Former Rare developer explains what happened to Donkey Kong Racing

A former Rare designer has revealed more information on the unreleased GameCube title Donkey Kong Racing.
Donkey Kong Racing was originally announced as a work-in-progress GameCube game, as CVG reported back in 2001.
However, shortly after this the studio was purchased by Microsoft, meaning the game had to be abandoned.
"The idea behind the game, which was Tim Stamper's, was that the player wouldn't be constricted to just a single animal when racing," former lead designer Lee Musgrave told Nintendo Life. "You would move between different-sized animals; bigger animals could smash through obstacles, while smaller ones were much more manoeuvrable."
However, following the Microsoft buy-out, the plan had to change. "We tried to figure out what to do with it," Musgrave said. "We made a prototype version for Xbox, but because nothing else had been made up until this point, we essentially built it from scratch."
http://cdn.medialib.computerandvideo...315692_320.jpgMusgrave also explains how the game eventually evolved to something completely different from a standard racing game, partly thanks to the influence of Grand Theft Auto III, which was wowing gamers at the time.
"Over the course of the next 18 months or so, it went from being a track-based animal racer to a more open-world game with Tamagotchi-style features, in which nurturing your animal became a key mechanic," he said, stating that it eventually became "a cute version of Grand Theft Auto set in Africa".
By this point, with the Donkey Kong IP owned by Nintendo, the game had been re-titled Sabreman Stampede and featured the hero of Rare's old ZX Spectrum title Sabre Wulf. After a while though, Musgrave admits "the development went off into the woods a little bit", and the game was quietly cancelled.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...y-kong-racing/