The Past and Times of Yore: Diddy Kong Racing, (Not Just) Kart racing excellence on the N64

Release date: December 20, 2017
Genre: Kart racing
Publisher: Rare
Developer: Rare
Platforms: Nintendo 64
Modes: Singleplayer Story, Multiplayer Racing and Battle Modes

Ahh kart racing games, with their cutesy characters and wacky cartoon graphics, I’ve owned a few myself the first and foremost being Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo which to this day I still regard as the best kart racer ever, followed closely by Crash Team Racing, and possibly Micro Maniacs and Lego Racers though they weren’t kart racers. Back in the day when I played the good old N64 with friends we mostly played Mario Kart 64, however my housemate Brok was a staunch fan of Diddy Kong Racing which did look quite interesting as it included not just Cars but Hovercrafts and Planes too which I understood you could use several different vehicles on the one map which was pretty cool. I can’t remember playing it back then I can only remember playing it a year or so ago at my house then playing it properly on emulator on the perfectly functional Project64, an excellent choice which I have used to this day. Diddy Kong Racing (DKR) was created by the famous Rareware who I’m sure you’ll know created the likes of Donkey Kong Country series and many other well-known titles such as GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and Conker's Bad Fur Day, they seemed to be able to do no wrong on the Nintendo 64 as DKR is no exception. Just a quick note before I start, I decided to use the Mario Wiki for my hotlinks as the Donkey Kong Wiki has an annoying custom mouse pointer, why do people do that, really? At least I don’t see it happening on many websites anymore.

It's go time! (almost)

The opening of the game is really enjoyable with the animated Nintendo and Rareware logo’s (A staple through Rare-made games) then it cuts to Diddy flying in and then starts that awesome intro that shows you all of the characters with that very catchy boppy music, I gotta say the music in Diddy Kong Racing pretty much beats any other kart racer I have played, even Mario Kart. After the great intro you can select your mode, DKR is fairly simple starting with Adventure mode and tracks mode. In tracks mode you can choose to race any track you have unlocked via Adventure mode, tracks with a Taj the Genie symbol are completed tracks, and players can choose any vehicle that is compatible with the track. Tracks with a Wizpig symbol have not been cleared, and players are restricted to the default vehicles for them.

Conker in his Hovercraft in Pirate Lagoon, this was one of the few tracks where only one type of vehicle could be used

 Whichever mode you pick you then get to choose your character in what is probably the most entertaining character select screen I have ever seen (or heard) and I loved the way the music changed its tune slightly whenever you selected a certain  character with each character having their own tune, it’s hard to explain you’ll just have to watch the video, I swear every single time I play the game I spend 2 minutes listening to all of the character tunes. There are 8 available characters at the start with two that are unlockable, as with Mario Kart there are various stats and weight differences with the smaller characters being easier to handle but slower, the middleweight character being good all round and the heavier characters have good top speed but can’t accelerate or turn very well. So I decided to go as Conker as he is an all-rounder then Bumper just for a change in the later game as I liked his yellow colour vehicles.


The intro and that awesome character select screen

Adventure mode is the main singleplayer mode and one of the features it has over Mario Kart 64, the first time I experienced an adventure mode was in Crash Team Racing and it made playing a kart racer alone so much better it isn’t just menu, race, menu, race you have a whole world to drive around in, explore, practice your skills and unlock new areas. This was an era where the story was written in the instruction manual which they assume you read first and I think I did used to do that but basically it’s all loosely tied in to the Rare Games. Diddy Kong is sitting at the tree house having a G&T then gets a letter from his friend Timber the tiger who says that while his parents were away holidaying with the Kong clan in the Caribbean the evil paedophile Wizpig has come from outer space and taken over his island and brainwashed some very large animals into serving him. So Diddy gets Squawks to send a message that their coming then attempts to sober up his friends Banjo and Conker from their hangover and they jack one of Funky’s boats to reach Timber’s Island, closely followed by Krunch, who is after them from a botched crack deal the previous night. Meanwhile on the island Bumper is trying to hide Pipsy and Tiptup from Wizpig but she’d eaten magic mushrooms and was dancing around trying to summon Taj the Genie although Tiptup says that he had been dead for 50 years due to substance abuse.

Taj awarding me with a Balloon

 When they all get together Bumper then has the great idea that they should defeat Wizpig by racing go-karts, hovercrafts and planes for no reason whatsoever and they should get practicing. Then T.T comes over and says he’s gonna do some hot laps and dares them all to beat him and their all like how the fack is that going to help us defeat Wizpig? And he’s like how the fack is us racing against each other going to do that either? oh and Drumstick has been turned into a frog, yeh I think that was the gist of it.

Timber Island, the main hub of the game, on the left is the entrance to Dino domain, on the right is the entrance to Snowflake Mountain inw hich you need the plane to navigate to.

So on starting the adventure you are greeted by Taj himself (guess he wasn’t dead) who gives you an introduction to adventure mode before challenging you to a kart race around the island rewarding you with a Golden Balloon which is the main reward system in DKR, golden ballons are awarded for coming 1^st in races and challenges and they allow you to unlock more areas on the island. So now I could enter Dino Domain the first sub-world which consists of 4 races, a challenge level, a boss race and a trophy race, earning stuff along the way. The first 4 races weren’t too bad, you race against the other characters in the game using weapon balloons and shortcuts to gain the upper hand. The weapon in DKR are pretty cool, they use a powering up system exactly the same as Lego Racers, there are different colour balloons that give different powerups, red are missiles, blue is boosts, green is mines etc, yellow is shields and rainbow are magnets which is a new one, you can pull yourself toward your opponents or pull them back to you which is pretty cool.


Shootin a few missiles on Crescent Island

The more balloons of the same type you get the more powerful the item is, for example 2 red balloons is a homing missile, 3 red balloons is a group of ten (not homing though) frankly I don’t know which is better, I would have preferred more homing missiles. Anyway you get a Golden balloon for coming 1^st each time, to get the challenge level you have to find the Wish Key hidden in one of the tracks, the challenge levels are either collection challenges like Fire Mountain where you have to fly around and collect Dragon Eggs or a straight battle mode like Icicle Pyramid. Diddy Kong Racing’s battle mode isn’t too bad though technically there is only two Mario Kart style battles which were Icicle Pyramid which was similar to Mario 64’s Double Deck and Darkwater Beach which was a fairly open water-filled level where hovercrafts were used.


The Icicle pyramid and Frosty village tracks

After you finish all 4 tracks and the challenge level you then have a chance to face the boss, which are giant animals that have been brainwashed by Wizpig, and they are quite challenging, even the Dino Domain boss Tricky the Triceratops wasn’t exactly easy they cheat and run ahead at the start before the  and they often throw things at you or leave them in their trail for you to crash into . So you beat the boss then have to complete all the races again this time doing the Silver Coin Challenges which added the extra difficulty of finding and collecting all 6 silver coins on a track and also finish first, then after that you had to race the boss again and win the Wizpig Amulet then after that you did the Trophy Race which was all the races of that world in row like a Mario Kart Cup and after that you were finally done with the area. To access the different areas you need to drive around Timber’s island unlocking new vehicles to use through Taj to reach different areas. I didn’t have too much trouble with Dino Domain or Sherbet Island though the boss of Sherbet Island Bubbler was pretty damn hard and when I got up to the Snowflake Mountain track Silver Coin challenges I was stuck on the Snowball Valley one for a while, it’s gets pretty fackin hard going out of your way to get the coins then still coming first.

Bubbler the octopus boss of Sherbert Island

 The main feature in Diddy Kong Racing that makes it stand out from the rest is the multiple vehicles used, you start off with the Car and after gaining more Gold Balloons you race Taj to gain access to the Hovercraft then eventually the Plane. Using the car is pretty easy, I was playing using a Playstation controller so just used R1 as the trigger button for using powerups, apart from that there was just accelerate, brake, sharp turn and powerslide where you went on two wheels. Most of the time I just used the brake button to make small adjustments and to get those boost pads, the Hovercraft was probably my favourite vehicle as I found it easy to drive an enjoyed being able to do very sharp turns by hopping. The Plane was probably the hardest as you had to deal with the vertical axis was well and there were often many obstacles and sharp turns in tracks where you flew the plane so you had to be nimble and remember to knife edge to make the corner. Crashing was often very costly as it slowed you down a lot and took a while to get back up to speed.

Flying on the Windmill Plains Level

So after god knows how many runs I managed to finish the Snowball Valley Silver coin challenge then race the boss again then finish the Trophy race then I finally got up to Dragon Forest where it was a medieval theme and a bit more challenging but I finished it ok including the Smokey Castle challenge level. The boss Smokey the Dragon was pretty darn hard, you challenged him in a  plane and had to dive through caverns dodging stalactites, but it was the silver coin challenges that stopped me dead, for the life of me I couldn’t finish the Greenwood Village, Windmill Plains or Haunted Woods Silver coin challenges. Unfortunately I never finished them and gave up the game but I came back eventually thanks to my housemate Brok who had unlocked almost everything I was able to play the bits I couldn’t reach such as racing Wizpig and unlocking the final area Future Fun Land which was pretty fackin awesome. It was a kind of space fun park with homages to different sci-fi movies notably Stars Wars as one track had a section that looked like the Death Star Trench run. Of course couldn’t defeat Smokey the second time or Wizpig in both his initial encounter and the second encounter Wizpig Strikes Back but at least I experienced them so I could write this review.

Dang those silver coin challenges were hard.

I love the look of the game, there is so much colour everywhere with great looking , it was made even better by the fact that I was playing on the emulator so although some of the text and icon graphics weren’t the best the 3D graphics were very crisp and looked great. The water textures were really good and the overall level design was great I’d say on par with Crash Team Racing. One thing I really need to do is see what the Future Fun land tracks look like on the emulator as they are so crazy and colourful it’d look nuts. Another thing I will have to go back and do is play all of the tracks again but with a different vehicle to the default just to see the track from a whole different angle. Though I didn’t finish the game fully it was still great to play both on emulator and the actual Nintendo 64, it had some really innovative features like the different vehicles and the adventure mode and the way you could use different vehicles on the one track. Oh and the music the soundtrack was so damn good it could give Spyro a run for its money, one of the few things that lets it down was that it only has two true “battle mode” levels but then again Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 only had two good ones anyway. So I will finish with this bombshell if I had to choose between Mario Kart 64 or Diddy Kong Racing? It’d be Diddy Kong Racing of course.

JD

I want one of those planes…