Activision talks more on Bowser/Donkey Kong's inclusion in Skylanders SuperChargers

A portion of a Nintendon interview with Activision's Guha Bala...

N: Can you tell us about how you came up with the concept of casting Nintendo characters in Skylanders?

Guha Bala: So for us, we’ve had creative interactions and collaboration with Nintendo for a long time.

You know, at the very beginning of Skylanders the Nintendo platforms were so important.

That’s where our customers have been, and so Wii and the 3DS were very important, we were there at the Wii U launch as well and when we talk about doing vehicles for Skylanders, and when Nintendo announced they were going to do amiibos, [we tought] maybe we could figure something out that makes sense for both of us, and also do something unique and creative and novel as well, and that’s how we started.

So I think they came up with the amiibo sometime in the middle of 2014 and they said “what could we do to do something creative together?” and it naturally went to “let’s pick a couple of characters that haven’t been done in a 3D environmental form and let’s take a unique twist on them, and let’s do it in a way that we give value to both the amiibo customers as well as Skylanders”.

So in that sense picking Donkey Kong, designing him as a Skylanders version of Donkey Kong, ‘cause Donkey Kong has really not appeared in a 3D action environment since DK64, he’s been more in the sidescrolling interactions for Donkey Kong.

So that’s a unique set and totally new upgraded set of moves. And then Bowser, he has never really been playable in 3D before, and especially as an hero. And I think that Smash Brothers and this type of games and other he is appeared in.

N: Well, that answers pretty much my second question: why starting with Bowser and DK? That’s the reason why.

GB: Well actually, you know, my personal favorite is Bowser because I have never really got to play as him, but also Donkey Kong is an awesome character as well.