Diddy Kong Pilot (2001): Difference between revisions

Rare's other two ''Donkey Kong'' installments from E3 2001, ''[[Donkey Kong Racing]]'' and ''[[Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers]]'', were delisted from Rare website in August 2002,<ref>[https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/7645/changes-to-rares-website Changes to Rare's Website]</ref> one month before Microsoft's acquisition of Rare on September 24, 2002, while ''Diddy Kong Pilot'' received no official announcement of the cancelation, ''Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers'' was planned for release on December 7, 2001,<ref name="gbx">[https://archive.org/details/GBX-Magazine-Print-Collection/04%20GBX%20October%202001/page/10/mode/2up GBX Magazine Game Boy Xtreme issues 4 (October 2001)], page 10.</ref> but ended up being unpublished.

On January 14, 2013, this prototype build was released online.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20151206022331/http://www.retrogamesuk.net/diddy-kong-pilot-alpha-2001-rom-release/ Diddy Kong Pilot Alpha 2001 (ROM release right here!)]</ref>

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:

|'''Beach 00'''

|Beach 01

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.<ref>[https://www.ign.com/articles/2001/05/23/diddy-kong-pilot IGN]</ref> 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.<ref name="DK Vine"/> 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. However, the portrait during Hair Raising Rescue (Haunted 01) can be loaded via hacking.{{footnote|main|3}}

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!colspan=4|Default characters

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!Character selected<br>''Highlighted''

There is also a chained barrel item in screenshots from Space World 2001, but it goes unimplemented in this build.<ref>{{media link|DKP12.jpg|A screenshot of Krunch racing in Frosty Lake}}</ref> There are also an unimplemented {{media link|DKDKP.jpg|yellow single rocket boost item}} and {{media link|DKPBalloon.jpg|unnumbered peanut item}}.

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!colspan="3"|Image

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'''.

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!colspan="12"style="font-size:125%;text-align:center|<font color=white>Sleepy Shores</font>

==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.

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!colspan="12"style="font-size:125%;text-align:center|<font color=white>King of Kongs</font> ([[Diddy Kong]])

|}

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!Story !! Dogfight/battle