Games that Never Were: Diddy Kong Pilot

It was the year 2001. With the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color nearing the end of their lifespans, and having just released Conker's Bad Fur Day to rave reviews, Rareware was preparing to offer numerous games for Nintendo's newest systems, the Gamecube and Game Boy Advance. At that year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, they unveiled many new games, most of which featured such familiar series such as Donkey Kong, Star Fox, and Banjo-Kazooie. Unfortunately, Rare's move to Microsoft the following year meant that various games were either retooled or ultimately canceled. One game that suffered the former fate was Diddy Kong Pilot, a Game Boy Advance title that was a sequel of sorts to the Nintendo 64 racer Diddy Kong Racing. It ended up being retooled with characters and elements from the Banjo games and called Banjo Pilot. How would the game have been like if it had been released in its original form? Allow me to explain.

As the title suggests, players would race in planes, and not cars like in so many other racing games. Planes were also used in Diddy Kong Racing as one of three modes of transportation. Other similarities to Diddy Kong Racing included weapons and speed boosts that would help players get ahead. Multiplayer modes for up to four people, featuring a variety of race courses, battle modes, and even dogfights, would also be featured. Returning from the original game would be Diddy Kong and Krunch the Kremling, with Donkey Kong, Dixie Kong, Cranky Kong, and King K. Rool also becoming playable characters. Even a brand new Kong, who looked like a country bumpkin, would have joined in the racing fun. It is unknown if other playable characters, perhaps unlockable ones, were intended to make the cut.

Diddy Kong Pilot was meant to have a unique game play style involving tilt technology. As with such games as Kirby's Tilt n' Tumble, players could control the planes by tilting the Game Boy Advance. Reportedly, the tilting feature was hailed as a pleasant addition that worked rather smoothly. Rare would have also included the option to turn the tilt feature off and simply use the directional pad to control the plane. This was an example of Rare's sense of being innovative and adding features that made their games truly special. Had this feature been carried over to Banjo Pilot, that game would have felt a little more unique and a little less derivative of other racing games.

As with Diddy Kong Racing, there was supposed to be a story mode for single players. Interestingly, each character would have had their own specific story lines, which undoubtedly would have increased the game's length and add more depth than to just have one uninteresting story. The actual plots, or whether or not they would have all tied in to one larger story, is not known. Would Wizpig, the antagonist from Diddy Kong Pilot, have returned to get his revenge on Diddy? Had Donkey's bananas been stolen again? Were K. Rool's minions planning to revolt against their leader, forcing the evil reptile to side with the Kongs in order to defeat them? Alas, we may never know what saga Rare was planning. It makes the virtual lack of a story in Banjo Pilot (I don't see gathering missing spell book pages as being much of a story) all the more depressing.

Not too surprisingly, Diddy Kong Pilot's graphics were simply amazing, as is par for the course for Rare. The 3D and Mode 7 effects were beautiful, and the game still managed to run at a solid frame rate. When the game was changed into Banjo Pilot, similarly impressive graphics were initially used, but due to slowdown, they were changed back into visuals that, while still nice to look at, were a bit less impressive. For an early Game Boy Advance title, Rare proved that they had what it took to make the most out of the hand held system's technological capabilities.

The game seemed to be fairly far along, and was planned to be released sometime in 2002 along with other Game Boy Advance games such as Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers and Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge. However, a long time passed without any new details or even a release date. This was hardly the first time that Rare had delayed a game in order to improve it even more, but this time, the game was destined to not see the light of day in its original form. When Rare was acquired by Microsoft, they could no longer make any new games starring the Donkey Kong characters, which were owned by Nintendo. Consequently, Diddy's hand held racing adventure received a massive overhaul, with Banjo and his friends becoming the stars. The result was Banjo-Pilot, released in 2005 as Rare's penultimate Game Boy Advance game. Poor Diddy would never star in a new racing game from Rare ever again.

I believe that if Diddy Kong Pilot had been released the way it was intended to be, it would have been one of Rare's best hand held games. Features such as the tilt function, numerous story lines, and at least one new character resulted in the game being intended to stand out from a crowded field of racing games, much like Diddy Kong Racing did. When the game was converted into Banjo Pilot, Rare threw innovation out the window in favor of more derivative features. As a result, that game felt more like other racing games and less like a unique game in its own right. You can read my review of Banjo Pilot for more information of why I felt that it was one of Rare's weaker titles. In general, Rare has been declining in quality in recent years. Diddy Kong Pilot would have surely proved otherwise-that the old Rare magic was still alive and well-but the powers that be never gave it a chance.

Rare had other games revealed at E3 2001 that were either overhauled or failed to be released at all following the move to Microsoft, and perhaps in the future, I will write about those games, as well. Diddy Kong Pilot did not deserve such a sad fate, as I, and surely many other people, were looking forward to what was shaping up to be another Rare classic. Perhaps if Banjo Pilot had more features from its original form intact, I would not have minded the overhaul so much. As it is, a Rare game that I would have loved to play is doomed to remain unreleased forever, leaving people thinking of what might have been if Microsoft had not entered the picture. A superb sequel to Diddy Kong Racing was what I wanted. It seems like such a title will never come to pass, which is rather unfortunate.