Banjo-Pilot

Unlike other kart racing games, characters control airplanes instead of go-karts. Rare and Nintendo announced Banjo-Pilot at E3 2001 under the title Diddy Kong Pilot. At this point, it was the sequel to Rare's Diddy Kong Racing (1997), and featured characters from Nintendo's Donkey Kong and Mario series. However, company politics and Nintendo's concerns about quality delayed Diddy Kong Pilot past its planned release date in March 2002. After Microsoft acquired Rare in September 2002, it lost the rights to the Nintendo characters and replaced them with characters from its Banjo series. THQ, which made a deal with Microsoft to publish Rare's GBA projects, released Banjo-Pilot in January 2005 to mixed reviews. Although critics praised its visuals, they felt it lacked originality and labelled it an inferior clone of Mario Kart.

• Title — Banjo-Pilot • Developer — Rare • Publisher — THQ • Composer — * Robin Beanland • Jamie Hughes • Series — Banjo-Kazooie • Platforms — Game Boy Advance • Genre — Kart racing • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer

• Illustration — Gameplay screenshot showing the player character, Banjo the bear, racing in one of the playable tracks Banjo-Pilot is a kart racing game featuring characters and environments from the Banjo-Kazooie series of platform games. It plays similarly to the Mario Kart series by Nintendo: the player, controlling a character in their vehicle, must race opponents around tracks. The player views the gameplay from behind the character's back, and must manoeuvre their character throughout the race. All races are three laps long and feature elements that confer advantages, such as offensive power-ups. Collectible, golden music notes, an element from the Banjo platformers, are scattered around tracks as well. Banjo-Pilot is distinguished from other kart racing games because the player controls airplanes instead of go-karts, allowing them to move up and down. However, the planes do exhibit behaviours normally associated with karts, such as slowing down over rough ground. The planes are equipped with bullets that can be shot at other players; they can also do a barrel roll to avoid attacks from others. The game features a total of nine player characters; Banjo, Kazooie, Mumbo Jumbo, and a purple Jinjo are initially available, while Humba Wumba, Gruntilda, Klungo, Bottles, and Jolly Roger can be unlocked through gameplay. The game features 16 tracks accessible through four different game modes for a single-player. In Grand Prix, players race opponents through a series of four consecutive tracks and earn points based on their finishing position. At the end of Grand Prix, players must participate in a Champion Challenge—an aerial dogfight against a boss. Jiggy Challenge retains the emphasis on collecting items from the Banjo platformers: the player must look for and collect puzzle pieces called Jiggies for points while racing Bottles the mole. Quickrace allows the player to choose from any of the game's tracks to race on, while time trial challenges players to finish a course in the fastest time possible. The game also features multiplayer modes for up to four players: a multiplayer version of Grand Prix, a one-on-one race, and a dogfighting game. Competing in races will earn players "Cheato pages", loose book pages which serve as a form of currency. How many they earn is based on their race placement and how many musical notes they collect. These pages can be given to the anthropomorphic book Cheato in exchange for various bonuses, such as new game modes and characters.

• Illustration — Promotional artwork for Diddy Kong Pilot Rare developed Banjo-Pilot for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) for nearly five years. At the beginning, Rare was a second-party developer for Nintendo and was known for creating games in Nintendo's long-running Donkey Kong franchise. As such, the game was originally titled Diddy Kong Pilot, a sequel to Rare's 1997 game Diddy Kong Racing, and would feature characters from Nintendo's Donkey Kong and Mario franchises. While it could be played using the GBA D-pad, Diddy Kong Pilot allowed players to control the characters by tilting the system, as the cartridge contained the same accelerometer technology used in Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble (2000). Rare chose to focus on planes rather than cars because it wanted the game to stand out against other GBA racers. Nintendo and Rare announced the game at E3 in May 2001, and presented demos to attendees there and at Nintendo Space World in August. Journalists reacted positively to the demos, with particular praise for the visuals. Nintendo aimed to release Diddy Kong Pilot on 4 March 2002, but became concerned with its quality around the time of Space World. One programmer recalled that Nintendo felt the tilt was not working well, that the GBA LCD only functioned as intended when aligned with a light source, and that a racing game with planes was pointless without a 3D world. Rare was expected to finish the game by October 2001 although it still had to implement numerous game modes; the programmer believed it should have been cancelled instead. Company politics also complicated development. According to the programmer, Rare was "micro-managing us into different directions, disregarding any hardware or cartridge space limitations". By September 2002, the game was still unreleased and Nintendo rival Microsoft acquired Rare. As Microsoft did not compete in the handheld market, the buyout did not affect Rare's plans to produce GBA games, but it lost access to Nintendo's Mario and Donkey Kong intellectual property (IP). After developing the GBA port of Donkey Kong Country 2, Rare staff were told they needed to finish Diddy Kong Pilot, but would have to retool it using elements from the Banjo series. Banjo was one of the IPs Rare retained after the Microsoft buyout, so the project was retitled Banjo-Pilot. The IP change came to light in July 2003 when Microsoft trademarked the Banjo-Pilot title. Rare's Paul Rahme said the retooling took five months. The game underwent "radical changes" during the transition; the graphics and presentation were altered, and different racetracks were added. Rare also removed the tilt controls as they were unable to improve them. The soundtrack, composed by Robin Beanland and Jamie Hughes, was unaltered as Rare was unable to implement new music. Staff who developed the Nintendo 64 (N64) Banjo games had little involvement, but the lead designer supervised to make sure the content was in line with the N64 games. Both the Diddy Kong Pilot prototypes and the final game use a Mode 7-style game engine, but at one point Rare switched to one that rendered environments using voxels. Rare quickly discarded the voxel engine due to frame rate problems that arose when characters and weapons were added. On 11 August 2003, Microsoft announced it would collaborate with THQ to publish Rare's GBA projects, including Banjo-Pilot, Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge (2003), Sabre Wulf (2004), and It's Mr. Pants (2005). THQ released Banjo-Pilot in North America on 11 January 2005 and in Europe on 18 February. On 5 November 2011, a Diddy Kong Pilot prototype leaked online.