Second, I want the crossover to feel equal. Every single Mario vs Donkey Kong game feels like a Mario game that Donkey Kong just happens to be in, there's 1-up shrooms, shy-guys, coins, Toads, Piranha Plants, but the only recognizable Donkey Kong iconography besides DK himself is barrels and a Rhino toy that kinda sorta looks a little bit like a baby Rambi. I want barrel canons, animal buddies, and common DKC baddies, and maybe other Kongs.
I know Nintendo has that stick up their butt about DK doing "Villainous things" when Diddy Kong is around but I don't care, remove the stick, or make a game where DK and Mario have a misunderstanding and DK was just trying to stop something bad from happening.
I know it's cliche, but it'd be cool to see Bowser and K Rool team up, though I don't see K Rool being much of a team player.
I think it's a lost cause to determine what is and isn't canon when it comes to Mario and Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong used to be a little better about it's canon than Mario was but Bananza kind of threw a wrench in things by having Pauline be a young girl. It's better to just make your own canon when it comes to Mario or Donkey Kong.
The real wrench thrown in the picture was Rare trying to make Cranky the original arcade DK,
Since Kongs don't "age faster than humans" because that has always been a fan theory trying to make sense of Cranky. Or better said, it's not Cranky's character, it's the "idea" behind him. That's the problem, not that Mario and Pauline have always been who they are.
And it sucks because Any other world building elements that Rare put back then doesn't clash much with anything else, except this one.
Nintendo of Japan have been ambivalent, ambiguous and just simply outright avoiding it when it comes to it, especially nowadays. Only two instances they directly referred as our DK as a "second generation Donkey Kong" but that doesn't answer if current DK is "Jr" or not and was over two decades ago too.
They don't really touch nor play with the idea as NoA does. The unnecessary english localization addition in Bananza is proof of that.
And even to this day NoJ state that Mario is Jumpman.
I imagine they'd be like the Robotniks in the Sonic 3 movie where at first they bond over their villainy before K. Rool takes things a step too far and Bowser just stares at him like this before fighting him: (Probably something involving their minions)
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u/PowerPad 17h ago
Bowser and King K. Rool as separate bosses who try to attack you (along with the other) during a dual boss, like the World of Light bosses.