Kart racer spin-offs that largely abandon the established characters
Nothing here!
5 Games
It seems Nintendo allowed Rare to make a Donkey Kong Country kart racer under the agreement that they would not include anyone who might ever get in a Mario Kart. This trust was broken when the company was sold to Microsoft and Donkey Kong needed a partner for Double Dash.
Drunk on the technical ability to reproduce Nintendo's Mode 7 technique on rival hardware, Core Design decided to make their own kart racer. They only really had Chuck Rock and Son of Chuck, though, so they came up with a full cast of wacky cavemen, instead of having the balls to include Rick Dangerous and the pilot from Thunderhawk
Despite having the rights to a huge number of beloved childrens characters, Chip, Dale and Jiminy Cricket star alongside a cast of 10 brand new racers in this very strange project
Hot on the heels of newfound international interest for the Final Fantasy series, Chocobo Racing ignores Tifa and Barret for Goblin, Golem and White Mage. You do get to unlock VIII's Squall Leonhart - and much more importantly - Jack from 3-D WorldRunner
Pitfall Harry sits on the sidelines as Crystal Castles' Bentley Bear stars alongside a cast of newbies
4 Comments
Konami Krazy Racers chose Dracula and Gray Fox over the Belmonts and Snake, respectively
@theia Now you mention it, I do recall hearing it started as an RC Pro Am game. I do think it's unlikely that it would have been a Diddy Kong starring role if they weren't concerned about Nintendo's response, but then, they threw out most of the SNES characters in DK64, so I can't pretend to understand every decision Rare were making in those days.
@BigGnome I kind of understand the Konami Krazy Racers roster, as they're looking for a diverse cast of colourful characters of different body types and suggested abilities. It's very skewed towards the Japanese audience too, where Goemon and Power Pro-kun are much bigger names. Maybe Chocobo Racing is similar, but even within the old Famicom-era fanbase, I think most of them would be wondering where all the PlayStation heroes were.
@BigGnome I kind of understand the Konami Krazy Racers roster, as they're looking for a diverse cast of colourful characters of different body types and suggested abilities. It's very skewed towards the Japanese audience too, where Goemon and Power Pro-kun are much bigger names. Maybe Chocobo Racing is similar, but even within the old Famicom-era fanbase, I think most of them would be wondering where all the PlayStation heroes were.
Atari Karts not having Yar from Yars' Revenge really baffled me
theia
2 months ago