There are three vehicles available: cars, hovercrafts, and airplanes. Each track requires a different vehicle. Tracks can only be accessed through the acquisition of golden balloons by winning races or completing tasks. Once each race in an area is completed, a bonus challenge will be accessed, such as racing a triceratops. To access each world and its tracks, you must drive, fly, or sail to the desired area.
Playable Characters[]
Eight characters are available at the start of the game. Two additional characters can be unlocked by completing certain objectives in adventure mode.
Banjo and Conker could not be transferred to the DS remake, Diddy Kong Racing DS, because Microsoft had bought rights to Rare before the game was made.
The characters Banjo the Bear and Conker the Squirrel both made their debut in this video game. Banjo would become the star of the family friendly Nintendo 64 adventures Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, both published by Nintendo. Banjo also stars in the Game Boy Advance game Banjo-Pilot, which is reminiscent of the plane flying action seen in Diddy Kong Racing. Meanwhile, Conker would appear in the Game Boy Color game Conker's Pocket Tales, and subsequently in the mature rated Conker's Bad Fur Day. Diddy Kong Racing would later be remade for the Nintendo DS under the name Diddy Kong Racing DS.
Diddy Kong Racing is one of the most popular N64 games not available on the Virtual Console. Only Diddy Kong and Krunch are Nintendo characters; every other character in the game is now property of Microsoft and Rare. But re-releasing the game is a non-issue, as Nintendo and Microsoft have been able to negotiate on Rare IP before, such as with Donkey Kong 64, which contains JetPac. Every time Nintendo wishes to re-release the SNES Donkey Kong Country titles, they have to approach Rare for a few checkpoints and minor approvals before doing so.
