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Banjo-Pilot is a video game for the Game Boy Advance featuring characters from the Banjo-Kazooie series of video games. Similar to Diddy Kong Racing, players will be able to race around various
locales from the Banjo-Kazooie universe. Banjo-Pilot was developed by Rare and was published by THQ in 2005.
Characters
Playable characters for the game include:
- Banjo the bear
- Kazooie the red-crested Breegull
- Mumbo Jumbo the masked shaman
- A purple Jinjo
- Humba Wumba the Native American
magician
- Gruntilda (aka 'Grunty') the
witch
- Klungo, the loyal manservant of
Gruntilda
- Bottles the mole
- Jolly Roger the frog
Series timeline
Precisely when in the Banjo-Kazooie timeline Banjo-Pilot takes place is subject to debate by many fans of the
series. In the original Banjo-Kazooie, Gruntilda was her regular self, as she is in this game, however, the characters
Humba Wumba and Jolly Roger were not featured in a game till the sequel, Banjo-Tooie. In Banjo-Tooie Gruntilda had withered away to a walking, talking skeleton due to her
being stuck under a rock for two years.
Tracks
Tracks in the game are based on areas in the three previous Banjo-Kazooie games. A BK next to the track name
indicates that it is from Banjo-Kazooie, BT indicates Banjo-Tooie, and GR indicates Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge. No
text indicates that the track is specific to Banjo Pilot.
- Spiral Mountain - BK
- Jinxy's Dunes
- Freezeezy Peak - BK
- Hailfire Peaks - BT
- Treasure Trove Cove - BK
- Clanker's River
- Grunty Industries - BT
- Gobi's Valley - BK
- Freezing Furnace - GR
- Mayahem Temple - BT
- Steamy Vents
- Jolly Roger's Lagoon - BT
- Witchyworld - BT
- Breegull Beach - GR
- Terrydactyland - BT
- Cauldron Keep - BT
In addition to these tracks, there are also reversed versions of the tracks where the pilots race around anticlockwise.
Trivia
- Banjo-Pilot was originally going to be called Diddy Kong Pilot and feature characters from the Donkey Kong Country series of games. Due to the Microsoft buyout of Rare in 2002, the Donkey Kong license was dropped and
replaced with the Banjo-Kazooie license, which is owned by Rare. Ironically, the character of Banjo originally appeared in the
Nintendo 64 racing game Diddy Kong Racing, of which Diddy Kong Pilot was going to be a pseudo-sequel to.
- At one point early in development, Banjo-Pilot was going to be titled Banjo-Kazoomie, to keep the tradition of
bad puns in the title - Banjo-Tooie is a pun on the number "two". THQ's marketing
department probably would have squashed this potential title early on due to fear of people not getting the joke. (A surprisingly
large amount of people still ask Rare who the "Tooie" character is in Banjo-Tooie.)
- When Banjo-Pilot was still Diddy Kong Pilot, it was going to feature a tilt sensor similar to the Game Boy
Color game Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble. This feature
was also dropped - Rare's official reason is that trying to play the game on the original, non-backlit Game Boy Advance was incredibly difficult, due to the player's loss of
natural light as they tilted their system around. Another possible reason is that it was dropped due to the cost of the more
expensive manufacture price of tilt-sensitive cartridges. The type of sensor that was going to be used in Diddy Kong Pilot
has not been used since Tilt 'n' Tumble. Games that use a tilt sensor now, such as Wario Ware Twisted!, use a simplified version of the sensor,
that only allows for left and right movement. It does not detect up and down movement of the system.
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