Mario Kart has enjoyed long-term success as the flagship racing game of Nintendo. For nearly as long as there's been Nintendo home consoles, there has been Mario Kart, going all the way back to 1992's Super Mario Kart on the SNES. Today it seems like Mario Kart stands alone in the Nintendo arcade racer genre, but there used to be direct a direct competitor: Diddy Kong Racing.
The most recent Mario Kart is technically the new Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, but the latest traditional game was Mario Kart 8, which initially launched on the Wii U in 2014. This long break between Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 9 shows there's an opportunity for competition, not only to force Nintendo's hand in development, but to provide more variety in the kart racing genre. Diddy Kong Racing (which also features Banjo and Conker) came to the Nintendo 64 in 1997, and still stands as an example of novel ideas that weren't widely adopted by the genre-leading Mario Kart.
Whenever the topic of Nintendo arcade racers comes up, the most immediately obvious answer for a preexisting series to make a return is F-Zero. After becoming a Super Smash Bros. mainstay, Captain Falcon definitely deserves to get back in the driver's seat, but Diddy Kong Racing is a closer analogue to Mario Kart that provides a more directly adjacent experience. Variety within a genre is always good, and Mario Kart has singularly dominated kart racing for a long time.
Diddy Kong Racing Had Fun Ideas That Won't Come Back
The biggest difference between Diddy Kong Racing and its closest competitor, Mario Kart 64, is the vehicles. At a time when weight class was the only discernible difference between Mario Kart characters, Diddy Kong Racing gave players the option of three different vehicles - a car, hovercraft, or airplane. Players were also treated to a story mode, in which the only way to defeat the evil Wizpig was to compete in a variety of races and mini games. Customization adds plenty of variety to modern Mario Kart games, but some entirely airborne tracks could bring some new gameplay, and the consistent lack of a story mode seems odd considering Nintendo does it with other sports games.
Unfortunately, if Diddy Kong Racing hasn't been revived by now, it seems an even more unlikely candidate than F-Zero to be rebooted. Diddy Kong is, after all, a Nintendo character, and creating a direct competitor to its own wildly successful franchise doesn't seem like a Nintendo kind of move. Additionally, Diddy Kong Racing was developed by Rare, which is now under the purview of Microsoft. Although this doesn't make a reboot impossible, it seems very unlikely that Mario Kart's N64 era rival will make a return.