Rare Appreciation Thread

[E-Man]

Chunky's inclusion in DK64 has to do with Rare's approach to protagonist during the early-polygon era. The philosophy seems to be that protagonists are always the middle ground--they aren't the fastest, the strongers, the highest jumper, but they are proficient enough at all of those things not to be left in the dust. When it came time to create specialized obstacles for the DK Krew, Donkey Kong was given the vanilla protagonist path and there needed to be a more generic "strongman" character to do the heavy lifting.

I don't really agree with that methodology, because it does strip away some of the more defining aspects of a character and create a lot of confusion in other areas (like Diddy Kong suddenly being a lightweight character when he should be about as large as Mario and played the middle ground in Diddy Kong Racing). That's what was going on there, though.

When you put it that way, it makes sense to make DK the middle man. In that regard, though, why couldn't they use a more interesting character than Chunky then? If you play the battle mode after getting 15 Banana Fairies, you unlock Krusha as a playable character! Sure, it's better if DK was the strongman on the team, but how often do you play as a baddie? Give Krusha some cooler abilities than Chunky and I can see him being more liked.

Otherwise, to reduce the amount of characters and still give DK his rightful role as a strong Kong, it would be better to start the game out with Diddy Kong instead and make him the jack of all trades.