Diddy Kong Racing

Following the success of Mario Kart 64 from Nintendo, Rare decided to follow suit with their own racing game. While the game was better than Mario Kart in some areas, it fell short in others.

Diddy Kong and his friends gather on Timber Island, which has been taken over by the evil alien Wizpig. Now they must engage the fiend a racing competition with assistance from the Elephant genie, Taj and TT the stopwatch.

There's eight different racers to choose from at the start with their own varying top speed, handling, and acceleration. They include Diddy, of course, and the soon to be famous Banjo Bear and, to a lesser extent, Conker T. Squirrel. There's also two unlockable characters, TT and Drumstick, but unlocking them is very difficult. Plus, you get to drive not only a car, but a hovercraft, and airplane as well.

DKR had better single player mode than Mario Kart with a stronger story in place. The island hub world is split into four different worlds: Dino Domain, Sherbert Island, Snowflake Mountain, and Dragon Forest. Each world has a guardian that serves as a boss your required to beat before proceeding to the next one. As opposed to base races against the other CPUs, the boss races and silver coin challenges were tough, and the first race against Wizpig is a nightmare unless you know a certain trick. But personally, I enjoyed the challenge.

Thanks to legendary game composer David Wise, the music was top-notch, from the arid Indian-esque Hot Top Volcanos, futuristic and triumphant sounding Spaceport Alphas, and Wizpig's diabolical and intense final boss theme.

Like Mario Kart 64, there's powerups to use against opponents during races but they are limited to speed boosts, shields, and missiles. The controls and handling felt smoother, but the racetracks felt far simpler and more linear than Mario Karts with fewer hazards, which took some of the racing thrill out for me.

At the end of the day, this was a great racing game, but a bit too cheery for my taste, and I feel it was just a brighter and softer version of Mario Kart, which I enjoyed more as far as multiplayer went.