Diddy Kong Racing featured two characters that would go on to have their own games, Banjo the Bear in Banjo-Kazooie, and Conker the Squirrel in Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Will we ever see another version of Diddy Kong Racing, aside from the DS remake in 2007? We’ll just have to wait and see.īut what about you? Did you play Diddy Kong Racing? What are your favorite racing memories? Let us know in the comments, but first check out this commercial to get you in the spirit: And to top it off, there was a snazzy adventure mode about the group of racers working together to defeat the evil Wizpig.įor many, Diddy Kong Racing was a much more satisfying game than Mario Kart 64, and while Diddy Kong himself has stood the test of time (he was most recently featured in the Nintendo Switch game Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze ), we never did get a sequel to this beloved N64 game. Not only could you race around in the typical kart, but you also had the choice of zooming past your friends in a hovercraft or an airplane. But it wasn’t just because of advertising that Diddy Kong Racing was a success, it was also because the game was innovative and fun. But they managed to do it, and with the full marketing power of Nintendo behind the game now that it was their only 1997 holiday release, Diddy Kong Racing did gangbusters. Now that Rare had settled on Diddy Kong, it was time to change up the game’s visuals and story, which the team had less than six months to do to meet their deadlines. But, the Banjo-Kazooie team wanted to work on their game more so that it would measure up to the behemoth that was Super Mario 64. 
At the time, the N64 game that was meant to anchor the 1997 holiday season was Rare’s own Banjo-Kazooie. So now you’re saying to yourself - wait a minute, I’ve never heard of an RC Pro-Am game for the N64, how did this become Diddy Kong Racing? Well! While the team quickly developed the racing game they internally called Pro-Am 64, even creating new characters and fully 3D models - things took a sudden turn in July 1997.
That’s right, while many might think Diddy Kong Racing was a knock-off of Mario Kart, Rare’s RC Pro-Am is actually considered a precursor to Mario Kart! Oh what tangled webs we weave.
But the first Mario Kart, Super Mario Kart, debuted in 1992 on the Super Nintendo, years after RC Pro-Am. Wait a minute - racing plus combat, that sounds similar to Mario Kart. What made the original RC Pro-Am series so innovative when it came out during these “olden” NES days of 1988 was that it was not just a competitive racing game - RC Pro-Am also featured vehicular combat.
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