Smokey Castle

The entrance screen for this course

Smokey Castle is the battle stage for Dragon Forest in Diddy Kong Racing and its remake. In the original this game can be played after obtaining the key hidden in Boulder Canyon, but in the DS version it is only playable in multiplayer mode.

Description

Similar in principle to the Fire Mountain challenge, this arena finds you trying to fill your treasure chest with ten bananas before your adversaries can do the same. The bananas appear scattered all around the course and they'll automatically leap from your car into the appropriate chest as you come within a certain range. However, it shouldn't take you long to realize that you can only carry two bananas at a time...

–Description from the Diddy Kong Racing Instruction Booklet

Map of Smokey Castle

Course Layout

As the name suggests, this battle course takes place within a large medieval castle and its grounds, featuring classic

drawbridges and a moat. Players begin on the upper level of the castle in front of a treasure chest with their racers picture, this is the chest where they must collect their bananas. The upper castle level runs the perimeter of the castle with four ramps descending, one for each racer, in blue, red, green and yellow. The bottom level of the castle features a multitude of power-up balloons and four exits to the grounds, one at the base of each ramp from the upper level. The castle grounds is dotted with the bananas the players must collect (mostly on the path among the grass or on the drawbridges) and more power-up balloons. Players also have the option of dropping down into the moat to collect bananas whilst generally being able to avoid being targeted by other racers. This is inadvisable, however, as the race takes place in a car, not a hovercraft, so detours in the water are slow and may cost the player the battle.

Objective

Tiptup on the course, close to victory

In order to win on this battle stage the player must be the first to collect 10 bananas in their chest from around the arena. Racers can only carry a maximum of 2 bananas at a time before they must go an deposit them in their allocated chest. Unlike the first battle stage, Fire Mountain, players cannot steal bananas from other racers. However, it retains the mechanic of the past two battle stages in that, if a player shoots another player/is shot it will result in the racer losing the bananas they are currently holding.

Trivia

• In the DS version of Smokey Castle, the collectibles was changed from bananas to Taj Coins and you can only hold 5 at a time.