Game Debate #192: Diddy Kong Racing

[Gloves | 11,801]

5 minutes ago, Sumez said:

How did you measure that?

The game doesn't feel close to 20 to me, but even then 15 is pretty damn unacceptable for a racing game  

The guy who made Project64 has a decompilation project for DKR as well as benchmarking tools.

[Sumez | 2,969]

Uh. Isn't that an emulatore though?

[Webhead123 | 684]

I've played about 5 minutes of DKR and found it...okay. The N64 era was not my favorite for racing games as-is, so I probably don't see myself visiting the game much beyond that.

River Raid has some special significance to me, so I'm hoping (although it seems unlikely) that we'll get to discuss that one.

[Brickman | 4,000]

18 minutes ago, fox said:

Another Kart Klone

It’s cool that you can race land, sea, and air.  But everything else about it feels really uninteresting from characters to weapons to tracks.

Adventure mode is a nice addition, but it is ruined with busy work filler like the silver coins challenge, which rehashes the same content just to pad things out.

Most kart racers do that. You've beaten 50cc now do 100cc! DKR tries to do something different.

I personally didn't mind it and found it to be something different, but I can see how some would find it tedious.

[wongojack | 217]

3 hours ago, Gloves said:

Oh and you're absolutely insane calling this game shovelware lol. It's a top 10 game for the console easily.

Well, I've never played it, so I'm judging it completely unfairly, and I'm going to take your word for it because I'll never play it.  It really looks like a cash grab jumping on the popularity of Donkey Kong Country and Mario Kart.

[Sumez | 2,969]

Nothing about it looks like a cash grab. Clearly a lot of work went into it. Too bad they didn't put more frames into it also :3 

[Mega Tank | 967]

13 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Nothing about it looks like a cash grab. Clearly a lot of work went into it. Too bad they didn't put more frames into it also :3 

Have you tried doing some research about your frame rate issue? People are entitled to their own opinion and can score a game whatever they want, but I really think you had a bad copy, maybe your system was crapping out or maybe you didn't get the hang of the controls. I don't ever remember having issues with this game, it was known it was a good second place to Mario Kart, but unplayable? Never.

[Hammerfestus | 3,867]

This game never made it past the lesser Mario kart impression for me.

[JamesRobot | 5,808]

Never gonna play it.  

[Rhuno | 108]

TIL Diddy Kong Racing is a fairly divisive title 

[The Count | 528]

Great game with some depth of vehicles and secrets. Perfect for couch 4-player or solo. The characters and environment are fun. Easy 8/10.

[Sumez | 2,969]

9 hours ago, Mega Tank said:

Have you tried doing some research about your frame rate issue? People are entitled to their own opinion and can score a game whatever they want, but I really think you had a bad copy, maybe your system was crapping out or maybe you didn't get the hang of the controls.

It's a N64 game, it runs at a low framerate even for the already low N64 standard. I don't know what I'd research outside of this. It's how the game is - when did you last try playing it?

[Brickman | 4,000]

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

It's a N64 game, it runs at a low framerate even for the already low N64 standard. I don't know what I'd research outside of this. It's how the game is - when did you last try playing it?

It’s an N64 game, no one is playing an N64 game and expecting some crazy perfect FPS 

The game runs fine, you make it sound like the game runs like we’re walking through Blight Town the whole game.

It has a consistent 18-20FPS. That’s good enough and sufficient to beat the game and all the bonus content. I’ve done it on original hardware when it was released and I’m pretty sure others here have too.

[Sumez | 2,969]

13 minutes ago, Brickman said:

It’s an N64 game, no one is playing an N64 game and expecting some crazy perfect FPS

Nah but a game that feels like it responds to your inputs and doesn't become harder to play due to the framerate still seems like a fair baseline

[Brickman | 4,000]

3 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Nah but a game that feels like it responds to your inputs and doesn't become harder to play due to the framerate still seems like a fair baseline

Nah it's fine, it's just you (and your "friend"  )

[OptOut | 8,889]

Lul peeps can't handle the fact it only takes the N64 20 frames to achieve what lesser systems can only accomplish with 60... You're literally cramming 3 times the awesomeness into every frame!

That's why they call it Ultra, baby! 

[fcgamer | 4,736]

13 hours ago, Hammerfestus said:

This game never made it past the lesser Mario kart impression for me.

Agreed.

[fcgamer | 4,736]

This game is terrible. Tried to get into it many times, put in the time, just not a very fun game.

[DefaultGen | 5,415]

Super Mario Kart runs at 60fps. How embarrassing that a next gen kart racer plays like Microsoft Powerpoint. It’s better than MK64 though, I love this game. There’s so much to explore and do and I remember some of it being pretty challenging like the bosses or Greenwood Village silver coins, but it’s possible I was just a dumb kid at the time. 8/10

[Gloves | 11,801]

14 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Super Mario Kart runs at 60fps. How embarrassing that a next gen kart racer plays like Microsoft Powerpoint. It’s better than MK64 though, I love this game. There’s so much to explore and do and I remember some of it being pretty challenging like the bosses or Greenwood Village silver coins, but it’s possible I was just a dumb kid at the time. 8/10

On Adventure 2 it's not just mirror mode; the coins themselves are in harder to reach places and the NPC racers are much faster than Adventure 1, which made for some legit difficult races especially as you say in the medieval races.

[koifish | 556]

I haven't played multi in forever, but I beat the single again 10 years ago and it was fun. Didn't understand why wizpig 1 was way harder than wizpig 2. The game overall is really great, definitely best kart racer on N64 that I know of (haven't played mickey speedway but otherwise I think I played all the racers). Very good soundtrack, timeless really. Characters made me wish that more of them had their own games. TT is a bastard. All that said, CTR is still best kart racer. Or maybe Sega All-Stars Transformed. I give 7/10

[AstralSoul | 502]

One of my absolute favorite games, easily my favorite racing game, I still think it's leagues better than any version of Mario Kart and it's honestly crazy to me that Nintendo still has yet to implement an adventure mode in Mario Kart. The hype I had when this game was coming out was unmatched by pretty much any game of the era. I replay this game every few years in its entirety and it simply never gets old.

10/10

[NostalgicMachine | 243]

Easy 8/10 from me. I grew up playing this one at a buddy's house, whom had an N64 a full year before I got mine. This one (along with Super Mario 64 and Goldeneye) were in heavy rotation. Pure nostalgia bias, but I still enjoy it to this day. Solid OST, too!

[RH | 4,928]

Trying to give this game an honest shake where I can, I don’t think the FPS complaints are fair, if you were a fan of the N64 and Rare.  The only other Rare games I owned were GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, and at times they both had significant frame dips. It just seemed that Rare didn’t prioritize fixing those issues and we all noticed but didn’t care.

So, you can complain about this but if you gave any of those games a pass, you should give this one a pass too.

Edited February 24 by RH

[NostalgicMachine | 243]

12 hours ago, RH said:

Trying to give this game an honest shake where I can, I don’t think the FPS complaints are fair, if you were a fan of the N64 and Rare.  The only other Rare games I owned were GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, and at times they both had significant frame dips. It just seemed that Rare didn’t prioritize fixing those issues and we all noticed but didn’t care.

So, you can complain about this but if you gave any of those games a pass, you should give this one a pass too.

Great catch and point!