"Just before Diddy Kong Racing, there was a month's worth of work on a strategy game that I did with Chris Stamper, but that was in the style of Command & Conquer and not related" “We’d just finished Killer Instinct II, and while some of the team went off to work on Killer Instinct Gold for the N64, we tried to start making a racing game”. “Right back at the beginning it was just me and Chris Stamper ”, Musgrave tells us. He gave us an insight into the game’s fascinating development, as well as what it was like to work at Rare during what many consider to be the studio’s golden era.įor a game that went on to sell an impressive number of copies, not to mention achieve near-universal critical acclaim, Diddy Kong Racing’s origins were remarkably humble. We caught up with Lee Musgrave, who worked as a 3D artist on Diddy Kong Racing and a number of other Rare titles before eventually going to become the studio’s Head of Art. When it was released in late 1997, it was a huge hit for a Rare. And in many ways, Diddy Kong Racing is most certainly the better game it added a host of new and engaging gameplay features while also offering much tighter controls. Fitting neatly into the kart racing genre, Diddy Kong Racing was the first real contender to challenge Nintendo’s dominance over the kart racing genre with Mario Kart 64. This game was not only huge for Diddy Kong’s street cred, but it was also a massive deal for Rare. Despite being a wholly new creation in 1994, Diddy Kong quickly became a popular Nintendo character, taking the lead role in 1995’s Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest before finally getting a game to truly call his own in 1997: Diddy Kong Racing. One of the most noticeable ways in which it did this was by creating a host of new characters, the most notable of which was Diddy Kong. When developing the original Donkey Kong Country series, the gang at Rare not only worked hard to make great use of the franchise, but it also used it as an opportunity to leave its own mark. During the 1990s, the British development studio played a crucial role in not only keeping DK fresh and at the forefront of gamers’ minds, but also in shaping the entire future of the franchise Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, for example, is very clearly inspired by the impressive legacy that Rare created. Of course, no examination of Kong’s history would be complete without taking a closer look at Rare’s involvement with the franchise. Donkey Kong has had a long and vibrant history on the video game scene.
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