Play Diddy Kong Racing Online
Release year: 1997 | Players: 1 player / multiplayer | Developed by Rare
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Game Review
Being a gamer in the late 90s meant that you were around when the kart-racing genre went through its golden age. This period of excellent kart-racer was obviously brought about by the monumental success of Mario Kart 64 in 1996, but it wasn’t long before other popular properties began to jump aboard the hype train (or hype kart?). The other great kart racers of this era included Crash Team Racing and Lego Racers, but fans of the genre still swear by the innovative and whimsical gameplay of 1997’s Diddy Kong Racing.
This gem from Rare introduced some exciting new ideas to the racing genre while delivering a colorful and adrenaline-pumping gameplay experience that fans are still raving about today. But how well does Diddy Kong Racing hold up 25 years later? Is this game still one of the crowning jewels of the kart-racing genre, or have the years been less than kind to its enduring legacy?
Perhaps the main point of contention about the quality of Diddy Kong Racing is how much or how little the game celebrates its source material. Despite the name and its main character being Diddy Kong, the game itself has very little to do with the Donkey Kong series. This is in sharp contrast to Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing, which go out of their way to fill their character roster, tracks, and items with references to their respective series.
When you take a look at Diddy Kong Racing’s unusual development, it starts to become clear why this was the case. The game wasn’t originally meant to be a Donkey Kong spinoff, nor was it even meant to be a kart-racer at first. As such, the finished product can hardly be described as a worthy spinoff of the Donkey Kong series, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t value to be found here. As with all games developed by Rare in this era, Diddy Kong Racing has a great deal of polish and heart put into its design and aesthetics. And even if the character roster lacks any of Diddy Kong’s primate friends, the inclusion of Banjo and Conker are genius appetizers for some of Rare’s upcoming projects on the Nintendo 64.
But any kart-racer worth its salt lives or dies by its gameplay experience, and fortunately, Diddy Kong Racing not only excels but innovates in this department. That is because each of the various tracks in the game can be raced on with either a car, a hovercraft, or an airplane. Racing in a car offers the most balanced experienced. Taking to the tracks in a hovercraft allows you to quickly skim over water and sand but lacks tight maneuverability. And flying around in an airplane offers the greatest amount of freedom, albeit at the slowest speed. Having the option to choose your vehicle type affords the player an incredible amount of flexibility in their playstyle that sets the game apart from others of its time.
The items are also a lot of fun to use – falling into the traditional offensive, defensive, and speed boost variants. The tracks cover diverse environments while all being tied together with the cohesive look of Timber’s Island – the game’s setting. And the different modes offer both a satisfying single-player experience and a bombastically fun multiplayer romp with up to three other friends.
Diddy Kong Racing may not be the absolute pinnacle of kart-racing games, but its interesting blend of different Rare franchises, flexible gameplay experience, and an undeniable level of polish means that it well and truly deserves its place amongst the classic of the genre.
