Trivia / Diddy Kong Racing

• Better Export for You: The US release of the game's soundtrack album featured a CD die-cut in the shape of Diddy Kong's head. While Nintendo of America saw novelty appeal in the idea, the non-circular shape of the disc meant that it would only work in top-loading CD players, sometimes even damaging them due to the uneven weight distribution making the CD too wobbly. The Japanese and German releases, meanwhile, use conventional 12 cm circular CDs.
• Christmas Rushed: The game got this treatment, but for good reason. After Banjo-Kazooie got delayed to summer 1998, Rare had to have some triple-A game to put out around the Christmas 1997 season, and the game they had at that point (which was miles away from the game you're reading an article about now) was revised extensively and ultimately published around mid-to-late November. According to general consensus, the rushed state of the game did very little to hinder the actual playing experience.
• Early Draft Tie-In: The N64 version features the original, kid friendly, and much younger Conker from when his game was meant to be a kid-friendly platformer. This version of Conker also appeared in Conker's Pocket Tales, a kid-friendly spin-off released on the Game Boy Color in 1999.
• Executive Meddling: The addition of Diddy Kong was apparently suggested by Shigeru Miyamoto during the game's early development. The team didn't like the idea at first, but have since stated that it was a good addition.
• Exiled from Continuity: Banjo and Conker for the DS remake, due to their franchises continuing on Microsoft systems. Tiptup is left intact though, likely because his presence in the Banjo series is minor enough that they didn't really care.
• First Appearance: Both Banjo and Conker first appeared in this game before appearing in their own games. Tiptup was also introduced in this game before appearing in the Banjo-Kazooie series.
• Follow the Leader: As a Kart Racer, this game follows Mario Kart, right down to having eight racers per race and pickups on the track. Unlike Mario Kart 64, which excluded the secondary pickup that increased top speed (coins) in the jump to 3D, Diddy Kong Racing has bananas that can be collected during a race and serve a similar purpose.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: As the sole Rare game with both Nintendo-owned and Microsoft-owned characters in it, the Nintendo 64 version of the game hasn't seen a digital re-release by either company. While the DS remake exists, it never got digital version on the Wii U. However, given that other Microsoft owned Nintendo 64 games like Goldeneye (which had way more legal problems behind the scenes) Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini and Blast Corps had been re-released on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, it could be just a matter of time before it sees a re-release to.
• No Export for You: The DS version wasn't translated into Japanese.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game started in development as RC Pro-Am 64 and was planned to have the regular characters aside from Diddy Kong and Conker. Timber the Tiger was going to be the main header character instead of Diddy.
    • A much earlier concept was a real-time strategy game with a caveman time travel theme, The idea was scrapped but some prehistoric characters were later used for this game.
    • Another scrapped idea before the kart racing Genre Shift was an adventure game called "Wild Cartoon Kingdom".
  • The game was going to have three-wheel motorcycles instead of regular karts... and plains... and boats.
  • There were two characters scrapped from the game such as a crab and donkey duo, and a wooly mammoth character that was a leftover from the RTS stage of development.
  • There was supposed to be a GameCube sequel to Diddy Kong Racing called Donkey Kong Racing, which judging by the only remnants of its existence - an E3 2001 trailer - would had taken place in the Donkey Kong series with Donkey Kong characters riding various animals as vehicles. If the original game's Sequel Hook ending is to be taken into consideration, Wizpig may had also returned. However, the game was canned due to Rare being bought out by Microsoft, and presumably as a result of the buyout, the To Be Continued card is removed in the remake.
  • According to a promo video, Krunch was originally named "Krash".
  • Pipsy was retooled from a scrapped concept called Astro Mouse.
  • Remnants of several unused tracks have been found in the game's code. What they would have been used for is unknown, since all that remains of them is their general layout.
  • There are a few unused songs in the game, too. One of them is a fully cut song intended for Crescent Island — it's track 12 in the Sound Test. The other is an unused channel for the character select theme, using the sitar instrument associated with Taj. Since the character select theme is a Variable Mix that changes for each racer, it's possible that Taj was intended to be playable in the N64 version at some point, like he is in the Nintendo DS remake.
  • Some Dummied Out voice clips in the DS version suggest that it might have had Yoshi as an unlockable character at one point.
  • The music files for the Nintendo DS version list Stardust Alley's music as "Spaceport Alpha", intending that Spaceport Alpha was possibly going to use it's original arrangement with the new arrangement it ended up receiving being given to Spacedust Alley instead.
• Word of God: Bumper the Badger was arrested around the release of Conker: Live & Reloaded for unspecified crimes [1]. He was placed on parole sometime between 2012 [2] and 2021[3], with Bumper being "superficially apologetic" about his actions.
• Working Title: "Adventure Racers" and (as mentioned above) "Wild Cartoon Kingdom".

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