Donkey Kong Victory Dance

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About

Donkey Kong Victory Dance refers to a series of videos in which Donkey Kong's celebration animation after scoring a goal in the 2022 video game Mario Strikers: Battle League is set to various background music options, making him appear to be dancing to the beat. The remix meme trend appeared on YouTube in late May 2022 roughly a month before the game's release on June 22nd.

Origin

The upcoming Nintendo Switch game Mario Strikers: Battle League, a soccer themed Mario title, was first shown on February 9th, 2022, as part of a Nintendo Direct broadcast. The game features the usual cast of Super Mario characters in the third game for the franchise, who each have unique celebration dances upon scoring goals. On May 29th, 2022, the YouTube channel Yomasi^[1] uploaded a short clip of Donkey Kong's victory celebration, claiming that it is "just perfect," and earning 532,000 views in 10 days (shown below).

Spread

Later that same day on May 29th, 2022, the animation of Donkey Kong dancing began seeing use in remixes. For example, one such version includes DK's dance set to the song "Let's Groove" by Earth, Wind, and Fire, with the uploader, YouTuber The Hyper Kid^[2], earning 41,000 views in 10 days (shown below).

On May 31st, YouTuber NintendoSaiyan24^[3] uploaded a four-minute meme compilation showing Donkey Kong dancing to a myriad of songs, including many well-known meme songs, music from other video games and other various tracks as the trend spread on the platform (shown below).