| Banjo-Pilot | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Rare |
| Publisher(s) | THQ |
| Composer(s) |
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| Series | Banjo-Kazooie |
| Platform(s) | Game Boy Advance |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Kart racing |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Banjo-Pilot is a 2005 kart racing video game for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) and the fourth installment in Rare's Banjo-Kazooie series. It plays similarly to the Mario Kart series by Nintendo: the player races one of nine playable characters around tracks, attacking other racers with bullets and collecting power-ups. The game features a number of single-player and multiplayer modes, such as time attack and item hunts. Unlike other kart racing games, characters control airplanes instead of go-karts.
Rare and Nintendo announced Banjo-Pilot at E3 2001 under the title Diddy Kong Pilot. At this point, it was the sequel to Rare's Diddy Kong Racing (1997), and featured characters from Nintendo's Donkey Kong and Mario series. However, company politics and Nintendo's concerns about quality delayed Diddy Kong Pilot past its planned release date in March 2002. After Microsoft acquired Rare in September 2002, it lost the rights to the Nintendo characters and replaced them with characters from its Banjo series.
THQ, which made a deal with Microsoft to publish Rare's GBA projects, released Banjo-Pilot in January 2005 to mixed reviews. Although critics praised its visuals, they felt it lacked originality and labelled it an inferior clone of Mario Kart.