>>715197360
I do think a lot of people in Nintendo were genuinely offended that Rare left, and wanted to recreate his world without their image involved. While other kongs got to keep existing because they related to DK at least, the Kremlings were basically the defining feature of that "old world" and the relationship the series had with rare that they may have wanted to move on from, like keepsakes leftover after a bad breakup. It just makes too little sense for such a hit of the 90s to have it's bad guys referenced almost only by exterior devs and for the theme park to basically unperson all games besides returns and maybe Jungle Beat. (Strikers devs, Sora Ltd, etc.)

Or maybe they just never saw Donkey Kong needing anything else than the main ape himself until recently. Remember they had said as such during Jungle Beat's development.