May 10^th, 2006 (3:18pm) - Interestingly enough, many gamers, including myself began to speculate who the developer of the Nintendo DS’ Diddy Kong Racing is. Nintendo has not released a fact sheet revealing such information and because of that hopeful speculation arose that former Nintendo 2nd party and wholly owned Microsoft Game Studios subsidiary Rare is developing the game. Anyone who thought along these lines was proven to be 100% correct this morning as Rare’s official website confirmed that Diddy Kong Racing DS is the developer’s first game for the Nintendo DS.

The following text can be found at Rareware.com:

E3 ’06 is also the debut stage for our latest collaboration with Nintendo: we’ve possibly hinted at it in the past, but then again we’ve also hinted at a lot of other things, because we’re like that. Yes, Diddy Kong Racing is our first official DS project, and Nintendo are busily promoting it as part of their next wave of big DS offerings for late 2006. Based on the N64 classic but improved and expanded in ways that only the DS allows, you can see the first shot and movie snippet over on NCL’s website if you haven’t already.

A few tantalising DKR DS info-bites to keep you going: eight-player single-card and multi-card WiFi play, touch-screen and microphone compatibility, some familiar faces in newly playable form, remodelled and retextured tracks, customisable vehicles, new modes, weapons and challenges, a little something called TT’s Wish Races where you can create your very own tracks... and it doesn’t end there.

Rare may not be a Nintendo 2nd party anymore but fans can still reminisce on the days of old as Rare continues to develop games for Nintendo’s handheld platforms.