Diddy Kong Pilot (2001)

Diddy Kong Pilot is a canceled follow-up title of Diddy Kong Racing for the Game Boy Advance, which was developed by Rare Ltd. Diddy Kong was the main and titular character of the game. The game involves Donkey Kong characters racing in Planes on -rendered courses. It was initially planned for early 2002, but Nintendo sold their share of Rare Ltd. to and opted out of their publishing contract. Around the same time, in 2002-2003, before the decision was made to design it into a Banjo-Kazooie game, Diddy Kong Pilot was being redeveloped into an entirely different game. In 2005, the game was finalized as a ' game, ' due to Microsoft's acquisition of Rare in 2002.

History
The game was first shown at, and was also shown a few months later at.

One of the characters, tentatively named Redneck Kong, or "Crappy Kong", was "killed off" early in the game's development, according to the September 3, 2001 edition of Scribes from Rareware and Jens Christian Restemeier, one of the game's developers. Candy Kong would subsequently appear in the background for character selection menus.

One of the builds, said to be presented at a Space World 2000, consisted of a cast featuring both Donkey Kong Country and Mario characters, which would have been a first for a Donkey Kong spinoff. This version allowed players to select between six Donkey Kong characters (Diddy Kong, Cranky Kong, Donkey Kong, King K. Rool, Funky Kong, and Dixie Kong) and six Mario characters (Princess Peach, Mario, Yoshi sitting atop a Lakitu's Cloud, Wario piloting a red biplane similar to the Bulldog, Bowser, and Toad). A tilt control idea that was present in the debug mode of a very early build was dropped in this build, but was retained in the Options mode. Not much information is known regarding this build or its history.

At Space World 2001, the game was at 65% completion, and by October 2001, planned for release on March 4, 2002.

In early 2002, Nintendo refused to publish Diddy Kong Pilot, with one of their criticisms being that there was "no point in flying up and down on flat levels." Some Rare employees believed the company was prejudiced since it occurred in a time period just before the Microsoft acquisition. Despite being featured in the DVD of the May 2002 issue of G-Force magazine, none of the Rare games except Star Fox Adventures were showcased at E3 2002.

Rare's other two Donkey Kong installments from E3 2001, Donkey Kong Racing and Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers, were canceled in August 2002, one month before Microsoft's acquisition of Rare, while Diddy Kong Pilot received no official announcement of the cancelation.

On September 15, 2011, after ten years of no new information regarding the game, a former Rare employee, under the pseudonym of Transparentjinjo, posted gameplay footage of the game on YouTube. According to the video's title, the build was dated "September 7, 2001".

On January 14, 2013, this prototype build was released online.

Gameplay
Diddy Kong Pilot featured six modes: Racing, Stories, Dog Fights, Battle, Clock Race, and Options. The build is largely unfinished as most of the stages are nearly empty, some only having a backdrop and a few assets laid out on the stage. Many of the modes, such as Dog Fights, are non-functional. The gameplay essentially only consists of flying around on a course. Some features were never implemented such as plane customization, or unlockable characters, stories, and stages.

Debug menu
Upon starting up the game, the player is instantly led onto a debug menu, and it has three options: Level, Player, and Blend. The first option allows them to choose a course, and the second one allows them to select a character (Cranky). The "level" options include:

The second option, "Player" has six numerical values, labeled 0-5. Each of them represent a playable character:


 * 0: Cranky Kong
 * 1: Diddy Kong
 * 2: Krunch
 * 3: K. Rool
 * 4: Dixie Kong
 * 5: Donkey Kong (selecting him results in playing as Cranky Kong instead)
 * 6: Diddy Kong instead of Candy Kong (only selectable by using cheats; same function as when selecting Dixie in the character select)
 * 7-11: No data (only selectable by using cheats; Krunch, K. Rool, Dixie, Cranky, Diddy in order)

The last option, Blend, does not have any apparent function. It has four options: Off, Alpha, Up, and Down.

Modes
The player can exit to the main menu by opening the pause menu. It has three options which are self-explanatory: Continue, Restart, and Quit. Few of the further developed courses also redirect the player to the main menu after they complete all three laps.

The main menu has six modes: Racing, Stories, Dog Fights, Battle, Clock Race, and Options. It is also the only part of the game to have a music track. However, there exist six unused sound tracks in the ROM.

Before starting a mode, the player must select a character. The selection menu is very buggy, and choosing a character causes a different one to be playable, except for Cranky Kong. For example, selecting Diddy Kong causes Krunch to be playable instead. The sound that each character makes when highlighted does not correspond to the correct character as well. When a character is highlighted, they are not aligned with their sepia shadow; additionally, the sepia backdrop has Candy Kong but highlighting her shows Redneck Kong instead, meaning the color character select screen had not been edited yet; Cranky Kong's pose is different as well. The following "Select World" menu shows the character that will actually be played as, with the exception of when Dixie is selected. In this case, a glitchy black rectangle taking up the entirety of the character sprites' parameters will be shown, and playing will result in Diddy appearing. As such, the rectangle is likely the remains of Redneck Kong's data.

The Racing mode allows the player to select a world, each with an associated level difficulty. Unlike its predecessor, Diddy Kong Pilot only features four characters racing on a course at a time; the main goal remains the same: racing three laps around a course and getting first place. Many of the core features are similar to Diddy Kong Racing, such as how the player can collect bananas and pick up an item from item balloons appearing around the course. Zippers also return in the courses, and they give racers a speed boost.

The Stories mode has three different stories: King of Kongs (Diddy Kong), Back to the Light (Dixie Kong), and K. Rool's Gold (K. Rool). This mode is almost entirely non-functional, but it was intended to have a unique story for a certain character and a final boss at the end. This build seemed to be in the process of removing Stories mode, since K. Rool's Gold did not work in this build but did in the very early build.

The Dogfight mode features players fighting against each other. There are four options and none can be accessed: Classic Dogfight, a Dawn Duel, a Classic Variation, or a Focal Feud.

The Battle mode was planned to be a multiplayer mode, and its icon shows a crate containing miscellaneous objects. Another version has a different icon showing four original Game Boy Advance units hooked to each other via a Link Cable.

The Clock Race mode was presumably planned as the Time Trials mode. It has little to no difference from the Racing mode, but it allows the player to easily select a stage, similar to the debug menu. Unlike the debug menu, most of the stages crash in this option.

The Options mode is untouched from E3 2001, retaining the same background graphics as the E3 2001 character selection screen. It only gives the option to use either D-Pad or tilt control to steer the plane. This was completely scrapped in October 2001.

Controls

 * or : Move in the desired direction.
 * Acceleration
 * Use weapon
 * or : Tilt at a sharper angle
 * or (twice): aerial roll
 * and Down (twice while accelerating): U-turn
 * Pause the game

Playable characters
The character selection menu is highly incomplete, as highlighting a character would trigger a sound effect from an unrelated character. The game was planned to include more than seven characters. Selecting a character causes the game to choose an entirely different character instead. Redneck Kong was playable in earlier builds, such as E3 2001, and was a very short-lived idea from the designer of the project. He was replaced by Candy Kong in a later build. Despite her appearing on the character selection screen, she was not implemented in this build. She also appeared on the main menu, in the "Dog Fights" animated icon and battle mode portrait.


 * Status unknown
 * Funky Kong (none of his data except the Space World 2000 remains)

Items
Most of the items reappeared from Diddy Kong Racing except for peanuts, watermelons, and eggs. The player can carry up to a few items at a time. Most of the items can be obtained from sky blue-colored item balloons with a yellow question mark on them. Item balloons also have a green and DK variant, and both have unfinished functionality. Both provide an item, either with an icon of Cranky or Diddy, and neither are functional.

There is also a chained barrel item in screenshots from Space World 2001, but it goes unimplemented in this build. There are also unimplemented and.

Race tracks
The game was planned to feature 24 tracks, with four in each of the six worlds. Only five of the courses can be selected from the Clock Race menu, and they are marked in bold.

Stories
The game was planned to feature 36 dogfight and battle levels. Only "Hair Raising Rescue" is playable in this build, where the player has to catch ghosts and move them to a pond. There are 41 coffins on that map.

Characters
Mario characters would have originally made an appearance. While the idea had already been scrapped at E3 2001 in development, the graphics still remain in the ROM. The playable characters included:
 * Bowser
 * Cranky Kong
 * Diddy Kong
 * Dixie Kong
 * Funky Kong
 * Donkey Kong
 * K. Rool
 * Mario
 * Princess Peach
 * Toad
 * Wario
 * Yoshi

K. Rool's Gold
K. Rool's Gold was a functional story in the build. It is inaccessible in the September 2001 build, although its graphics and story remain inside of the ROM:


 * Genie
 * Nikiki (red)
 * Nakaka (green)
 * Nukuku (blue)
 * Nokoko (yellow)

Menu

 * The title logo is smaller and has a slightly different font, and its wings are slightly more pointed.
 * Diddy's plane is pointed directly towards the screen.
 * A tilt option was present in the Debug menu.
 * Dog Fights had a different menu.

General

 * Redneck Kong was a playable character.
 * The "Racing" mode was called "Tournament".

Characters and background

 * The background had less colors and was brighter. In a leaked build, it was instead used for the Options menu.
 * The sepia background graphic of the characters was different:
 * Cranky Kong's pose is slightly different.
 * Redneck Kong is shown instead of Candy Kong.
 * Dixie Kong does not have two curly hairs on the left side.
 * Krunch's toenails are smaller.
 * K. Rool's goggle outfit is smaller.
 * A highlighted character on the menu aligns with their sepia background, as this was before it was in the process of being redesigned.

Menu

 * The text has a black outline.
 * The item box had a different shape and contents, being rectangular-shaped instead of square.

Map

 * The flame is yellow instead of orange in the lava course.
 * The boundary is orange instead of blue.

General

 * The current lap number is shown in between the course icon.

Trivia

 * The background of the Stories menu has two photographs resembling official artwork from Diddy Kong Racing.
 * The map of Magma Mainland would be reused in Banjo-Pilot as the lower background layer of the dogfight against Bottles in the Feather Cup, but the track itself cannot be raced on. Differences include: a darker layer consisting of both the lava and the track; a big hole in the center; the removal of the finish line and boosts; and the removal of the cracks in the center island.