Diddy Kong Racing

Diddy Kong Racing didn't start as a Donkey Kong game. After Killer Instinct 2, part of a team at Rare began a Nintendo 64 racer that went through several identities. It was a Disney World-inspired adventure called Wild Cartoon Kingdom, then Adventure Racers, and by June 1997 Pro-Am 64, an unrelated follow-up to the NES game R.C. Pro-Am, starring Kevin Bayliss's character Timber the Tiger. Then Banjo-Kazooie slipped to summer 1998, and Rare wanted a big game for Christmas 1997. Some at Rare felt Pro-Am 64 didn't have a strong enough brand to sell it, so the studio rebuilt it around Diddy Kong. A team of 14 people finished it, with the goal, Lee Musgrave said, of running as fast as Mario Kart 64 while using full 3D characters.

The finished game had a story. The wizard pig Wizpig arrives from space to take over Timber's island, and the islanders have to beat him in a series of races. Diddy leads a roster of ten that included Timber, Krunch the Kremling, Conker the Squirrel and Banjo the bear, who showed up here months before his own game. Every racer could drive a car, a hovercraft or a plane. Colored balloons gave you missiles, shields, boosts, traps or a magnet. Adventure Mode connected five worlds, from Dino Domain to Future Fun Land, through an open hub, with boss races and amulet pieces to collect. Before any of that, the Rare logo played over a clip of children laughing, a stock sound effect fans now call "the Diddy laugh."

The game came out in November 1997, and when most of Nintendo's other holiday games slipped into 1998, it became the N64's big Christmas release. Most of Nintendo's $200 million ad budget for the year went to it. It sold a million copies in the U.S. in three weeks and became the console's eighth best-selling game. EGM's Dan Hsu said it "beats Mario Kart 64 in every department," and Edge called its single-player "everything Mario Kart 64 should have been." GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann said it was far better than Mario Kart but too repetitive. It won Console Racing Game of the Year at the 1998 Interactive Achievement Awards, beating Mario Kart 64. A GameCube sequel, Donkey Kong Racing, was canceled in 2002, a month before Microsoft bought Rare, and the original got a Nintendo DS remake in 2007.