

This number indicates how many balloons you need to have acquired before you can enter that specific race. Upon entering a hub, you'll see large doors with a numbered balloon on them. The island is large, but it's mostly devoid of things to do, and it gets tedious driving from one hub to the next. Rather than letting you choose a series of races from a menu, Diddy Kong's races are located in themed hubs (snow, dinosaur, beach, volcano.), which are spread across the island. The premise is completely absurd and doesn't make a lick of sense, but outside of the opening cutscene, there's thankfully very little story exposition. Now you know why most racing games don't have a story. Once you're on the island, a flamboyant purple elephant-genie named Taj guides you through the basics and sends you on your racing quest. Nobody tells Diddy his plan doesn't make any sense, so they head off to save the day. Because living on an island ruled by an evil giant pig stinks, the animals send a letter to Diddy Kong, who quickly rounds up his friends so that they can race each other and then race and defeat Wizpig. It seems that a giant evil pig named Wizpig has taken control of an island that is inhabited by cute little talking animals. Unlike most racing games, Diddy Kong Racing has a story to explain why you're racing.

There are eight characters playable from the outset: Diddy Kong, Pipsy, TipTup, Dixie Kong, Timber, Tiny Kong, Bumper, and Krunch Banjo and Conker, who were in the original, are nowhere to be found. If you didn't like the original game, there's nothing here that's going to change your mind, and it's certainly no threat to the Mario Kart series, but it is a solid racing game that, good or bad, has enough content to keep you busy for a very long time.īut I don't want to spin the wheel to boost! The core game is mostly unchanged, but there are new race modes, new characters, touch-screen controls, and even online multiplayer. Almost 10 years later, the game is back, having gotten a touch-up similar to what Nintendo did with Super Mario 64 DS. Diddy Kong Racing was released to mixed reviews on the Nintendo 64 in 1997. While Rare hasn't been making any games for Nintendo's home consoles, it has released a handful of games for the Game Boy Advance, and now, the Nintendo DS, as well. Many of Rare's fans were deeply saddened when Microsoft purchased the company in 2002, thinking that no more Rare games would ever find their way onto a Nintendo system again.
