NEW FUNKY MODE logo with Funky Kong surfing on a sunburst background

New Funky Mode

2018photoshop memedead

Published November 13, 2026

New Funky Mode is a photoshop meme from January 2018 that slaps the Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze box-art badge advertising playable Funky Kong onto unrelated video game covers. Within hours of Nintendo's reveal on January 11, 4chan's /v/ board and Twitter user Nittomata were editing the sticker onto Dark Souls, Doom and other boxes, with the official Doom Twitter account joining the same day.

cover art parody memes photoshop memes nintendo memes gaming 4chan memes

Overview

A typical New Funky Mode edit lifts the small orange "New Funky Mode" tag from the Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze box and places it in the upper-right corner of a completely unrelated game cover4. The humor comes from the mismatch: a badge advertising casual, kid-friendly extra content lands on something like From Software's Dark Souls or id Software's Doom. Edits may use the full original Funky Kong artwork with the character included, or a cleaned-up template showing just the badge and its text.

Formally, the joke works like older image-overlay gags such as "& Knuckles" and "Featuring Dante From the Devil May Cry Series," where fans graft a small piece of outside branding onto a product it has nothing to do with2. New Funky Mode narrows that approach to one specific, real-world promotional sticker that Nintendo genuinely printed on a 2018 Switch box.

Origin & Background

Platform
4chan /v/ and Twitter (viral spread)
Date
2018

Nintendo revealed the Switch rerelease of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze during a Nintendo Direct on January 11, 2018, announcing Funky Kong as a new playable character1. The company released the retail box art later that day; its upper-right corner carries a small orange "New Funky Mode" tag advertising the new character option1. Nintendo developed the game and designed the real badge, not the meme format; fans created the edits within hours of the box art going public.

An anonymous poster on 4chan's /v/ board opened a "Funky New Mode" thread that same day by pasting the sticker onto the cover of Dark Souls3. Twitter user Nittomata followed with a clean template of the isolated badge and tweeted a run of photoshopped covers, reaching over 2,600 retweets and 6,600 likes4. The true original artist of the meme format is unconfirmed; the 4chan anon and Nittomata are the earliest known posters.

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How It Spread

Virality on Twitter came quickly: the official Doom account replied to Nittomata's template thread with its own New Funky Mode cover and reached over 5,400 retweets and 11,000 likes4. Reddit followed; a /r/NintendoSwitch thread about the Doom tweet gained more than 630 upvotes within four hours5.

User @beefskell attached the sticker to the cover of the NSFW visual novel Starless: 21st Century Nymphomaniacs, reaching over 270 retweets and 790 likes2. Discussion also appeared on Funnyjunk6 and the IGN forums7 the same day.

Almost all of the activity concentrated on January 11, 2018. The format never produced a sustained second wave, and the trend is now remembered as a one-day photoshop burst in the same family as "& Knuckles" rather than an ongoing meme format2.

Timeline

2018-01-11

Nintendo Direct announces the Switch rerelease of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze with Funky Kong as a playable character.

2018-01-11

Nintendo releases the Switch box art, whose upper-right corner carries the "New Funky Mode" tag.

2018-01-11

An anonymous /v/ user opens a "Funky New Mode" thread on 4chan by editing the sticker onto the Dark Souls cover.

2018-01-11

Twitter user Nittomata posts a clean template badge and a run of photoshopped covers, reaching 2,600+ retweets.

2018-01-11

The official Doom Twitter account replies with its own New Funky Mode cover and tops 5,400 retweets.

2018-01-11

A /r/NintendoSwitch thread about the Doom tweet gains 630+ upvotes within four hours.

How to Use This Meme

Take a video game box cover, place the small orange "New Funky Mode" badge in the upper-right corner where Tropical Freeze put its own, and post the result4. The payoff is sharper when the target game is tonally far from a kid-friendly platformer, Souls-likes, FPS titles and NSFW visual novels were common early picks2.

Frequently Asked Questions