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Rare Details On Canceled Diddy Kong Racing Sequel
Diddy Kong Racing for the N64 was one of the better Mario Kart-clones of the era; Nintendo actually announced a sequel to the game during E3 2001. However, it never saw the light of day. Here's why.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze just released and Diddy Kong was recently confirmed to return to the next Super Smash Bros. It's been a big month for Diddy Kong. Too bad that the Diddy Kong Racing sequel got cancelled after Microsoft bought Rare in 2002. But is the story really that simple?
"The idea behind the game – which was Tim Stamper’s – was that the player wouldn't be constricted to just a single animal when racing," lead designer Lee Musgrave told Nintendo Life in a recent interview. “You would move between different-sized animals; bigger animals could smash through obstacles, while smaller ones were much more maneuverable.”
Under Microsoft's watch, Rare tried to continue the development of the game without the Nintendo license. “We tried to figure out what to do with it," says Musgrave, “We made a prototype version for Xbox, but because nothing else had been made up until this point, we essentially built it from scratch...We decided to try and make it a bit more like Diddy Kong Racing in terms of it being an adventure game. Over the course of the next 18 months or so, it went from being a track-based animal racer to a more open-world game with Tamagotchi-style features, in which nurturing your animal became a key mechanic.”
Unfortunately, the game never really came together and was ultimately cancelled so that Rare could focus on other projects. Hopefully someday Nintendo will resurrect the Diddy Kong racing brand, but Rare probably won't work on it.
[Source: NintendoLife via Destructoid]
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