dixie's starring role. It would be like making a Mario platformer where Luigi is the star and Mario is player two. Rare was a lot smarter than people give them credit for.

I fucking love kiddy Kong.


Also, I'm just starting my first ever dk64 play through. It and banjo kazooie were games I never owned as a kid but played here and there and always loved. so I'm pumped. So many Damn bananas. And yeah op, those two are gross. I love how they have nipples though.
 

Tomasooie

Member
"Aggressively naked" is the funniest thing I've ever heard used to describe a character.

Troff and Scoff (peep the names) are just a stupid joke they probably dared themselves to put in. They don't fit, but like someone else also said, not a lot in DK64 is consistent with the SNES games, or even with itself, really.
thought OP would feature everyone's bro

Fast_Rabbit.png
This guy always looked like a Diddy Kong Racing reject.
 

Boney

Banned
Kiddy was designed to be unappealing on purpose because they didn't want Dixie to be overshadowed. DK's sidekick got his own game, Diddy's sidekick got her own game, and the joke was supposed to be that Kiddy would never get his own game or sidekick. Adding DK instead, like many people have suggested, would have just trivialized Dixie's starring role. It would be like making a Mario platformer where Luigi is the star and Mario is player two. Rare was a lot smarter than people give them credit for.
So smart
 

illadelph

Member
Kiddy was designed to be unappealing on purpose because they didn't want Dixie to be overshadowed. DK's sidekick got his own game, Diddy's sidekick got her own game, and the joke was supposed to be that Kiddy would never get his own game or sidekick. Adding DK instead, like many people have suggested, would have just trivialized Dixie's starring role. It would be like making a Mario platformer where Luigi is the star and Mario is player two. Rare was a lot smarter than people give them credit for.

lkrwtf.gif


I love DKC 3
 
J

Jpop

Unconfirmed Member
Rare designed awesome games back in the day, but their character design was iffy.
 
I feel like Rare's problem was that they were taking character designs with a 2D saturday morning cartoon aesthetic and blowing them up into 3D without any concessions for the shift in dimensions. What looks good as a flat drawing is not guaranteed to translate well into polygons. 2D artists can design their characters so that the viewer always sees their good side (how does Goku's hair always seem to face the same way?), but in 3D every angle has to be accounted for - every side has to be the good side. Rare, at least during the mid-late '90s, seemed to have trouble figuring out what worked in a 3D environment and what didn't, and Donkey Kong got hit particularly hard with the didn'ts.

Now, the pig nipples I can't explain. Rejects from Conker, perhaps?
 

Dr. Buni

Member
Kiddy Kong is the worst character. He ruined Donkey Kong Country 3
Except he didn't. Donkey Kong Country 3 is amazing and much better than the first. And I don't even like Kiddy.
unlike Japanese media which tends to make good-looking or cute villains, Western media tends to be more willing to make them ugly.
Which is how it should be, in my opinion.
He's still upset that no one likes K Rool.
I like K. Rool. What are you talking about? What is with people attacking K. Rool fans on NeoGAF?
 

KHlover

Banned
Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, Cranky Kong, Regular Kremlin mooks.

All other of Rare's designs could go die in a fire for all I care.
 

Watch Da Birdie

I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
really thought this was going to be about B Locker
i mean look at this thing

latest

This looks like what you'd make to make fun of Rare's "slap googly eyes on it!" designs

Oh, I forgot this guy existed before I replayed it...

But yeah, this guy totally just comes out of left-field since Donkey Kong doesn't have goggle-eyed objects like Banjo-Kazooie does. And there's really no point to him---why do you need him to take your Golden Bananas, when you could just lock the level doors behind a door with the # of Golden Bananas needed on it?

I guess I respect Rare wanting to have an in-story reason for every collectible, but in this case it's just nonsensical that there's a living sign-post who wants your Golden Bananas.
 
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