Diddy Kong Racing reveals unused character Roo

Nearly three decades after the release of Diddy Kong Racing, a new unused character from the game has been shown – a kangaroo known as Roo.

Kevin Bayliss, who worked on the N64 title as an artist, shared a look at Roo on social media. Later in development, Pipsy took her spot on the roster.

Bayliss explained that it didn’t make sense for “a baby kangaroo to drive a car, fly a plane or operate a hovercraft wearing boxing gloves”. Ultimately, she was scrapped.

Bayliss also shared the following in his post:

I think I probably borrowed the gloves from my model of the Thai boxer girl that I had built for Killer Instinct 3! lol.

Roo looked nice, and as you can see I even rendered her using fur, which was a feature within Alias Poweranimator which I felt I had to use, but decided against because it took so long to render, despite us having a massive 10 processor death star rendering server to cope with all of the graphics we used to throw at it overnight to draw.

Anyway, it would have been great to have at least hidden Roo in part of the island and perhaps change her color (Pink? So she wasn’t confused with Pipsy)

She could have been a great unlockable character like Drumstick!

For Diddy Kong Racing fans that want to explore more on the series, we previously reported that Climax Studios pitched Diddy Kong Racing Adventure for the GameCube. Read more about that here.