sorry about this whole obsession with other people's obsessions with things vaguely hinted by cartoon gorilla eye shapes, but
Mario/DK continuity doesn't matter, because one of the most beautiful moments in a Nintendo game ever, the ending of Yoshi's Island, is a blatant and unapologetic retcon - and then another almost as beautiful moment that today's kids will surely see the same way that I saw YI, the broken TV scene in the CGI Mario movie, is part of an equally as brazen retcon of that retcon. What works for the single work is most important, not whether you can piece them together.