Back in 2004, UK studio Climax was keen for work. The war between the PS2, Xbox and GameCube was in full swing and this presented opportunities for developers, assuming they had the right game.

Like all game studios, Climax created speculative pitches for titles it wanted to work on. Around this time, the studio put together a pitch for Diddy Kong Racing Adventures, which it subsequently pitched to Nintendo for release on the GameCube.

Conceived as a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing - developed by Rare for the N64 - the title would allow up to four players to mount animals and race in a variety of game modes. By this point, of course, Rare was no longer working with Nintendo and had been purchased by Microsoft.

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Footage of the pitch demo has now surfaced online. PtoPOnline has supplied the video above, as well as details from the pitch document, which include a unique colour-based world mechanic, fruit which can be collected and various villages and NPCs which would have populated the game world. According to PtoPOnline, Climax actually got the chance to present the demo to Nintendo, but didn't receive the go-ahead to continue with development.

It's not the first time that a sequel to the classic N64 racer was proposed - Rare created its own follow-up, which we covered in depth some time ago. Would you have liked to have played Climax's vision for Diddy Kong? Let us know with a comment.

Thanks to Liam Robertson for the tip!