RR Week: Diddy Kong Racing

[Double]

Intro: Shortly after Mario Kart 64 came out, another kart racer also came out on the N64 designed by Rare Ware, this was Diddy Kong Racing. While the less known of the two, it did things that not only Mario Kart 64 didn't but to this day things the Mario Kart series as a whole hasn't. The game was eventually re-released on the DS where it sucked but we aren't talking about that. This game was also the genesis of RR week as I ended up playing the game for the first time in years earlier this year.

Gameplay: The game is fairly different then most racing games as it has an Adventure Mode where you have a hub and select what races you want to do. Completing races yields Balloons which behave like Mario 64's stars and let you access new areas. After you beat all the tracks in an area you can race against a boss. After beating him you can go redo the tracks under a new condition, the Silver Coin Challenge. In this you must collect 8 silver coins along the track AND finish in first place. Many of them are actually used to show shortcuts which is cool, on the harder difficulty though they REALLY put a few out of the way. After this you get to refight the boss again, repeat for each of the four worlds and the games final boss. A fifth area can be accessed by beating Trophy Races, which behave like Grand Prix modes of other racing games and by this point should be insanely easy for you to do. After beating the mode entirely a more difficult mirrored version of the mode Adventure Two is unlocked. Adventure is usually one player but with a special code it can played Co-Op, or as I like to call it, one person wins while the other camps Red Balloons and shoots everyone elses ass down.

On the subject of balloons, DKR uses a different weapon system than Mario Kart. Whereas Mario Karts weapons are stacked against the person in first, every player has access to the same weapons regardless of place in DKR. The game does this by splitting the various weapons into five categories, and placing balloons for them throughout the courses.
-Red: Missiles
-Green: Shit to lay behind you like oil slicks and mines.
-Blue: Boosts
-Yellow and Purple: Shields
-Rainbow: Magnets
You can also upgrade your power by hitting the same color balloon in a row, up to a 3rd level (or indefinitely in the red case). An example is the magnet power up, which the first two levels simply pull you towards the next racer in line, the 3rd power up slings the person in front of you backwards, for much hilarity. Each level also has "Zippers" which can be used to temporarily increase your speed, and bananas which increase your acceleration up to ten.

The game also has 4 special challenges, one per each of the first four worlds. To even GET to them you must find a key somewhere in that worlds tracks, these range from a key on a simple ledge to one where you must rocket yourself up a drawbridge going the wrong way. These challenges are varied with two like battle mode in Mario Kart 64 and two that are item grabbing challenges. While these are fun and required for the Adventure Mode they seem underutilized and more would have been welcomed.

The game has most of the standard racing character cliques, a fast character with really bad turning and piss poor acceleration, a character with really slow speed but great turning etc. The game also feature two hidden characters that sort of break the standard rules, Drumstick who has fast speed and fast acceleration but steers like a brick, and another that is discussed in this reviews difficulty section. The game also uses three vehicles: a standard kart, a plane, and a hovercraft. This is fairly interesting from a balance standpoint as some characters will be good in one but horrible in the others or something like that. It's also interesting from a multiplayer standpoint as you can have different characters in different vehicles, sadly there is little difference between a hover craft and a car though.

The game also has a tracks mode wherein you can select any of the games twenty regular tracks and race on them, or do time trial or play multiplayer. You can also choose to race these like a traditional grand prix or play the aforementioned 4 challenge levels, which are really only fun in multiplayer. Also about multiplayer, the game has several various cheats that mess around with the way the game works in this setting, such as making all the balloons one color (do it with Magnet, hilarity ensues) or alter the AI, or even the way the bananas work.
19 out of 20

Music: DKR's music is pretty good, which should be expected as David Wise, the guy who did the music in the first two DKC games, did this games music. Not every stage has a unique theme though, in each world there seem to be three tracks with the third being used in multiple tracks. The game also makes use of tracks that change depending on location (something the Banjo series and DK64 would also do), but is fairly underutilized limited to the hub of adventure mode and Boulder Canyon. My only real complaint about the games soundtrack is Whale Bay, that music just sucks balls. Also I think some of the music that plays in the snowy levels sounds like the Brady Bunch theme...
11 out of 15

Translation: The game was actually released in Japan around the same time, so I'll count it here. First of all, the game uses largely voice acting instead of text but subtitles can be used in their place. The subtitles are fine and most of the voices are ok (with the exception of a few boss characters ESPECIALLY THE WALRUS). Also if you turn off subtitles when the elephant shows up to give you a hint after the first boss nothing happens, so it just looks really creepy when he says "I'VE GOT SOMETHING SPECIAL FOR YOU" and it just shows a screen of him starring into your soul while he moves his hands. No really that gave me nightmares as a kid.
9 out of 10

Length: The game has twenty regular tracks, as opposed to 16 in Mario Kart 64. The game also has boss battles (and rematches for the first four), and the special T.T. challenges. If that isn't long enough after beating the game you get to do it again but harder and mirrored. After that there is still time trial and the games tracks mode where you can do multiplayer or just screw around with the games cheats, overall A LOT better than that other kart game on the 64.
15 out of 15

Rehash Factor: Well besides the fact that Diddy is in the game and Krunch is modeled after a Kritter from Donkey Kong Country there isn't much from the Donkey Kong series reused here. Rare however was moderately lazy and reused characters from other series Banjo from Banjo-Kazzoie and Conker from... well at this time his game was still supposed to be a normal platformer.
15 out of 15

Plot: A evil space travelling pig has come to a racing island to take over it and won't admit defeat until his minions have all been defeated in a race twice an...

I'm sorry as much as I like the game this has to be the most absurd plot ever. No really I don't care if it's a racing game the plot hurts my brain.
0 out of 10

Difficulty: The game's Adventure mode is quite easy, but as mentioned before Adventure 2 is a bit harder as the CPU is better and the Silver Coins tend to be in douchey places. But even then the game can be fairly easy as long as you use the right character (see below). The CPU also does not seem to rubberband like in the Mario Kart series, i.e. if you go insanely fast they aren't going to suddenly start going faster. There is a code however that makes the AI more difficult.

Which brings us to the games second hidden character, one many people seem to go without unlocking T.T. the guy who runs the time trial is also a character and is insanely broken (he has the highest speed and acceleration in the game with average turning). To unlock T.T. you must beat his course ghost on every stage in the game. When I was a kid I thought this was insanely hard. Eventually I did it after several weeks and lost my copy about a year after that. Earlier this year someone showed up here with a copy that hadn't unlocked T.T.. I decided for giggles to try and unlock T.T. again and managed to do it about 2 hours, without really trying. So T.T. really isn't that hard you just have to have know the courses and use the right character for that course* and eventually by trial and error you WILL get it.
13 out of 15

*Car = Tip-Tup
Hovercraft = Timber
Plane = Timber, or if you're feeling bold Drumstick

Total: 82/100 = 82 %

DKR is a fairly decent racing game and arguably better than most of the ones released on the N64. Even more arguably it's better than most the racing games that come out NOW. The only complaints one could easily draw is the CPU isn't as challenging in other games and the weapon system can make the game a bit easy after the player remembers where the balloons are. However the games adventure mode is also a good thing about it, and something to be frank you don't seem to see in racing games.

Positive: It beats the pants of Mario Kart 64. YEAH YOU HEARD ME. TAKE YOUR SPINY SHELLS AND SHOVE THEM UP YOUR A...

Negative: I'VE GOT SOMETHING SPECIAL FOR YOU