Diddy Kong Racing - Soundtrack

Soundtrack

The music for the game was composed by David Wise, one of Rare's in-house composers. Using the Nintendo 64's cartridge format, the music in the game could change mood across the overworld or midway through a racetrack (retaining the same tune and tempo but using different instruments) without being hampered by load times common to the disc format. However, this technique was only used on one track (Boulder Canyon), although it is used in the hub world, and in the character select screen as well. This was the first Rare game to use this technique, with it later being used in Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64 and Conker's Bad Fur Day. The soundtrack was first released in Japan on April 1, 1998, with 42 tracks, a German version of the album was released in Europe with the same number of tracks. For its U.S. release only 16 tracks were featured, those being over a minute long, excluding the jingle type short pieces. The CD itself was specially shaped in the form of Diddy Kong's head, which was unplayable in certain players.