Ah yes. The 1997 Donkey Dong Country series. I seem to recall it being motion capture. It's quite impressive and fair for its day. Beast Wars was a little more polished looking.
It aired briefly on the Fox Family channel, so I'm guessing that's why you've never heard of it. It was a hit in Japan and it's native country of France, just not much here. Shout was actually trying to get that series out years ago, after they ran out of Super Mario cartoons, but some yutz company was sitting on the rights for the privilage of having the rights, and didn't want to do anything with it. Nor did they want anyone else to want to do anything with it. I'm super ticked Phase 4 is just releasing the series in a chopped up movie form instead of the complete collection it deserves.
Besides that, there's another reason it's far from new. Nintendo has a humongous bug up its butt when it comes to cartoon series, comic books, and movies. The last of which, totally understandable. Koopa's cameo in Wreck-it Ralph is the closest thing we'll ever get to another Super Mario movie (unless a second Wreck-it Ralph does get made and they have a place to put Mario this time). Yet, they treat repetitive toy commercial Pokemon like it's the best thing in the universe.
But the DKC show is pretty good. Kinda goofy, and Diddy's voice is pretty annoying, but it's pretty fun.