Does the look of the DKC series match the gameplay?

[Zero Kirby]

So Sonic Lost World is a bad game because it looks like a Mario game, and not because it's a terrible game.

I'm just messin'. I get what you're goin' at, and it makes me think about how Retro Studios totally revamped the DK style for the Donkey Kong Country Returns series, and for the better, honestly. The cartoony yet detailed environments look like they'll pop out at you and quite often do, whereas the realistic environments of the SNES games were fairly set in stone and non-interactive - much like Mario's backgrounds. Part of that's just because Rare made the original games with pre-rendered graphics though - I can only wonder what they would have done with polygonal graphics for a 2D platformer.

I think Donkey Kong fits pretty well into the worlds of the modern games, though. He's created his own style unique from Mario or Sonic - the very levels themselves collapse and change around you, often because big, hairy wrecking-ball Donkey Kong is barrelling through the levels full-tilt with nary a care for what is behind him. I think that fits him well. But I wouldn't mind seeing another open-world exploration game with Retro at the helm and in the new style.

I don't really care that much for the original DK64 though. Then again I think Rareware, even back during their heyday, are pretty overrated.