Zelda reference in Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D launched this past week, and with it a surprising reference. Nintendo certainly isn’t a stranger to hiding references to their games in other games, but this one is kind of obvious, and definitely unexpected. Hit the jump to be surprised.

Cranky Kong, aka Donkey Kong the original and the best (as he’d probably describe himself) has been a source of a lot of the metahumor in the Donkey Kong series. Whether it’s complaining about modern games, or insinuating that the player isn’t skilled enough to beat the game, where there’s Cranky, there’s video game humor. So it makes sense that Cranky would be the one to make this unexpected joke. Check out this video from GameXplain to see for yourself.

There’s definitely a weird parallel, isn’t there? An Old Man with a sword, an old gorilla with a barrel? Uncanny.

Source: GamerMotion via GameXplain