The time was right for me to go through my classic Nintendo 64 games. At this time, most games were being ported, remade, emulated, or brought back to us today. But instead I decided to just use my Diddy Kong Racing cartridge that I had once beaten as a child, with all levels, characters, etc.

I had also realized I had an unopened GameShark Nintendo 64 that my relatives gave to me for Christmas (I didn’t know what the hell it was so I never bothered to open it) but now I realize what GameShark is and what its functions are. So I decided, "Hey, maybe I could use cheats for DKR."

I got onto my computer and went to Google to type in Diddy Kong Racing GameShark Codes. I had come across this one interesting site that had a whole variety of codes, such as infinite Bananas or even cheats you could already use ingame within its own code system. Then I looked for the GameShark exclusive codes and came across one in particular entitled “SATAN” and I wondered what that was about, so I loaded my GameShark and typed that long code into DiddyKongRacings Cartridge.

When I started the game, everything seemed fine, until I got to the character select screen. My select cursor was on the clock T.T. (that took me forever to unlock, must I add), but it wouldn’t let me move it over to another character. I thought maybe the controller was broken, but everything checked out fine with it. So when I chose T.T., he just remained silent, though the joyous music continued to play.

I decided to bring him to the tracks, and out of random, I chose Fossil Canyon. Though when I chose which vehicle to play, I could only use the Plane. The options for the Car and Hovercraft were eliminated. The race began as usual, though the 3rd person perspective was not shown in my character. It was almost as if I was riding on T.T.’s shoulder and he was soaring through the level like Superman, but that didn’t make it anymore difficult. So, I just played through.

The characters all got off the starting line as I did, and for the most part of the race I was in last place. That is, until I found one of those orange/red rings you could fly through to get a boost on the plane; however, for some reason it was no ring at all. When I approached it, it looked like I was going into some Solar Eclipse-looking object. Once I went through it, the boost effect worked, though instead of hearing the boost sound it made a different sound that sounded like a giant clock bell being struck.

The music continued after the boost had finished, but I noticed one thing… The characters were all gone from the track. None of them had even finished the Fossil Canyon track. I was so confused. Where did they all go? I felt maybe it was a glitch from using GameShark, but it had to be more serious than that. I finished the race, but when I crossed the finish line after the Final Lap, the “FINISH” line you would normally hear at the end was not heard, and instead, a deeper and more frightening version of Wizpig’s laugh could be heard.

This is where I began to panic. I knew that GameShark Hacking could mean serious business, though I was really wondering if any cheat device could cause this all to occur. So I returned to the tracks menu and chose different tracks to play on, and the characters had still vanished.

So I decided to play the adventure mode with this “Satanic T.T.”. When I went to select a game file to play, the file's name, which was once my initials, was now “TTX”. I assumed the TT stood for T.T., and the X could have meant Satan.

The joyous island music that played did not play. The whole area was dead silent, not even the birds or the frogs could be heard. Taj the Elephant wasn't anywhere to be found. I thought I could somehow summon Taj by honking at the big circle in the middle of the field, but instead I got this big message that came up saying “THERE IS NO HOPE – TAJ". Now I was creeped out. Burning with curiosity, I took a ride around the area and noticed T.T. had still remained in the lobbies. I walked over to talk to him and he said “*&$%!#^@ OR DEATH”. I immediately rushed out of the Dino Demain lobby where I talked to him.

The giant Wizpig head where you first raced him had been closed, but the eyes still lit up, and its eyes tended to follow you every time you entered the main field. I took the Satan T.T. character to Future FunLand, and noticed I could still access the Second Wizpig Door. I had talked to the FFL Lobby T.T. and all he had to say was “There’s only death to purify the world and its inhabitants.” That made completely no sense to me, but was still a bit creepy.

I went through the second Wizpig door, but instead there being Wizpig to crash through the rocks, it was the life size Satan T.T., who blasted his way to the starting line while making a sort of Godzilla roar. The race began. It was not at all normal, though. The Satan T.T. I was racing looked exactly and flew exactly the way mine did, but when we approached the item balloons, each balloon was a still shot of each Playable Character floating in mid-air (such as Diddy, Tiptup, Conker, and Bumper). Once you hit a balloon, you’d hear a sort of messed up audio sound of their own character voices, as if they were being tortured or murdered. The items worked regularly though.

After a few tries, I eventually managed to defeat The massive Satan T.T. When I defeated him, music came up that sounded like the Angry Aztec Lobby from Donkey Kong 64. Then the text appeared “YOUR SOUL HAS BEEN SUCCEEDED, THERE IS NO MORE DEATH, NO MORE PAIN, NO MORE CRYING”. The screen fades to black for about 13 seconds (I thought the game froze).

The Diddy Kong Racing startup screen loaded and everything worked OK again. You could select your own character and T.T. was no longer Satan T.T. When I selected a character, however, The message that was supposed to come up was replaced with this text. “MYTHOLOGY, I HAVE TAKEN THAT, AND IT WILL COME TO YOU THAT YOU CAN HAVE ULTIMATE POWER. NOW PLAY, PLAY YOUR GAME AND LET US FORGET THIS EVER OCCURRED”.