Diddy Kong Racing, the game forgotten in MK64/CTR debates

I've seen YouTube videos of the original, so I knew about quite a few of those things already.

I was immensely surprised about the musical differences (before, I thought all the music in the DS version had appeared in the original). They added a lot of music in the DS version, including some incredibly good tunes (e.g., Windmill Plains and Treasure Caves), but I have no clue why they completely removed one of the original tunes (the first Pirate Lagoon / Treasure Caves one).

The Silver Coin challenges are still in the DS version, unless they were different originally. They're only found in Single Race mode now, though.

I also knew about the bananas, even though I'm still not quite sure what their purpose is. Is it exactly the same as that of SMK coins? (For some reason, I thought before that they made vehicles incrementally faster.)

Even though there are some really neat additions to the DS version (such as online play which I STILL haven't tried out for some reason, the sound recorder (I've had a lot of fun with that), the emblems and billboards, the extra musics, the new tracks for Single Race mode, and probably other stuff too), there are a lot of things I've seen in videos of the original that seem way better in comparison:

- The voices, as you said, sound a lot better in the N64 version (Taj's newer voice is TERRIBLE)
- The sound effects for items are vastly better in the original - the new ones are completely boring (not counting Sound Recorder sounds)
- The fact that that obnoxious torch-blowing minigame didn't exist in the original (I hate that light-headed feeling I get after playing it)
- Wizpig I's original track was AMAZING-looking, with all that darkness and rain - plus the cutscene before it was really neat.
- Apparently there was more speech in cutscenes in the original; in DKRDS there's usually just text or whatever.
- I'd much rather play single-player versions of the special multiplayer stages after unlocking the locked doors than doing the usually ultra-boring Wish Races. (In the original you do the former, right?)


Basically the main point of all this is that both versions clearly have their pros and cons, and I hope to eventually have copies of both.

Wizpig makes the DS game too easy, never used him online because of how cheap he was to use. Apart from that I liked it, but its nowhere near as good as the n64 version.

It just seems like they were more fun as actual required challenges instead of as optional bonuses to screw around with.

Collecting bananas increased the vehicle's top speed, and getting hit by items makes the player drop 2. The top speed is at 10 bananas, but one can still collect more after that. One cheat code makes everybody start with 10 bananas, and another one can make collecting bananas slow the player down.

That's another thing I loved about DKR, which was the cheat system. I'd always plug in the 2-player adventure cheat or the cheat to make the CPU players really hard(it's the only way I could make it so that they could keep up with me).