The main character that was intended to star in Pro Am 64 was Timber the Tiger and the development team added other animal characters to accompany him.   At the time Rare already had plans to develop a game that was going to star a bear and another game that was going to star a squirrel.  They decided to include the two characters in the game to build an early awareness of the characters and help promote the upcoming games.  The two characters were Banjo and Conker whose games were unveiled to the public prior to the release of the racing game but ultimately did not release until after the release of Diddy Kong Racing.

While attending the 1997 E3 trade event Rare demoed Pro Am 64 to Shigeru Miyamoto who liked the game so much that he offered the development team to use Diddy Kong in the title.  The development team initially did not like the suggestion made by Miyamoto as they wanted the title to stand on its own and not incorporate the use of characters that were already established.   They wanted to create their own intellectual property (IP) instead of leveraging one of Nintendo’s franchises.  Rare had plans to release Banjo-Kazooie as their triple-A title for the 1997 holiday season, but the game was delayed until the summer of 1998, leaving Rare without a triple-A title for the 1997 holiday season.  In need for a triple-A quality game for the holiday season, Rare felt that Pro Am 64 did not have a strong enough intellectual property to capture the attention of consumers and ended up reconsidering Miyamoto’s suggestion of using Diddy Kong.

Featuring Diddy Kong in the game would provide stronger marketing from Nintendo and give greater visibility to the game due to the popularity of the Donkey Kong brand thus making consumers more aware of the Banjo and Conker characters in advance of their future game releases.  The game was renamed to Diddy Kong Racing and the team began to adapt the game’s story, visual aesthetics and packaging in time for it November release.  The story was altered were the game’s original protagonist Timber the Tiger sent a letter to Diddy Kong asking for his help to save his island from an evil space wizard named Wizpig thus providing an affective way to incorporate Diddy into the game.

The final release of the game features five worlds containing four racetracks each and the ability to drive a car, hovercraft or pilot and airplane.   The title has a total cast of ten playable characters, two of which must be unlocked and five different bosses that players will battle in each world.  Upon its release the game was received with critical acclaim for its graphics, audio, and gameplay.  The game was a commercial success for Rare, selling approximately 4.88 million copies worldwide and is one of the best-selling games on the Nintendo 64.

A sequel named Donkey Kong Racing was planned for development for the Nintendo GameCube but was abandoned after Microsoft acquired Rare in 2002.   The game did however receive an enhanced remake for the Nintendo DS titled Diddy Kong Racing DS that was released in early 2007.