Not to pretend that every K. Rool fan has been a perfect angel to the Dixie fanbase, but yeah, there was a very long period of time (arguably still today) where people, some Dixie fans, some not, put her on a pedestal as a super shoo-in and, for some reason, used that as a reason K. Rool had no chance. . .because for some reason, "Donkey Kong Rep" is singular and our series is the only one that can't support two newcomers at once.
Two things that just occurred to me:
--You can tell who isn't really a Dixie fan, or at least who's not familiar with the DK series, by who says "Tropical Freeze was too soon for Sakurai to add Dixie." Dixie appeared in as many games as K. Rool before Tropical Freeze and is certainly important enough in them to merit playability, not to mention it would take a simple phone call to Retro to check up on her status during roster development, but no. . .Dixie is essentially a Tropical Freeze original character to a ton of people, and that's a shame.
--On my home computer (which I only see on vacations), I have a lot of strange links bookmarked from years ago, one of which is this GameFAQs thread, titled "
Retro's Phone Number." Last time I was home, I posted an excerpt from that to criticize Miyamoto for allegedly being the driving force being No Crocodiles *laughs*. What I didn't notice was this little tidbit that followed, from the supposed Retro developer on the line:
If this is true, our suspicions are correct: even if the Miyamotos of the world are hesitant, with a large enough amount of outcry, the exact sort we've been doing for years, we can push the Kremlings back into their home series. I guess only time will tell if we've been loud enough; Tropical Freeze started development in late 2011, before Kremling support really skyrocketed, but now, we're absolutely on the radar, based on Kelbaugh on Twitter.