Soon, You'll Be Able To Play Diddy Kong Racing Natively On Your PC

Decompilation project is around 80% complete

by Damien McFerran 10:30am

Soon, You'll Be Able To Play Diddy Kong Racing Natively On Your PC 1 — *Image: Damien McFerran / Time Extension*

While emulation is commonplace these days, we're seeing an exciting new trend emerge: decompilation.

This process allows the homebrew community to recompile native (not emulated) PC versions of classic games, and we've seen the likes of Star Fox, Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time benefit so far.

Another N64 classic is on the way, thanks to a project to decompile Rare's Mario Kart rival Diddy Kong Racing.

Released in 1997, the kart-based racer is one of the best examples of the genre on the N64, and some fans would even argue it trumps Nintendo's own offering on the same console.

The project is around 80% complete and, once finished, should open up the doors for some cool modifications—such as 4K resolution, ultra-widescreen support, an improved frame rate and much, much more.

The game is worth celebrating, as it holds a special place in Rare's amazing library of titles. "Diddy Kong Racing was the most enjoyable game I’d ever worked on," said former Rare staffer Kev Bayliss back in 2023. "I loved Killer Instinct as I was such a martial arts enthusiast and loved fighting games. 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."

[source x.com]

Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media's sites from an editorial perspective. He's also the editor of Time Extension, the network's newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming's past glories.

1
PZT
11:44am

these headlines are so clickbaity, Paper Mario has been 100% for ages still no PC port, Nerrel showed Rocket Robot on Wheels and Superman 64 running on PC natively forever ago, still no port of those
it was a little irritating how he showed those as a proof-of-concept with "just to show you can do it with any old game" with an implied undercurrent of "who would ever want to play these", and then nothing ever mentioned about them again, because Rocket Robot on Wheels owns and I want to play it in glorious 120fps
the Nintendo-centric bias comes through even when their fans are talking about their own console's third-party libraries 😩

2
RextheSheep
11:51am

Please stop reporting on decompilation as if it directly means a port is in development. That's rarely the goal of reverse engineering console games, and perpetuating this misconception places undue pressure on the people working on these RE projects.

3
RextheSheep
12:23pm

Furthermore, these decompilation projects tend to slow down in that last 10-20%. You often see rapid progress early on as all of the simpler functions are blitzed through and merged with the main repo, but the more complicated stuff takes longer to work through.

And having completed, binary-matching functions is one thing, but actually having that code documented and readable is an ongoing process. The Banjo-Kazooie decomp is a good example where the documentation is currently lacking.

As for Paper Mario, for reasons I don't fully understand, I'm told that due to some complexities specific to that game, you shouldn't expect a multiplatform port any time soon if ever.

"100% decompiled" really doesn't mean anything when it comes to the possibility of a port. And just because we have frameworks like Libultraship and N64 Recompiled to make translating that code to other platforms easier, it doesn't mean that creating a port isn't still a lot of work. – It would help everyone involved these projects so much if people took the time to understand what actually goes into them and why the distinction between all these terms matters.

All this to say: if a port were actually in development for Diddy Kong Racing, you would hear about it.

4
RupeeClock
1:39pm

As PZT and RextheSheep already said, ports can be the fruit of a decompilation project, but they are not the goal, and ports are usually done by groups external to the decompilation effort.
There are exceptions such as the Sonic Advance 2 decompilation project, which does have the goal of producing enhanced ports with work-in-progress builds available, but these are usually an exception.

The Zelda Reverse Engineering Team to date have fully decompiled Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Minish Cap, but the Zelda 64 ports were handled by a separate group called Harbour Masters with their Ship of Harkinian project. Minish Cap to my knowledge doesn't have a port available

Decompilation projects usually have the goal of getting an in-depth understanding of a goal at the lowest possible level, which advances speedrun theory for both what's humanly achieveable, and fascinating on a tool-assisted scale.
They're also fantastic for preservation purposes as it gives insight into developmental processes, and can indeed be used to make the games accessible on newer hardware if necessary.

80% is a promising milestone for any decompilation to reach, but the last 20%, 10%, or even 1% of code can be painstaking to finish.

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