Original Donkey Kong Country Returns developers omitted from the credits of its HD remaster
It has been discovered that Retro Studios staff who worked on the original Wii release of Donkey Kong Country Returns are not mentioned in any way in the credits for its new HD remaster, prompting many to wonder why Nintendo chose to leave out the developers.
The details:
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, which was announced last year, is set to be released on Thursday and is developed by Polish studio Forever Entertainment. Nintendo-owned Retro Studios developed the original 2010 Wii title, but it appears that it has no involvement in the Switch remaster.
As spotted by Nintendo Life, it appears that not only does Retro have no involvement, no mention of the developer can be found in the remaster's credits. Instead, the credits simply state "based on the work of the original development staff," with no individual names or even the studio's name.
It is unknown whether this was an intentional move, as a similar situation occurred with Metroid Prime, another Retro-developed title. Developers who worked on the GameCube classic publicly criticized Nintendo's decision to leave the studio out of the credits for the 2023 remaster. Similar to DKC Country Returns HD, the game's credits included a message reading, "Based on the work of Metroid Prime original Nintendo GameCube and Wii version development staff."
Nintendo has also been criticized in the past by several external localization staff, who revealed that the company has refused to credit them for their efforts despite being involved in a project for months. The contract employees also accused Nintendo of imposing non-disclosure agreements that prohibit employees from discussing their work on a first-party game for years, preventing it from being mentioned on résumés and making other developers less likely to approach the translators directly.
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