Diddy Kong Racing
Reviewed by Scott McCall
What a year (1997) this has been for Rare. We got Blast Corps,
the addictive action/puzzle game, back in March. Then we got
the incredible GoldenEye 007 in August. Now we get Diddy Kong
Racing in November. Diddy Kong Racing further exemplifies
Nintendo and Rare's commitment to quality. This is the latest
triple-A title that not only shows off the N64's capabilities
but proves that developers can still make games with more
substance than flash.
Diddy Kong Racing is actually the first game that Rare is
publishing and Nintendo is exclusively distributing. Despite
this solely being a Rare game, I think it's safe to assume
Nintendo is playing a big part in it with all the Nintendo
logos plastered throughout the game, the fact that all
customer support will be taken care of by Nintendo of
America, and because Nintendo is handling all of the advertising
and promotion.
But, of course, Diddy Kong Racing wasn't supposed to appear
this year, anyway. If it weren't for the delays of Banjo-Kazooie,
Yoshi's Story, MLB Featuring Ken Griffey Jr., and Conker's Quest, we
probably would have never heard of Diddy Kong Racing until well
into 1998. Does this mean the game feels rushed or unpolished?
Absolutely not. In fact, the only area I can see Rare possibly
improving is the fair amount of clipping in the game. But that's
a moot point.
So you've heard that Diddy Kong Racing is a "racing/adventure"
game. What does that mean? Well, racing is definitely the main
attraction here, but there are quite a few adventure aspects,
too. For example, all worlds and tracks are accessed via the
"Central Area," which is setup just like Super Mario 64. Instead
of walking around, though, you drive around. The default vehicle
you have is a car, but it can be changed to a plane or hovercraft
as well. Plus, there is a background story to the game and there
are different objectives you have to complete on the tracks.
When you start the game for the first time, you'll meet Taj, an
elephant with an Arabian accent. He helps by giving you hints,
switching your vehicle, presenting you with challenges, and more.
In order to access the various worlds in Diddy Kong Racing, you
are required to have a certain number of Golden Balloons. If
you don't have enough Golden Balloons, or if you didn't complete
a certain task, then you cannot enter the level. You may realize
that this is just like Super Mario 64 in that you had to have a
certain number of Power Stars to enter a level. Like Super Mario 64,
Diddy Kong Racing is also a non-linear game. If you're having
trouble with one level, then you might want to try another
level -- that is, assuming you have enough Golden Balloons to enter it.
From the Central Area, which is where you always start each
time you turn on the game, you can ride to different worlds.
There are four different worlds (along with a fifth, hidden one)
to race in: Dino Domain, Snowflake Mountain, Sherbet Island
and Dragon Forest. Once you enter the door to go to one of these
worlds, you're put in the "lobby" of that world. From there, you
can ride up to the different doors. In each world, there are four
main racing levels, a boss door, a challenge area, and a trophy race.
Let's look at what needs to be done in each world. Your first
assignment is always to get a first place on all four main
racing levels in that world. Beating each individual racing level
will net you one more Golden Balloon. Once you do that, you
can challenge a boss to a one-on-one race. If you beat the
boss, then that opens up the Silver Coin Challenge. For this,
you go back and race through those same four levels again. This
time, though, you must get eight silver coins before you finish
the three laps and you must finish in first place. If you finish
the Silver Coin Challenge on all four boards, then you can face
the boss a second time. He is much tougher the second time
around, however. Beating him the second time will give you a
piece of the Wizpig amulet. It will also open up the Trophy Race.
The Trophy Race is set up just like Mario Kart's Grand Prix mode,
except the points are divided up a different way (9 for first, 7
for second, 5 for third, 3 for fourth, and 1 for fifth). After going
through all four racing levels again, if you come out on top, then you
win the Gold Trophy of Champions for that world. But wait, there's
still one more thing. If you can find the hidden key in one of the
four main racing levels in that world, then you can open up a
Challenge area. The Challenge area is Diddy Kong Racing's version
of the Battle Mode (more on this later). Beating the Challenge area
will give you a piece of the T.T. amulet.
Now you know how Diddy Kong Racing gets its replay value and
challenge, as all of the above tasks must be completed on all the
worlds. Even though it seems like an artificial way to increase
the game's length, it really is insanely fun to play through all
those levels multiple times. And as you can probably imagine,
it takes several hours just to complete all the tasks in one world.
Diddy Kong Racing throws three different vehicles your way: the
car, the plane and the hovercraft. Until you complete the Silver
Coin Challenge on a board, you are forced to use the designated
vehicle in the race. You start off with the car on the first several
ones, then you're forced to use the plane on the fourth level of the
first world. Later on you'll have to use the hovercraft. The game
does mix up the vehicles from level to level quite nicely. Naturally,
however, some levels do limit the vehicles you can choose. For
example, you can't use a car on a level that's solely on water. Or
you might not be able to use the plane if it would be too easy to
take a massive shortcut. In the "Tracks" mode, which is Diddy
Kong Racing's Match Race, you and other human opponents can even
use completely different vehicles. One might use the car while
the other uses the plane. If you have the option to choose in the
Adventure mode, then the computer opponents will use the same
vehicle that you pick.
Of course, you'll need someone to take control of those vehicles.
So here's a list of characters straight from the instruction booklet:
Timber the tiger
(medium acceleration, medium weight, good handling, medium top speed)
Pipsy the mouse
(high acceleration, light weight, excellent handling, medium top speed)
Diddy Kong the monkey
(medium acceleration, medium weight, good handling, medium top speed)
Banjo the bear
(low acceleration, heavy weight, good handling, high top speed)
Conker the squirrel
(medium acceleration, medium weight, good handling, medium top speed)
Bumper the badger
(medium acceleration, medium weight, good handling, medium top speed)
Tiptup the turtle
(high acceleration, light weight, excellent handling, medium top speed)
Krunch the kremling
(low acceleration, heavy weight, difficult handling, high top speed)
I use Tiptup and my friend uses Pipsy. We chose them because they're
similar to the original Mario Kart's duo of Toad and Koopa Troopa.
You might be wondering about the game's control now. First of all,
the control scheme cannot be configured, though I don't think it
needs to be. But I figured I'd mention it. Anyway, the Control Stick
is used to control your vehicle (sorry, no support for the Control
Pad). The A button is used to accelerate. The B button is used to
brake. Holding B and pressing back on the Control Stick will cause
you to go in reverse. The Z button is used to fire a weapon (a horn
will sound if you don't have one). The C group is only used to toggle
some on-screen indicators like speedometer, camera, etc. Finally,
the R button is used for a sharp turn. With the car, you can do a
power-slide by holding it down. However, your car does not hop
like the original Mario Kart. With the plane, press it twice
while holding left, right, up or down to do a roll or flip. And
with the hovercraft, pressing R will cause the boat to jump.
Also, using B and R in conjunction with each other will enable
you to do a super sharp turn or even a 180 if held down long enough.
Racing action in Diddy Kong Racing is decidedly similar to Super
Mario Kart and kind of different at the same time. First of all,
there are bananas on the road in Diddy Kong Racing that act just
like the coins in Super Mario Kart. Hallelujah! I was disappointed
when coins weren't included in Mario Kart 64. In Diddy Kong Racing,
picking up bananas, to a maximum of 10, will increase your overall
top speed. You can collect more than 10 bananas, but they won't
increase your speed beyond that. However, they will give you added
protection, as getting hit with a weapon will make you lose two bananas.
Another important part of Diddy Kong Racing's gameplay is the
zippers. While they disappeared like the coins in Mario Kart 64,
the zippers are back and more prevalent than ever in Diddy Kong
Racing. In fact, you almost have to hit every one on some levels
to catch up to or maintain first place. And, yes, Rare was intelligent
enough to include zippers at appropriate locations depending on
which vehicle you choose (zippers for the plane are in the air).
Now how about those weapons? In all honesty, this will be what
disappoints die-hard Mario Kart fanatics the most. Diddy Kong
Racing's weapon selection is a little on the lacking side, but it
does grow on you as you play the game more. There are five different
colored balloons. Different color balloons appear at many different
places on the track -- but they are not random. Sometimes they're
in a row with other colors and sometimes they're off to the side. What's
different in Diddy Kong Racing is that these Weapon Balloons can be
upgraded, becoming more powerful with each power-up, all the way
up to level three. To upgrade them, just keep the getting the same
colored balloon without picking up any other color. Here are the
weapons in the game:
The Yellow Balloon (yellow with purple stars) is a shield. Level one
is a short-lived shield that protects you. If you run into an opponent
while having it on, it will throw them off course a little. If you power
it up to level two or three, it just becomes more powerful and
even injures your opponent more!
The Red Balloon (red with yellow stars) will give you missiles. This
one is everyone's favorite. Level one offers you a single, unguided
missile. Level two offers you a single homing missile. It's fairly
intelligent but not quite as smart as Mario Kart 64's red shell.
Level three gives you 10 unguided missiles. The cool thing about
the level three Red Balloon is that you can be down to eight, six,
two, one missile -- whatever -- and if you pick up another Red Balloon,
then it will replenish your supply back to 10.
The Green Balloon (green with yellow stars) gives you the
droppers. Level one is an oil spill. Level two is a mine, which
will cause even more damage. Finally, level three is a bubble.
If an opponent touches it, they will be encased in it for several
seconds. The cool thing about the Green Balloon is that if you
are using the plane, then these droppers will be placed in the
air. And, yes, oil does float on water.
The Blue Balloon (blue with yellow stars) gives you speed boosts.
This is probably just about as useful as the Red Balloon. Level
one gives you a short boost and level two gives you an even
longer boost. But then there's level three. Not only does it give
you a longer boost still, but it makes a really, really cool loud sound.
The Rainbow Balloon (green, blue, red and yellow swirls) is a
magnet. It locks on to the nearest racer ahead of you and pulls
you up to their position. Level one is somewhat weak while level
two is slightly more powerful. Level three, however, will drag the
target back to you.
Wow. I think all got all of the background information out of the
way. Sorry for going overkill here, but I wanted to provide you with
as much information as possible about the Diddy Kong Racing
experience. I guess now it's time to move on to actual opinions....
From the moment I turned on Diddy Kong Racing, I was extremely
impressed with the game's visuals. Rare pioneered something
called "Real-Time Dynamic Animation." This technology is supposed
to consist of kinematic data rather than frame data. With frame
data, which is what all previous polygon games have used, there is
a specific set of motions programmed into the game. With kinematic
data, the code is supposed to be more generalized so that motion
can be altered, giving you a unique sequence...or something. I don't
know if I've seen this in the game or not, but the game sure looks
very good at any rate.
The Central Area from which you access the individual worlds,
much like Super Mario 64, looks fantastic. Everything is
anti-aliased, perspective corrected and all that good stuff. The actual
racing levels look pretty darn nice, too. If you're playing the game
in the one-player mode, there are seven other highly intelligent
racers on the track with you. Some of the levels in which you race
with the car might have huge polygons moving around, i.e., the first
level has a big dinosaur moving around on it. The plane levels
usually have huge polygon-based structures throughout the level.
And the hovercraft levels have some perpetually calculated wave
effects, just like Wave Race 64. At times they look even better
than the waves in Wave Race 64 because of the transparent nature
of the water.
The two-player mode looks just as good. There are few minor
changes to keep the frame rate at 30 frames per second, though.
For example, that huge brontosaurs is nowhere to be found and there
is only a total of six (two humans and four computer opponents)
vehicles on the track at once instead of eight. Although it was
slightly disappointing there were six racers instead of eight, hey,
I'm not complaining. It sure beats the hell out of those racers
(TGR, MRC) that don't even offer racing with the computer in the
two-player mode. The three- and four-player modes, which operate
just like Mario Kart 64's, lose a bit more detail, but it's still one
of smoothest multi-player games yet on the Nintendo 64.
Throughout the whole game, Rare shows itself off as the only
developer to seemingly offer fog-free action. That's right, you
won't see it here. You can see far off into the horizon in all gameplay
modes (OK, with the exception of maybe a cave in a boss level).
The only knock against Diddy Kong Racing's graphics is probably
the somewhat excessive amount of clipping. I mean, it's nowhere
near unbearable, but it's more than we're used to seeing in a 64-bit
game. But as I said earlier, I think Rare would have fixed a lot of
the clipping problems if it had more time.
Aurally, I must say that I am quite impressed with Diddy Kong
Racing. Let me start off by saying that pretty much all of the
voice, sound effects and music are more kiddie-like in nature, but
that sort of thing never bothered me. First, there is a tremendous
amount of speech in the game. Taj (the helpful elephant), T.T.
(overseer of Time Trial and game status) and all the bosses have
multiple sentences of speech. Rare tried to make each one sound
like what it looks like, but some of them come off sounding a bit
cheesy. All of the racers in the game also have a voice. But most
of their comments are mainly yelps, grunts, yippies, yahoos -- that
sort of thing. Each racer probably has more than a handful of those
types of comments.
Music in the game is kind of interesting. Considering the Mario Kart
games never exactly had good music, some of the tunes in Diddy
Kong Racing are pretty good. In fact, you might even notice that
a few have chants in them. Most of the music fits the level's
theme. So a haunted-type level will having haunting music,
while a level set in a volcano has almost tribal-like music. Most
of the levels, though, have the typically happy-go-lucky style of music.
Let me make one more comment about the sound. The game's sound
seems to have great stereo separation. As a matter of fact, I
wouldn't be surprised if the sound was in surround sound, especially
considering that two upcoming Rare games, Banjo-Kazooie and
Conker's Quest, will be in surround sound. Yet another fabulous
job by Rare, the only N64 developer who seems to be able to
eliminate fog and compose good background music.
Control in the game is generally pretty great. The car controls
just like you would hope, except for the fact that it doesn't
power-slide like the karts in Super Mario Kart. Oh well. The
plane has very good control, too, though my friend can't seem
to use it very well. However, I'm going to gripe about the hovercraft.
In my opinion, the control could use some tweaking. It's overly
difficult to keep it constantly moving around bends, in my
opinion. Nevertheless, I don't mind using it when I have to. In
fact, it gets quite wild using speed boost over those waves.
And now for the meat and potatoes -- gameplay. No, this is not
a Mario Kart clone. If this is a Mario Kart clone, then Sonic
the Hedgehog is a Mario clone, Mortal Kombat is a Street Fighter
clone, Xevious is a Galaga clone, and so on. There are similarities,
but it's too different to be generally lumped into a clone category.
Diddy Kong Racing's Adventure mode is just great. It's ridiculously
fun, quite lengthy, and pretty challenging. The amazing thing
about Diddy Kong Racing is that the computer racers do NOT cheat.
What a novel idea! It almost seems as if they can tell how good
you are and adjust to that. But if you don't think they're challenging
enough, then enter this code to make the computer intelligence
markedly more difficult (TIMETOLOSE).
It's too bad that Rare included a great idea as a cheat. Just enter
JOINTVENTURE as a Magic Code and two players can simultaneously
play the Adventure mode! This mode must have actually been more
than an afterthought, too. Here's how it works: Only one player can
be on the map screen (the Central Area, lobbies) at once. So they'll
have to choose which level you play and such. However, if you go to
a race and the other person wins, then they get control of the map screen.
When you play the Adventure mode simultaneously, remember that
there will be six total racers on a track instead of eight. The
objectives are all the same as in the one-player mode. The first
time through the tracks (you and your friend race simultaneously
against the computer opponents), one of you has to place first.
When facing the boss, only one person can race it at a time. If
you die, or if you press start and pick "Restart Race," then the
other player gets an opportunity to race the boss. With the Silver
Coin Challenge, your coins are not pooled together. One of you must
still collect all eight coins and finish first at the same time. What's
pretty cool is that the silver coins you need only appear on your
screen. Once my friend looked up at my screen and saw a coin that
he thought he needed. But as it turned out, he already got it (I didn't),
which meant it wasn't on his screen at that same part.
If you choose to pick "Tracks" instead of "Adventure," you can go
play any level that you opened up in the Adventure mode. If two
people are playing, then you can choose if you want a total of
two (you and a friend), four (two human and two AI) or six (two
human and four AI) racers on the track at once. You can also choose
the "Trophy Race" for each world to do it up Mario Kart GP style.
One nifty thing to note about the Tracks mode is that it keeps track
of your first, second, third and fourth place finishes. I thought it
was a nice touch that it kept track of third and fourth place finishes.
And what about Diddy Kong Racing's Battle Mode, which is referred
to as a "Challenge"? Sadly, it is not as good as Super Mario Kart
or Mario Kart 64. Again, there are a mere four areas to choose
from. While two of the levels are straight "be the last one alive"
type of stages, two of them offer actual challenges.
For example, the goal of Fire Mountain is to hatch three baby
dinosaurs before your opponents do. What you must do is fly down
to a center area, grab a egg (if there's one there), and drop it in your
designated nest. It will then be vulnerable in the nest for about
five seconds. During this time, your egg can be stolen, or you
might want to steal someone else's. If it's not stolen after that time,
it will count as one egg. Then you'll need to go down and grab another
one to put in your nest. There are also weapons around to take
care of would-be thieves.
The goal of Smokey Castle is to fill your treasure chest with 10
bananas before your opponents do. The bananas appear scattered
all around the course. You can carry two bananas at a time. Again,
there are weapons around and you can steal bananas before your
opponent puts them in his or her treasure chest.
The other two levels, Icicle Pyramid and Darkwater Beach, are
the "normal" Challenge areas. The way these two work is that
you have eight bananas to start off with. Each time you get hit you
lose two bananas. Once you have zero bananas, you're out of the
battle. (There's no ghost racer or bomb or anything.) Icicle Pyramid
is the best of the lot. You use the car in this one. There are multiple
levels to the pyramid, with single balloons scattered around.
Darkwater Beach is almost as good. It puts you in a hovercraft as
you race around a big lake with sand dunes, logs, and even a small
bridge and tunnel.
For obvious reasons, the weapon selection in the Challenge mode
is less than in the normal modes. Red Balloons can only be powered
up to level two (sorry, but you're not allowed to get the 10-missile,
level three power-up). The Green Balloons only give you mines (no
oil spills or bubbles). And the Yellow Balloon will only give you a
level two shield. Although this was obviously done to make the
Challenge mode fair, maybe the whole game just generally needs a
few more weapons?
Oh yeah, one more thing I should note about the Challenge mode
is that if you play it with two players, then two computer
opponents will join you! That's right. You can play against the
computer in the two-player Challenge mode! Or if you play it
with three players, then one computer opponent will join in.
And you can even play it by yourself (against three computer
opponents) in the one-player mode. The computer is actually
fairly intelligent as well.
Diddy Kong Racing is one of the best racing titles ever, one of
the best games of the year, and probably just one of the best
games of all-time. It's too early to tell how well it stacks up against
Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64. My gut feeling, however,
is that two-, three- and four-player racing won't be quite as
spectacular (needs more weapons and better Battle Mode arenas), but
it's easy to tell that the one-player mode beats the crap out of
the Mario Kart games. Do yourself a favor and get this game. It's
one of the few must-have titles out there -- especially for the N64.
Graphics: 4.6 out of 5
Sound: 4.4 out of 5
Control: 4.5 out of 5
Gameplay: 4.7 out of 5
Lastability: 4.7 out of 5
Overall: 4.6 out of 5