I recently picked up Diddy Kong Racing DS; I honestly don't know how much of it I'm going to play since almost all my game time is taken up by Pokémon and my new affliction, Animal Crossing. Curse you Nintendo and your rabidly addictive games.

Anyway, DKRDS has changed somewhat from the N64 original, although some of the changes were the result of Rare's acquisition by Microsoft, so none of Rare's characters appear, and were replaced by other Donkey Kong characters, which are owned by Nintendo. It's sometimes a bit surprising that Microsoft even allows Rare to work on the DS, but they do; I guess their gaming division could use the money. ;)

Anyway, while Donkey Kong and most of the Kongs are still absent, they did include Dixie Kong--Diddy's girlfriend--and tagging along is Dixie's little sister, Tiny...? TINY?! What the Hell happened to her? In DK64 she was seemingly pre-school age, now she's through puberty, while Dixie is mostly unchanged? Did Rare drop a time warp in this game? She's hardly "tiny" anymore... well, except for certain parts being kind of tiny in a cute way. At least we have another furry Nintendo character to oggle over, though from seeing some of the art around here, I'm sure some of you would prefer the younger version.

Tiny Kong (C) Nintendo, used without permission

[Update: No matter how much I looked at it and tried to convince myself it wasn't that bad, I knew it looked funny. Her sweatpants are loose fiting, but the huge butt just looked off, so I trimmed it down and resubmitted. Check my DA page for the original funny butt version.]

[Update: I can't seem to leave well enogh alone, I've made a few more tweaks and reposted the image. Can you see the differences? (There are 3)]