Diddy Kong Racing Rare Retrospective

1997 was a year of revelations for Rare. If the sheer quality of the oft-delayed GoldenEye and the announcement of Banjo-Kazooie and what was then known as Conker’s Quest at E3 astonished the world, Diddy Kong Racing’s unveiling at the Nintendo Gamers’ Summit in August and its subsequent achievement of platinum sales status by year’s end proved the latest and last in a string of great surprises.

Arriving as it did without warning or specific hype, the single most astonishing thing about DKR at the time was that it was virtually complete before anyone outside the company caught their first glimpse. In an industry dominated by premature promises and drawing-board press releases, this strategy was hopefully seen as a breath of fresh air. Nonetheless, market pressure would have made it a less than viable option if it wasn’t for the advent of Rare’s RDA technology, a revolutionary graphical editing system that offers an unprecedented level of creative control to each and every team member, cutting out all but the most fundamental delays. And this, of course, meant that the development timescale for DKR was drastically shortened.

The game itself is an attempt at blending a number of traditional genres. To the inexperienced eye it may seem like a straight racing title, but dive in and you’ll soon see that there’s far more to it than that. In DKR, racing is only a means to an end: coming in first will earn you a golden balloon, various numbers of which are needed to unlock the secrets of further worlds and more tracks to race. So exploration is also a key element, featuring a wide range of collectible items, interactive characters, single/multiplayer modes and, of course, time-honoured secrets for the dedicated player to ferret out.

And what is this end that Diddy and co. must reach? Well, the storyline has one Wizpig, a particularly unpleasant planet-hopping bully, dropping in uninvited on the home of Timber the tiger, a long-time friend of Diddy Kong. And where should Timber’s parents be but away on their summer break – visiting the Kongs, no less – so it’s left to Timber and friends to rally round, recruit as many helping hands as possible, and strike out on a crusade to evict the spiteful pig before it’s too late. Fortunately they’ve got a powerful ally in the form of Taj, the Genie of the mountain, who’s not too impressed at being rudely awoken and left homeless by Wizpig’s intrusion…

Great effort has been put into Diddy Kong Racing to make it as enjoyable and long-lasting an experience as possible in any and all of its gameplay modes. At least four diverse worlds, each featuring four racetracks, two boss confrontations and a special Challenge arena, are there to be explored – and that, naturally, is just the beginning. You can embark on a search for hidden areas, shave milliseconds off your best lap in Time Trial mode, throw down the gauntlet to your friends in a head-to-head four-player battle or co-operate with them in the Adventure… Just pick your champion from the ranks of established or upcoming Rare celebrities and join the race!