Krunch

Krunch is a Kremling playable character in Diddy Kong Racing and Diddy Kong Racing DS. He wears a purple leather vest, similar to the Kritters' jacket in Donkey Kong 64 and both versions of the cancelled Diddy Kong Pilot. The back of his vest has a skull-and-crossbones design in Diddy Kong Racing, but it is omitted in Diddy Kong Racing DS.

In the 2002 acquisition of Rare Ltd., the rights of many franchises and characters were passed on from Nintendo to Microsoft. Nintendo sought to keep all characters directly linked to the Donkey Kong series, with the exception of the cast of Donkey Kong Racing. Due to the nature of Krunch being a Kremling, which is a Nintendo-owned fictional species, Krunch was the only Diddy Kong Racing cast member, besides Diddy Kong, whose rights were kept with Nintendo.

Character creation
In a now defunct Facebook page for Rare employees, former Rare artist and employee Kevin Bayliss, revealed that Krunch was not originally designed to be a Kremling. His creation predates Diddy Kong Racing being a Donkey Kong series game, as originally, Timber was slated to be the main character. Krunch was designed to fulfill the role of a "bad guy" playable character, and was meant to be a crocodile. Upon attaching Diddy Kong to the project, Krunch was slightly altered to be a Kremling.

Footage of the early pre-release build 1.964 of Diddy Kong Racing shown in the German Nintendo 64 promotional VHS tape "Wieviel 3-D hältst du aus?" reveals that Krunch was named "Krash" at some point in development. As this name was already taken by another Kremling in Donkey Kong Country, it is possible that played a factor in his renaming to "Krunch".

Diddy Kong Racing
In the backstory for Diddy Kong Racing, provided in the instruction manual, Krunch was one of two "Kremling spies" sent by King K. Rool to investigate why Diddy Kong and his friends are at Timber's Island, with fears they could be plotting against the Kremlings. According to the game's backstory, the Kremling spies watched Diddy Kong "tearing off at high speed through the jungle" from behind a boulder, before Krunch suggests to the other Kremling that they should follow him. The Kremling declines the suggestion and "bolted into the undergrowth", to which Krunch decided to follow Diddy Kong alone. Instead of antagonizing them, Krunch ends up teaming up alongside Diddy and friends, helping the racers on their journey to expel Wizpig from Timber's Island. The instruction manual states that, despite offering to help Diddy Kong and his friends, the cast of the game do not trust him.

As a playable character, Krunch is a heavyweight with the lowest acceleration and handling of the racers, but has a very high top speed. He is the third-fastest racer in the game. Krunch's top speed without bananas is 60 mph.

Diddy Kong Racing DS
In the remake, Diddy Kong Racing DS, Krunch reprises the role of the original game with very minor changes. He appears in the new intro cutscene, spying on Diddy Kong, Tiny Kong and Dixie Kong behind a boulder, with another Kremling. This Kremling reuses the exact same model as Krunch. As they watch the three characters run by, Krunch informs the other Kremling that he plans to follow the Kongs to find out what they are doing. The other Kremling flees the scene, as Krunch begins to follow the three Kongs.

As a playable character, Krunch's turning and acceleration were slightly increased, and his top speed was slightly decreased.

Diddy Kong Racing

 * Diddy Kong Racing instruction manual: "(Low acceleration, heavy weight, difficult handling, high top speed) Seeing Diddy Kong rush off so suddenly makes the Kremlings very suspicious, so Krunch goes bounding after him to make sure that there aren't any anti-Kremling plots in the works. Diddy Kong, Timber and company don't exactly trust him, but Krunch insists he's only there to lend a hand..."
 * Character stats
 * Weight group: Heavy
 * Acceleration: 1/5
 * Turning: 1/5
 * Top Speed: 4/5
 * Vehicle Color: Orange

Diddy Kong Racing DS

 * Character stats
 * Speed: 4/5
 * Acceleration: 2/5
 * Handling: 2/5

Quotes

 * "Hi, it's Krunch." - Diddy Kong Racing
 * "Hey - where you think he go?" - Diddy Kong Racing, instructional booklet
 * "What if he go fetch others? Fight Kremlings?" - Diddy Kong Racing, instructional booklet
 * "I go after him. You go tell boss - see what he think of that, huh?" - Diddy Kong Racing, instructional booklet
 * "Where are thossse Kongsss going? I will follow!" - Diddy Kong Racing DS

Trivia

 * The Kritter character in both versions of the cancelled Diddy Kong Pilot bear an almost identical appearance to Krunch. In addition, in the 2001 version of Diddy Kong Pilot, the internal name for the Kritter is "Krash". Whether the Kritter was at some point intended to be Krunch is unknown, but all of the remaining information and screenshots for the cancelled two games simply refer to this character as Kritter.
 * Krunch has four fingers in Diddy Kong Racing–for the remake, Diddy Kong Racing DS, his new appearance now has five fingers.
 * Krunch would have been included as part of the cast to Diddy Kong Racing Adventure, a rejected video game idea pitch that never came into fruition. It was planned that he would use his jaw to chase down other racers as a special move.