Proto:Banjo-Pilot/Diddy Kong Pilot 2001

The early build of Diddy Kong Pilot is the earliest known version of the game that became Banjo-Pilot. The ROM bears a striking resemblance to a version of the game shown at Spaceworld 2000/2001, but there are some differences that indicate it comes from a slightly later point – mainly since it contains unused resources that were seen in action during the Spaceworld 2000/2001 demonstration.

Debug Menu
When the ROM is first started up, the debug menu is immediately loaded.



This menu has three options as shown in the picture above and listed below:
 * Level
 * Player
 * Blend

The list can be navigated using the d pad. Using the A and B buttons will scroll through what is available for each option. Pressing Start will start the race. The names listed under levels are as follows:

A majority of the levels that can be accessed here are placeholder levels that don't have much in them and cannot be raced. These levels tend to use placeholder graphics. Only a minority of the levels can actually be raced.

The second option in the list is "Player". You can scroll through options 0 through 5 and selecting a different number will select a different character.

"Blend", the last option, displays the following:

Main Menu
This prototype has a different main menu than its later counterparts. The main menu has six selectable options: Racing, Stories, Dog Fights, Battles, Clock Race, and Options.

Racing
Selecting this will bring the player to a (very buggy) character select screen.



What makes this screen buggy is that the characters don't align with the background like they are supposed to and selecting one character will select another. For example, selecting King K. Rool will select Donkey Kong. There are six selectable characters on this screen include Diddy Kong, Donkey Kong, Cranky Kong, Dixie Kong, Kritter, and K Rool. Candy Kong cannot be selected at all. There is also a Kong unique to this prototype, known as Redneck Kong, that can be highlighted but you can never play as him.



After the player is selected, the list of selectable tracks screen appears. Only Sleepy Shores and Polar Plateau can be played. The tracks Kongo Kingdom, Western Wastes, and Island of Eggs, all crash the game for unknown reasons.

Options


One interesting fact is that this game has an option under the Options menu to change the control method of flying the planes from using the D-Pad to using tilt motion. This was completely scrapped in later versions of the game. When selecting tilt motion from the Options menu, the game will tell you to lay your Game Boy Advance flat and press A to start. If you do, you go back to the title screen.

It isn't known how accurate or how well the tilt motion works, since no emulator has such a feature (yet) and nobody has access to the original cartridge this ROM was dumped from. The game does recognize when tilt motion is enabled, though, as the D-Pad is disabled during races.

Splash Screens


Splash screens of the Nintendo and Rare logos exist in the ROM, but are never loaded. Note that the copyright date on the Nintendo splash screen says 2001. Banjo-Pilot, the game this prototype eventually became, was released in 2005.

Characters
As shown from the demonstration at Spaceworld 2000/2001, there were going to be Mario Characters in the game. At this point of development, that idea was scrapped but the old character select icons from that Spaceworld, along with character sprites, are left unused on the ROM. The older character list included 12 characters: Bowser, Dixie Kong, Donkey Kong, Funky Kong, Cranky Kong, Mario, Peach, Toad, Wario, Yoshi, Diddy Kong, and K. Rool.



The video below is from the demonstration of Diddy Kong Pilot during SpaceWorld 2000/2001. The character select icons along with the character select sprites can be seen in the video starting at 0:14.

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