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Retro The Climax Studios X Diddy Kong Racing saga continues, with an 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘺 early tech demo for DS.

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Krvavi Abadas

Krvavi Abadas

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For those of you that missed the initial proto, Climax had pitched a Diddy Kong Racing game for Gamecube (Though the build was running on Xbox hardware as that was what the team had the most development experience on.) called "Diddy Kong Racing Adventure".


For a while, that video by Borman (I would ping him, but he's not on here :() was the only proper evidence of it's existence. But the build shown would eventually be released online in 2020.

But it turns out this wasn't the only attempt they did at reviving the IP.


Yes, before the actual Diddy Kong Racing DS port, and before the system itself came out, Climax had experimented with recreating the hub world from that game.
As the video shows, it's even more basic than the Xbox proto, and due to it's age. It has a bit of trouble running on unofficial emulators (It also currently doesn't work on flash carts unfortunately, so you'll need a devkit if you want to try it on real hardware.)

Climax Studios is a bit of a fertile ground for protos in general, actually. As they auctioned off a bunch of their stuff from a former office of theirs back in 2016.
Some other notable things you might recognize from that lot include source code and many builds of SpongeBob SquarePants: SuperSponge, as well as the infamous Elder Scrolls PSP game.
 
Donkey Kong Racing became the unreleased Sabreman Stampede that coincidentally also has Sabreman riding a rhino (and other animals) quite similar to the Diddy Kong Racing Adventure video you shared:



There was also rumors that Monster Games’ Excite Bots for the Wii was originally a Diddy Kong Racing sequel as well before becoming Excite Bots.
 
wow really fascinating. I loved Diddy Kong racing on the 64. The 3DS was a bit of a let down unfortunately. I wish they remade the 64 version, though I think the original on NSO is far more likely to happen.
 
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Build was possibly originally designed for the unreleased "Nintendo IRIS" handheld.
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    • For those unaware, the Nintendo Iris was an early version of the DS that used only one screen. Which was changed after former chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi pitched the idea of adding a second one. These tech demos don't use the second screen at all, and can run fine (mostly, one of the builds can't receive any inputs for some reason.) on the sole devkit known to exist currently.

    The gigaleak also had various SDKs and even some test programs for it, which the current owner of the devkit was able to get working prior to this.
    If this is indeed the case, it would have massive implications. As from what we can tell. The units appeared to have only been in the hands of 1st-party devs.
     
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    • Krvavi Abadas said:


    For those unaware, the Nintendo Iris was an early version of the DS that used only one screen. Which was changed after former chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi pitched the idea of adding a second one. These tech demos don't use the second screen at all, and can run fine (mostly, one of the builds can't receive any inputs for some reason.) on the sole devkit known to exist currently.

    The gigaleak also had various SDKs and even some test programs for it, which the current owner of the devkit was able to get working prior to this.
    If this is indeed the case, it would have massive implications. As from what we can tell. The units appeared to have only been in the hands of 1st-party devs.
    Click to expand...

    Oh wow!! It's actually an Iris ROM!? Holy cow! That's an incredible find! I didn't even consider that possiblity!

    So we actually have a Nintendo Iris game now! And we finally know the specs... and it really is basically a DS with a screen snapped off :ROFLMAO:
    ... so.... could this Iris dev kit have actually come from Climax Studios then?
     
    Last edited:
    Krvavi Abadas said:


    For those unaware, the Nintendo Iris was an early version of the DS that used only one screen. Which was changed after former chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi pitched the idea of adding a second one. These tech demos don't use the second screen at all, and can run fine (mostly, one of the builds can't receive any inputs for some reason.) on the sole devkit known to exist currently.

    The gigaleak also had various SDKs and even some test programs for it, which the current owner of the devkit was able to get working prior to this.
    If this is indeed the case, it would have massive implications. As from what we can tell. The units appeared to have only been in the hands of 1st-party devs.
    Click to expand...

    Sad that the video is now set in private mode :(
     
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