Rumor: Diddy Kong Racing Sequel Being Developed By Monster Games for Wii U

Diddy Kong Racing was a Rareware developed game for the N64. An enhanced port came to the DS too. Now, rumor has it that Monster Games could be working on a sequel for Wii U. I don\’t usually post rumors from anonymous insiders on message boards but this one had an air of credibility.

I sent an email to Monster Games to see if they\’ll shed any light on the rumor but in the meantime I\’m trying to figure out whether or not I believe it.

On one hand it’s certainly plausible. Monster Games has been working on Nintendo IPs for a while now and they upped the ante with Pilotwings Resort. I can see Nintendo using them for another franchise, especially now that Nintendo probably wants to give the Mario Kart series a bit of a breather with Mario Kart 7 coming out at the end of 2011.

It also seems like part of the reason it’s Diddy Kong Racing as opposed to Mario Kart is to allow some of the smaller characters of Nintendo to have a chance. Conker made his debut in the original on the N64. The rumor-originator mentions Dillon being one of the characters. Giving those smaller characters a chance to shine could be a way of refreshing the scenery for Nintendo. We\’ve already played with the Mushroom Kingdom characters too many times to count.

One detail of the rumor can either be something that gives it extra credibility or detracts its credibility by being too convenient. The source of the rumor drops a few names as the people working on the game.

He says:

\”Dave Broske and Dave Pollatsek are the programming leads on the game, and the game design chief is John Schneider. Josh Defries is working on Environment design. Kodai Matsumoto is a superviser on the project. A guy named Mitch Ernst is another person working on the game. He’s involved in user interface design with the Wii U controller’s touchscreen. You can touch certain icons on the touchscreen to use power ups.\”

I looked into those names. At first, I found some of them having worked on ExciteTruck. So, it seemed kind of random, but also seemed like they were people who made sense. He wouldn\’t have chosen those names by chance if not for the fact that he knows a bit about the actual project. But, then I searched for the credits for Pilotwings Resort and found that everyone one of those people he mentioned worked on Pilotwings Resort in the exact position he puts them in for the new project. Now this could make sense or it could be too conveniently copied and pasted. For example, Mitch Ernst worked on environment design for ExciteTruck. But then for the 3DS they needed someone to work on the UI for Pilotwings. Mitch was chosen for the job. The source of the rumor claims he’s now working on the UI for the Wii U GamePad. Makes sense or too coincidental? The guy who made the rumor certainly put in some effort to make it seem real if it in fact is fake.

He also neatly ties it in to another rumor that was long forgotten about Nintendo working out some trademark issues in regards to Rare with Microsoft. Everyone thought it had to do with Conker and Banjo, which didn\’t make much sense since they\’ve been out of Nintendo’s hands for a while. Now there’s a new twist on what they were actually discussing–

He says:

\”There were some legal grey zones with characters like Tip Tup, Timber, Bumper, etc, and Nintendo was in talks with Microsoft/Rare to clear it up. Banjo and Conker won\’t be in the game.\”

This ties in well with that earlier rumor, but once again, did this guy just do his homework before concocting a fabrication or is there truth to this?

Lastly, he claims that it will allow Mii characters to join the race as playable characters and it will be integrated with Miiverse. This also makes sense, but it would be easy to come up with such ideas.

So what do you think? We\’ll take it with a grain of salt, but how big should that grain of salt be?