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Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze Removed From Wii U Digital Store
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Retro Studios' 2D platformer from 2014, has been delisted from Nintendo's Wii U eShop in North America today.
Fans on the Wii U subreddit noticed it missing today, which seemed rather abrupt as people have been able to buy it as recently as yesterday. The top comment points out that Nintendo's website, which previously sold digital and physical versions of a game, has been updated to only sell physical versions.
We have confirmed both these changes ourselves on the Wii U eShop and website.
Players who have already bought the Wii U version of Tropical Freeze are able to redownload the game, so there is nothing to worry about there. You can, of course, also still purchase the game physically. It's worth noting that disappearing from the eShop has happened before to Nintendoland, which returned a day later with its removal being labeled a mistake.
We reached out to Nintendo for comment and clarification this morning, but have not received anything by the time of writing.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was a Nintendo Selects title on Wii U, making the game $20 on the eShop and retail. You can watch us play the Switch version of the game, with its new Funky mode, right here. The Switch version of the game is full price.
Our Take
The initial suspicion is that Nintendo removed the lower price option from a store they have complete control over, but it could also just be a mistake like Nintendoland was. If they did remove it because Tropical Freeze comes out on Switch this week for $60, then that's fairly brazen.
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