Since Vicarious Visions also developed for Nintendo platforms back in the day, there was a connection between them and the Japanese company, but it’s a more modern time period that makes the story interesting…

Supposedly, a 3D Donkey Kong platformer was made at Vicarious Visions. The team made a lot of games for the Game Boy Advance in the 2000s, including Tony Hawk and Crash Bandicoot, which made it to the GBA thanks to them. But now we hear that Vicarious Visions (which has since merged with Activision and is now called Blizzard Albany…) was developing a Donkey Kong game for the Nintendo Switch, codenamed Freedom, in which one of the main mechanics involved the big ape sliding on vines.

This was first reported by DK Vine, a Donkey Kong fan site, and they also produced a video courtesy of ludologist (video game historian) Liam Robertson, which we’ve embedded below the paragraph. According to DK Vine, the project was given the green light when Nintendo characters appeared in Skylanders SuperChargers. That impressed the big N, but Robertson failed to properly follow up on the story. Nintendo began working with Vicarious Visions on the project, and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto was involved, often providing feedback and suggestions on the mechanics.

According to Robertson, the game didn’t get much further than early development, and was only made in six months by the studio that made it big with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 (which couldn’t make Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, as we wrote about today). Instead, Activision has diverted its resources away from the broader catalog of games to focus solely on Call of Duty. (It must be a bit annoying for developers to be forced to work on this IP by the publisher…)

The project was shelved in 2016, and for the studio’s two founders, Karthik and Guha Bala, it was the last straw. They have since founded Velan Studios…

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