Soon, You'll Be Able To Play Diddy Kong Racing Natively On Your PC
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Decompilation project is around 80% complete

Soon you’ll be able to play Diddy Kong Racing natively on your PC

The Diddy Kong Racing Decompilation project is around 80% complete.

The Trend of Decompilation

This process allows the homebrew community to recompile native versions of classic games like Star Fox, Super Mario 64, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Diddy Kong Racing’s Place in N64 History

Released in 1997, Diddy Kong Racing is one of the best examples of a kart-based racer on the N64. Fans even claim it trumps Nintendo’s own offering on the same console.

Creating motion capture and being in control of a set of fighting characters was like a dream for me. But after taking a break from two ‘pretty gory’ and dark games, Diddy Kong Racing was like a breath of fresh air and happiness.

– Kev Bayliss, former Rare staffer (2023)

The Road Ahead

The project is 80% complete. It should be noted that, in these projects, the final percentage points often take the longest to complete.

Potential enhancements include

  • 4K resolution
  • Ultra-wide screen support
  • Improved frame rate
  • Support for mods like new characters and tracks.

How do you think Diddy Kong Racing compares with Mario Kart?

    • towerful@programming.devEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      Pretty much, yes.
      Developers for the older consoles employed all sorts of hacks and used all sorts of undocumented features.
      Emulators of N64 would develop the emulator for something like 80% of the features of 80% of the games, then put in specific workarounds for the oddities of each game.
      Which is why some games are better on specific emulators.

      Also, decompilation lead to a greater understanding of the various glitches. DK64 and Mario 64 speedruns benefitted massively from this.
      And also fun hack/mods like randomisers and hardcore modes, massively extending the games playability.

      But yeh, the things devs did back in the day is bonkers

      • SailorMoss@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        I’m surprised no one ever tried to compile all the hacks into a single open source plugin or emulator. There are only around 400 retail games for the N64 which seems pretty manageable to have some sort of game detection ruleset for various hacks.

        It seems like in recent years N64 emulation is finally improving somewhat with lower level emulation like the parallel64 core in retroarch.

        Long term decompilation is the better solution regardless but it’s going to take a good amount of time to decompile all the games of significance for the N64.

  • technomad@slrpnk.netEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    DKR was awesome. I always wanted to play that one on the N64, even though the others at the time just wanted to play 007.

    • neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      I just 100% the game a few months ago. It actually holds up really well and it’s still really fun. There were a few annoying silver coin races, but it wasn’t too bad. Plus that stuff isn’t really necessary to enjoy the game.

      • technomad@slrpnk.netEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        That’s awesome, and good to hear it still holds up. It will always hold a special place for me.

        At some point, I’d like to do a deep dive into all these awesome decompilation projects that are being developed. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

            • neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              21 hours ago

              Perfect dark, ocarina of time.

              I feel like I’ve played others but I can’t think of it off the top of my head. Star Fox has one, but the people who did Zelda, but last I checked it didn’t work on Linux yet.

              I setup the sonic one, but haven’t played it yet.

              • technomad@slrpnk.netEnglish
                2·
                14 hours ago

                Awesome, both of those are great. I’ve never actually played perfect dark so that one’s definitely on the list. I also saw that there’s one for majora’s mask as well.

                I’m sure they’re probably working on getting the star fox to work on linux. That will be cool getting back into that one too.

                I never got into the sonic games too much.

                • neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  1·
                  13 hours ago

                  Same, the only one I ever enjoyed was sonic adventure 1. Perfect dark is really amazing, but some of the level objectives on the hardest difficulty can be annoying because of escort mission type stuff where the person you need to keep alive keeps tanking enemy fire and then dying.

  • Zarxrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    DKR was so awesome. I’ve always waited for another game like this with exploration and boss battles and stuff, but I haven’t seen anything else.