Diddy Kong Racing DS

"Enjoyable At First"

Diddy Kong Racing was originally a game for the Nintendo 64. Unfortunately, many overlooked it for the likes of Mario Kart 64 and F-Zero X. Now, however, it's been re-made for the DS. But how does it fare?

Let's start with the basics. The characters are well-animated and the music is very well done, and the course variety is great. The game also offers you three different types of vehicles, these being a car for general racing, a hovercraft for water racing, and a plane for aerial racing. A variety of characters are available, with a few requiring that you complete certain tasks before you can use them in races. The controls are very good, and the game is generally user-friendly.

The main game generally follows a flow whereby you win a race on each track in an area, and challenge a boss. You then return to each track in the area to win a stylus challenge, before facing a harder version of the area's boss. Then, you play a tournament in which you race through all four of the area's tracks in a row, before challenging the boss to a Touch Screen challenge. Unfortunately, controlling your vehicle with the Touch Screen can be a very frustrating event. Still, with enough practice, you can defeat them all.

Throughout the game, there are various extras to unlock. You can buy upgrades for your vehicles, new tracks and a lot of other things, including a function which allows you to record your own voices for the game. When you finish the game, you unlock a few more things. One is the custom track creator, which we'll get to later. You also unlock a new version of the main game mode, in which you play through the entire thing again, except that the tracks are mirrored. The maps aren't.

However, it's when you've completed the game that you quickly start running out of things to do.

The track creator sees you drawing a track using your stylus and racing through it. While this sounds great, it's very limited. All the tracks have the same background and texture, and the hills are generated by the game - you can only specify how "hilly" you want the track to be in general. You can only race it against an AI-controlled T.T., who has a habit of not only being generally slow, but also falling off the track. In fact, this is understandable, because the track never changes its width throughout the race, and the narrow tracks, raised edges and blind hills will cause you to do the same a lot. Even the A.I. falls off frequently during the victory lap! Still, no matter how often you fall off, you may often get more than a lap ahead of T.T.

While it's fun while it lasts, Diddy Kong Racing DS isn't really the kind of game which you'd come back to for a quick blast. It's one of those games which you can only fully enjoy if you do a lot of it at once. It's not a bad game at all - perhaps the best racer on the DS at the moment - but it's more for those who are willing to put a lot of effort into it than those who want to be able to play for five minutes.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/22/07