Diddy Kong Racing ROM Hacks
This page features a collection of Diddy Kong Racing ROM hacks that I've created. Due to copyright, hacks cannot be distributed directly, and instead patches are provided instead. Patches can be applied to a base ROM here. All patches provided expect to be patched onto an NTSC-U v1.0 Diddy Kong Racing ROM (if you have the wrong version, then the patcher will report a "checksum mismatch" error).
Table of contents:
Practice ROM
The practice ROM supports a variety of features for ease of practicing, available through an added menu. Menu navigation:
- L: Toggle practice menu.
- Z/R: Move between menus.
- D pad: Move within menu.
- A/Start: Apply changes.
Practice features include:
- Instant race warps for:
- All tracks, minigames, and bosses
- All vehicles
- Time trials, balloon races, and silver coins
- Savestates
- Start to save state, C left to load state
- Four unique save slots. Use D pad to change save/load slots
- Disabled for time trials
- Requires expansion pak
- Endless races
- View position, speed, checkpoint, framerate, etc. live
- In-game sound menu
- Ability to freeze timer on specific in-game actions
- View invisible geometry
- Input display
- Toggleability for all magic codes
- Toggleability of golden balloon cutscenes (allows for cutscene skips)
All Versions
Version 1.2 (download)
- Added menu for specific Show State options.
- Show State options now include max speed, max height, and throttle.
- Added menu to control music/sfx.
- Added menu to control timer freezes on specific in-game actions.
- There are now 4 unique savestate slots.
- Savestates now work for bananas and silver coins.
- Miscellaneous bug fixes.
Version 1.1 (download)
- Added option to allow for cutscene skips.
- Added global watermark.
- Triangle count being rendered per frame can also be printed.
- You have to try slightly harder to crash the game.
- Fixed endless races sometimes not working.
Version 1.0 (download)
- Supports warps to any race, minigame, or boss in any vehicle, for time trials, balloon races, or silver coins.
- Supports stavestates.
- Supports endless races.
- Game data such as position, speed, checkpoint, framerate, etc. can be printed.
- Input display can be printed.
- Invisible geometry can be rendered.
- All magic codes can be easily toggleable.
Randomizer
The randomizer features two main modes: 100% randos and ATR randos.
100% randos only allow playing in Adventure mode, and are designed to expect 100% completion of a savefile. All warps can be randomized (with the exception of Wizpig 2), where entering a warp will the player to a random location. Hub world exits are adjusted so they always take you outside of the warp that goes back to said hub world. With sufficient options enabled, the completion of a rando is effectively a puzzle. To aid in tracking progress of a playthrough, a completion tracker can be found here. Logic is set in place such that 100% completion is always possible, but it is possible to softlock a playthrough if things aren't completed in the right order. See the readme in the download for details.
ATR randos only allow playing in Tracks mode, and are designed for "All Trophy Races" playthroughs. Unlike in 100% randos, each track is reassigned a random world so that each trophy race can have a set of any 4 tracks.
Randomization options include:
- Races, minigames, bosses, and hub worlds
- Vehicle
- Race lap counts
- Balloon powerups
- Magic codes
- Rerandomizing silver coin races
All Versions
Version 1.5 (download)
- Added option to differentiate between 100% randos and ATR randos.
- In 100% randos, races stay assigned to their vanilla worlds, and must be found to make progress for each world.
- In ATR randos, races will be reassigned worlds so that each trophy race can have any set of 4 tracks.
- Completely overhauled 100% randos.
- Added routing logic to ensure that 100% completion is always possible, though softlocks are possible.
- Minigames, boss races, and hub worlds can additionally be randomized.
- Sequence breaks can be enabled. This extends the logic such that any enabled sequence breaks may be necessary to perform in order to complete a playthrough.
- Randomized laps now affect Taj challenges.
- Fixed overworld vehicle getting corrupted.
- Added a spoiler log.
Version 1.4 (download)
- Silver coin races can be rerandomized.
- Specific magic codes can be banned.
- Boss races and minigames are now affected by randomized vehicles.
- Added a GUI for creating randomized ROMs.
- Miscellaneous bug fixes.
Version 1.3 (download)
- Magic codes can be randomized.
- FFL 1 races are no longer silver coin challenges.
- Randomizer now fails if an invalid flag is given.
- Loading tracks with randomized balloons no longer occasionally crashes.
- Expansion pak is no longer required.
- The intro cutscenes of trophy race races 2-4 can be skipped by default.
Version 1.2 (download)
- Silver coin challenges are no longer broken.
- Trophy race points aren't corrupted when tracks have > 3 laps.
- Race intro cutscenes are not skippable on first enter in adventure mode.
- The audio of TT introducing tracks is now synced with the randomized tracks.
- Vehicle randomization is more configurable.
Version 1.1 (download)
- The base ROM no longer needs to be supplied via command line arguments.
- Balloons powerups can be randomized.
Version 1.0 (download)
- Races can be randomized.
- Vehicles can be randomized.
- Lap counts can be randomized.
Miscellaneous
All hacks with an available gameshark can be stacked. If stacking patches, be sure to enable "skip checksums" when patching. The resulting ROM checksum will no longer be valid, and some emulators may not be able to play the ROM.
Checkpoint Viewer: | patch | gameshark |
Framerate Viewer: | patch | gameshark |
Invisible Geometry Viewer: | patch | gameshark |
Input Replayer: | patch | |
Unlock Tracks/Characters: | patch | gameshark |