DidYouKnowGaming, a popular video game channel dealing in video game trivia and news about cancelled projects, has recently updated the second part of its series investigating every cancelled Nintendo 64DD game and in the process has helped debunk a persistent rumour about Donkey Kong 64 beginning development on the Japanese-exclusive disk drive add-on.
For years, it's been claimed on Wikipedia that Donkey Kong 64 was among the games that were slated to be developed for the add-on before being switched over to an N64 cartridge, with the article linking to a Gamespot article from 1997 citing "Japanese reports". In this video, however, narrated by Hard4Games, DidYouKnowGaming were able to confirm with Rare artist Carl Tilley and other former Rare employees that the game was never properly in development for the add-on.
Tilley told DidYouKnowGaming, "The game didn't have any specific designs to make use of the [64DD] in pre-production [...and] Rare [management] wouldn't have wanted to release on the DD. Hardware sales dictated where best to sell the game."
As for the Japanese reports, DidYouKnowGaming claims some Japanese magazines at the time did list it as a DD game, but argues "They didn't really know anything" highlighting a specific article where a reporter writes: "Will the N64 version be a traditional side-scrolling action game, or an RPG taking advantage of the 64DD's features?
Interestingly, this is a topic that we have done some digging of our own on at Time Extension while researching the 64DD device for our extensive feature on the history of the add-on, and we can actually add a bit more information to this, including where these Japanese reports originally got their information from.
The same month as the Gamespot article, in April 1997, Yoshio Hongo, the Japanese spokesperson for Nintendo Co. Ltd gave a briefing to the press behind closed doors in which he announced that Nintendo was delaying the hardware's release date from late 1997 to March 1998 (as covered by N64 Magazine UK). As part of this, Hongo reportedly announced a new slate of games for the console, including Pocket Monsters 64, Sim City 64, Mario Paint 64 (Mario Artist: Paint Artist), Super Mario RPG 2 (Paper Mario), and Ultra Donkey Kong.
When we were looking into the topic, we reached out to a few ex-Rare staff members to try to find out more and looked online for other potential sources, but everything we came across seemed to suggest this was a mistake, a mistranslation, or simply talks between upper management. In other words, the team were never officially developing the title with 64DD in mind.
Neither Kev Bayliss nor Chris Sutherland, for instance, could remember the project ever being in development for the 64DD, and in interviews, the former Rare composer Grant Kirkhope has always been clear that it was Project Dream, not Donkey Kong 64, that was initially being developed for the 64DD before it was also switched over to a cartridge.
You can watch DidYouKnowGaming's full video here.