Post by Manspeed on Nov 23, 2011 20:04:51 GMT -5
A bit of background info: The Version We Got.
I dunno how much of you have played Banjo-Pilot, so I've posted a bunch of videos so those of you who haven't can see the game in action. One of them is Part 1 of a playthrough so you can see the whole game if you feel like it.
Basically it's a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing except only in planes and featuring the Banjo cast. Playable characters include Banjo, Kazooie, Mumbo, a purple Jinjo, Humba Wumba, Jolly Roger, Klungo and Gruntilda. Honeycombs are your item boxes. Items include Fire Eggs (projectiles), Ice Eggs (mines), the Saucer of Peril (the "Blue Shell"), Turbo Trainers (a boost of speed), a Gold Feather (invulnerability), and Mingy Jongo (the "Lightning Bolt"). The game also has the exact same dash hoops as Diddy Kong Racing.
You might notice that despite being a plane racing game, you race on flat Mode 7 courses. Flying off-course or above rough terrain will cause your plane to slow down. Yes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it still works for keeping the players from cheating. On each course you can find Musical Notes. Collecting these will earn you Cheato Points that you can spend in the Cheats menu to unlock hidden goodies, such as Glowbos that appear on each track and help you out.
The game has next to no plot to speak of. You start out in the Bottles GP and Bottles guides you through each cup. Beating a cup will unlock a dogfight against that cup's boss. Beat the boss and you can keep the trophy. After beating all four cups you'll unlock the Grunty GP, which is basically Mirror Mode. Here, Grunty shows up to taunt you in between each cup. In addition to the main mode, you also have the usual Time Trial mode and another mode called Jiggy Challenge. In this mode, your goal is to collect 6 Jiggies on each course and win (much like the Silver Coin Challenge in Diddy Kong Racing). The catch is that Bottles is your opponent and his stats are all maxed out (basically he's T.T.). If you can beat him on all the tracks, you'll unlock him as a playable character.
Now here's where it gets interesting. As some of you may know, B-P actually started development as 'Diddy Kong Pilot', which cements it's status as a DKR sequel. A long while ago, some folk discovered a couple of peculiar music tracks in the game's sound rips:
In addition to the two tracks above, most of the music already in the game sounded a lot more like DK music than Banjo music, right down to monkey sounds in the results screen music and what sounds like a Jungle Hijinx remix playing on Spiral Mountain. An ostrich bearing a striking resemblance to Expresso even appears on the Gobi's Valley course.
Before I can delve into this subject any further, I must first show you the previous version of B-P before it's final release:
As you can see, at one point B-P was intended to be a completely different game. This version of the game ran on what's called a Voxel engine, allowing the GBA to render fully 3D environments for the planes to fly in. According to the dev team, the Voxel engine was very expensive and very difficult to work with.
According to one member of the team, the reason this version of the game was scrapped was because the GBA's hardware just couldn't handle it. When they had one plane flying around the map it ran alright, but once they added several other planes along with all of the objects and power-ups it caused the system to slow down tremendously. However, another member has claimed that this version was actually making steady progress until they were spontaneously told to scrap it in favor of the version we got.
Now that that's out of the way, I can get into why the final version turned out the way it did:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj39J09qjv8
[/youtube]
Folks, this is the last version of Diddy Kong Pilot before it was shelved in favor of Banjo-Pilot. It's almost the exact same game as the final except everything is DK-related instead of Banjo-related. This is because once the Voxel version of B-P was canned, the dev team was given this version of DKP and told to replace all the existing backgrounds and sprites with new ones. They apparently weren't given enough time to replace the music, so it was left intact.
From the footage, you can see that the playable characters included Diddy, Dixie, Funky, DK, Kritter (who is actually a renamed Krunch from DKR), Klap Trap, Klump, and K.Rool. The Honeycombs were originally barrels. Fire Eggs were Pink Buzzes, Ice Eggs were Zingers (cool how they put both bee enemies in the same game), the Saucer of Peril was a Blue Buzz (not a green one?), the Turbo Trainers were a TNT Barrel (and in addition to giving you a boost it also blows up any opponents in the vicinity), the Gold Feather was Rambi, and Mingy Jongo was a barrel with a picture of stars and a wrench on it (wonder what name they'd have given this). The dash hoops were always there from the beginning.
The courses are all exactly the same except for the backgrounds, the obstacle sprites and the titles of each. Personally I think they fit DK a lot better than they did Banjo. It definitely explains why Gobi's Valley has grass: it was originally an African Savannah. Instead of Glowbos, you have target balloons. Instead of Musical Notes, you have KONG letters. According to Cranky's tips, collecting all of them on a course will give you an extra continue if you place lower than 3rd. Kinda reminiscent of the extra lives in Super Mario Kart.
This version doesn't appear to have much of a plot either. When you start the game you're only given the four Kongs to play as. Cranky Kong is your guide instead of Bottles (and he's perfectly in-character, making harsh remarks about your piloting skills the whole way through). Each of the cups has a Kremling for a boss. Once you beat all of them, you'll be given the choice to play 'Team Kong' or 'Team Krem' when you reload the game. 'Team Krem' is essentially the Grunty GP (Mirror Mode) except you're now given the chance to play as the Kremlings while the Kongs are the bosses. Cranky even berates the Kremlings for trying to take over the game. Once you beat this mode, the title screen changes to read "Kremling Pilot" and features a castle background.
The Jiggy Challenge was originally called Cranky Challenge and functioned exactly the same, except instead of Jiggies you collect Silver Coins and instead of Bottles you had to race Cranky. If you can clear this mode, 'Team Cranky' will become available to play. Amusingly, it features a character select screen with Cranky in every slot. He's basically Bottles, so that means his stats are maxed out. If you can beat the game as Cranky, the title screen will say "Cranky Kong Pilot':
Too bad this version wasn't actually released, or else the old ape might've finally gotten his wish.
It should be noted that the reason I know all this is because a ROM dump of this version has recently been released, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link directly to the download. You'll have to search for it on your own.
While this version was being worked on, Nintendo was already in the process of selling Rare to Microsoft. Eventually they decided not to publish it. The game was shelved for a while until another team decided to revive it as Banjo-Pilot.
Anyway, that's NOT all. There's an even EARLIER version of DKP to look at:
Some of you might remember seeing footage of this version at Spaceworld 2001. It was to feature tilt controls as an option, but according to the dev team that never actually worked properly. They were forced to keep them in there until the game was reworked into the 2003 version. Playable characters included Diddy, Dixie, DK, Cranky, Krunch, K.Rool (wearing a fancy pilot's outfit) and an unnamed redneck Kong who was apparently going to be replaced by Candy at some point in development.
From the footage, you can see that this version has a lot more in common with the original Diddy Kong Racing. Instead of cups, the game gives you five different "Worlds" to choose from. Power-ups are received from ? Balloons. There are bananas you can collect on each course. Instead of having invisible barriers around the track, you originally had to fly within the slalom poles. Miss three and you lose the race. There also appear to be strange orbs with "DK" or skull heads on them, and collecting them appears to make you lose as well.
Dash hoops were still intact, and this version also features ground-bound zippers. Some of the items appear to be carried over from DKR, such as the missiles and the magnet, while others appear to be references to DK64, such as the watermelon and the peanuts. No idea what the heck that rainbow-colored egg thing is supposed to be.
The most interesting thing about his version is the "Stories" option. Apparently there were three different story modes: King of Kongs, Back to the Light and K.Rool's Gold. Wonder what Rare had planned for these. They always did have a knack for making plots an important part of the experience.
Then we have the "Dogfights" menu. From what I can gather, the dogfights in this game worked a lot more like a traditional battle mode where you fly around an arena and shoot at the other players. According to the dev team, this version was also supposed to feature mini-games like the ones from DKR, including one where you have to avoid ghosts (seen in the footage above) and collect worms (also seen in the footage above).
Sadly this game was not making the cut by Nintendo's standards as they gave the game a lot of crap (the tilt control didn't work, planes are pointless if the courses aren't 3D, etc.) but instead of canning the game they were forced to continue working on it. It wasn't until a major team shift that they managed to drop the tilt control and the adventure element and rework it into the 2003 build.
Guess what though...it gets even BETTER. There exists an even EARLIER version of the game. Supposedly it's from as far back as 2000. Get ready, cuz this one's gonna blow your MIND (it doesn't appear until after that Sabre Wulf footage at the beginning:
Yes folks. You are not dreaming. What you see before you is the earliest known version of Diddy Kong Pilot...
.
...guest-starring Mario & friends.
To be precise, the roster appears to consist of Diddy, Dixie, Funky, DK, Cranky, K. Rool, Mario, Peach, Yoshi, Toad, Wario and Bowser. Funny how Luigi is nowhere to be found. Also interesting are the character's vehicles. Dixie originally had a stealth fighter while Peach has the plane that eventually became Dixie's. Funky, despite owning like two planes instead flies around on a surfboard. Toad flies a UFO (did they somehow predict SMG?), Wario appears to have the same red seaplane from VBWL and WL3, and Yoshi straddles a Lakitu cloud (the render looks very YS-esque).
Aside from the sheer WHAT THE FUCK factor of seeing Mario cameo in a DK game and NOT the other way around, we also get a glimpse at one of the story modes: K.Rool's Gold. It's apparently about K.Rool (still in his pilot's outfit) finding a map to Eldorado and trying to get past the genie who guards it. Truly wacky stuff. The whole thing is like one big fanfic, except it's an official product. If you're wondering about the artwork, it appears to have been drawn by the same guy who did the art for Sabre Wulf
Unless there's an even earlier version of Banjo/Diddy Kong Pilot floating around, that's pretty much all I got. I found out a lot of the info on it's development thanks to RareWare Central: www.rarewarecentral.com/diddy-kong-pilot
I dunno how much of you have played Banjo-Pilot, so I've posted a bunch of videos so those of you who haven't can see the game in action. One of them is Part 1 of a playthrough so you can see the whole game if you feel like it.
Basically it's a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing except only in planes and featuring the Banjo cast. Playable characters include Banjo, Kazooie, Mumbo, a purple Jinjo, Humba Wumba, Jolly Roger, Klungo and Gruntilda. Honeycombs are your item boxes. Items include Fire Eggs (projectiles), Ice Eggs (mines), the Saucer of Peril (the "Blue Shell"), Turbo Trainers (a boost of speed), a Gold Feather (invulnerability), and Mingy Jongo (the "Lightning Bolt"). The game also has the exact same dash hoops as Diddy Kong Racing.
You might notice that despite being a plane racing game, you race on flat Mode 7 courses. Flying off-course or above rough terrain will cause your plane to slow down. Yes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it still works for keeping the players from cheating. On each course you can find Musical Notes. Collecting these will earn you Cheato Points that you can spend in the Cheats menu to unlock hidden goodies, such as Glowbos that appear on each track and help you out.
The game has next to no plot to speak of. You start out in the Bottles GP and Bottles guides you through each cup. Beating a cup will unlock a dogfight against that cup's boss. Beat the boss and you can keep the trophy. After beating all four cups you'll unlock the Grunty GP, which is basically Mirror Mode. Here, Grunty shows up to taunt you in between each cup. In addition to the main mode, you also have the usual Time Trial mode and another mode called Jiggy Challenge. In this mode, your goal is to collect 6 Jiggies on each course and win (much like the Silver Coin Challenge in Diddy Kong Racing). The catch is that Bottles is your opponent and his stats are all maxed out (basically he's T.T.). If you can beat him on all the tracks, you'll unlock him as a playable character.
Now here's where it gets interesting. As some of you may know, B-P actually started development as 'Diddy Kong Pilot', which cements it's status as a DKR sequel. A long while ago, some folk discovered a couple of peculiar music tracks in the game's sound rips:
In addition to the two tracks above, most of the music already in the game sounded a lot more like DK music than Banjo music, right down to monkey sounds in the results screen music and what sounds like a Jungle Hijinx remix playing on Spiral Mountain. An ostrich bearing a striking resemblance to Expresso even appears on the Gobi's Valley course.
Before I can delve into this subject any further, I must first show you the previous version of B-P before it's final release:
As you can see, at one point B-P was intended to be a completely different game. This version of the game ran on what's called a Voxel engine, allowing the GBA to render fully 3D environments for the planes to fly in. According to the dev team, the Voxel engine was very expensive and very difficult to work with.
According to one member of the team, the reason this version of the game was scrapped was because the GBA's hardware just couldn't handle it. When they had one plane flying around the map it ran alright, but once they added several other planes along with all of the objects and power-ups it caused the system to slow down tremendously. However, another member has claimed that this version was actually making steady progress until they were spontaneously told to scrap it in favor of the version we got.
Now that that's out of the way, I can get into why the final version turned out the way it did:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj39J09qjv8
[/youtube]
Folks, this is the last version of Diddy Kong Pilot before it was shelved in favor of Banjo-Pilot. It's almost the exact same game as the final except everything is DK-related instead of Banjo-related. This is because once the Voxel version of B-P was canned, the dev team was given this version of DKP and told to replace all the existing backgrounds and sprites with new ones. They apparently weren't given enough time to replace the music, so it was left intact.
From the footage, you can see that the playable characters included Diddy, Dixie, Funky, DK, Kritter (who is actually a renamed Krunch from DKR), Klap Trap, Klump, and K.Rool. The Honeycombs were originally barrels. Fire Eggs were Pink Buzzes, Ice Eggs were Zingers (cool how they put both bee enemies in the same game), the Saucer of Peril was a Blue Buzz (not a green one?), the Turbo Trainers were a TNT Barrel (and in addition to giving you a boost it also blows up any opponents in the vicinity), the Gold Feather was Rambi, and Mingy Jongo was a barrel with a picture of stars and a wrench on it (wonder what name they'd have given this). The dash hoops were always there from the beginning.
The courses are all exactly the same except for the backgrounds, the obstacle sprites and the titles of each. Personally I think they fit DK a lot better than they did Banjo. It definitely explains why Gobi's Valley has grass: it was originally an African Savannah. Instead of Glowbos, you have target balloons. Instead of Musical Notes, you have KONG letters. According to Cranky's tips, collecting all of them on a course will give you an extra continue if you place lower than 3rd. Kinda reminiscent of the extra lives in Super Mario Kart.
This version doesn't appear to have much of a plot either. When you start the game you're only given the four Kongs to play as. Cranky Kong is your guide instead of Bottles (and he's perfectly in-character, making harsh remarks about your piloting skills the whole way through). Each of the cups has a Kremling for a boss. Once you beat all of them, you'll be given the choice to play 'Team Kong' or 'Team Krem' when you reload the game. 'Team Krem' is essentially the Grunty GP (Mirror Mode) except you're now given the chance to play as the Kremlings while the Kongs are the bosses. Cranky even berates the Kremlings for trying to take over the game. Once you beat this mode, the title screen changes to read "Kremling Pilot" and features a castle background.
The Jiggy Challenge was originally called Cranky Challenge and functioned exactly the same, except instead of Jiggies you collect Silver Coins and instead of Bottles you had to race Cranky. If you can clear this mode, 'Team Cranky' will become available to play. Amusingly, it features a character select screen with Cranky in every slot. He's basically Bottles, so that means his stats are maxed out. If you can beat the game as Cranky, the title screen will say "Cranky Kong Pilot':
Too bad this version wasn't actually released, or else the old ape might've finally gotten his wish.
It should be noted that the reason I know all this is because a ROM dump of this version has recently been released, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link directly to the download. You'll have to search for it on your own.
While this version was being worked on, Nintendo was already in the process of selling Rare to Microsoft. Eventually they decided not to publish it. The game was shelved for a while until another team decided to revive it as Banjo-Pilot.
Anyway, that's NOT all. There's an even EARLIER version of DKP to look at:
Some of you might remember seeing footage of this version at Spaceworld 2001. It was to feature tilt controls as an option, but according to the dev team that never actually worked properly. They were forced to keep them in there until the game was reworked into the 2003 version. Playable characters included Diddy, Dixie, DK, Cranky, Krunch, K.Rool (wearing a fancy pilot's outfit) and an unnamed redneck Kong who was apparently going to be replaced by Candy at some point in development.
From the footage, you can see that this version has a lot more in common with the original Diddy Kong Racing. Instead of cups, the game gives you five different "Worlds" to choose from. Power-ups are received from ? Balloons. There are bananas you can collect on each course. Instead of having invisible barriers around the track, you originally had to fly within the slalom poles. Miss three and you lose the race. There also appear to be strange orbs with "DK" or skull heads on them, and collecting them appears to make you lose as well.
Dash hoops were still intact, and this version also features ground-bound zippers. Some of the items appear to be carried over from DKR, such as the missiles and the magnet, while others appear to be references to DK64, such as the watermelon and the peanuts. No idea what the heck that rainbow-colored egg thing is supposed to be.
The most interesting thing about his version is the "Stories" option. Apparently there were three different story modes: King of Kongs, Back to the Light and K.Rool's Gold. Wonder what Rare had planned for these. They always did have a knack for making plots an important part of the experience.
Then we have the "Dogfights" menu. From what I can gather, the dogfights in this game worked a lot more like a traditional battle mode where you fly around an arena and shoot at the other players. According to the dev team, this version was also supposed to feature mini-games like the ones from DKR, including one where you have to avoid ghosts (seen in the footage above) and collect worms (also seen in the footage above).
Sadly this game was not making the cut by Nintendo's standards as they gave the game a lot of crap (the tilt control didn't work, planes are pointless if the courses aren't 3D, etc.) but instead of canning the game they were forced to continue working on it. It wasn't until a major team shift that they managed to drop the tilt control and the adventure element and rework it into the 2003 build.
Guess what though...it gets even BETTER. There exists an even EARLIER version of the game. Supposedly it's from as far back as 2000. Get ready, cuz this one's gonna blow your MIND (it doesn't appear until after that Sabre Wulf footage at the beginning:
Yes folks. You are not dreaming. What you see before you is the earliest known version of Diddy Kong Pilot...
.
...guest-starring Mario & friends.
To be precise, the roster appears to consist of Diddy, Dixie, Funky, DK, Cranky, K. Rool, Mario, Peach, Yoshi, Toad, Wario and Bowser. Funny how Luigi is nowhere to be found. Also interesting are the character's vehicles. Dixie originally had a stealth fighter while Peach has the plane that eventually became Dixie's. Funky, despite owning like two planes instead flies around on a surfboard. Toad flies a UFO (did they somehow predict SMG?), Wario appears to have the same red seaplane from VBWL and WL3, and Yoshi straddles a Lakitu cloud (the render looks very YS-esque).
Aside from the sheer WHAT THE FUCK factor of seeing Mario cameo in a DK game and NOT the other way around, we also get a glimpse at one of the story modes: K.Rool's Gold. It's apparently about K.Rool (still in his pilot's outfit) finding a map to Eldorado and trying to get past the genie who guards it. Truly wacky stuff. The whole thing is like one big fanfic, except it's an official product. If you're wondering about the artwork, it appears to have been drawn by the same guy who did the art for Sabre Wulf
Unless there's an even earlier version of Banjo/Diddy Kong Pilot floating around, that's pretty much all I got. I found out a lot of the info on it's development thanks to RareWare Central: www.rarewarecentral.com/diddy-kong-pilot
