Donkey Kong hugging Diddy in a hidden barrel animation is the cutest thing you’ll see all week

He likes warm hugs

The announcement of Donkey Kong Country Returns was a huge moment for me. It was one of my first E3s, and I was there at the Nintendo conference when the crowd went wild over it.

Having been dormant for many years in terms of “main” games (spinoffs were still going on at that point but the last real entry was DK64 in 1999), the series was due for a comeback, and and Retro Studios was the developer to do it. The results were fantastic, and although the Wii/Wii U version remain somewhat elusive (unlike Tropical Freeze, it did not get a Switch port), it did mosey on over to the 3DS, so it’s at least somewhat accessible.

Part of its charm was in the details, particularly the animation. All these years later Supper Mario Broth managed to uncover another little tidbit by unloading barrel models in an emulator; a hug. Yep, in normal gameplay you cannot see Donkey and Diddy inside barrels beyond their faces, but a bit of clever manipulation shows that Donkey Kong is actually hugging Diddy.

This is so wholesome!

Supper Mario Broth [Twitter]

By unloading the barrel model in Donkey Kong Country Returns, we can see that in order to fit Donkey Kong’s and Diddy Kong’s models inside the limited space of the barrel, their bodies are made as compact as possible by having DK hold onto Diddy while in a fetal position. pic.twitter.com/u6bKSZRDfz

— Supper Mario Broth (@MarioBrothBlog) July 8, 2019