Banjo-Pilot

Banjo-Pilot is a kart racing game featuring characters and environments from the Banjo-Kazooie series of platform games. It plays similarly to the Mario Kart series by Nintendo: the player, controlling a character in their vehicle, must race opponents around tracks. The player views the gameplay from behind the character's back, and must manoeuvre their character throughout the race. All races are three laps long and feature elements that confer advantages, such as offensive power-ups.

Collectible, golden music notes, an element from the Banjo platformers, are scattered around tracks as well. Banjo-Pilot is distinguished from other kart racing games because the player controls airplanes instead of go-karts, allowing them to move up and down. However, the planes do exhibit behaviours normally associated with karts, such as slowing down over rough ground. The planes are equipped with bullets that can be shot at other players; they can also do a barrel roll to avoid attacks from others.

Rare developed Banjo-Pilot for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) for nearly five years. At the beginning, Rare was a second-party developer for Nintendo and was known for creating games in Nintendo's long-running Donkey Kong franchise. As such, the game was originally titled Diddy Kong Pilot, a sequel to Rare's 1997 game Diddy Kong Racing, and would feature characters from Nintendo's Donkey Kong and Mario franchises. While it could be played using the GBA D-pad, Diddy Kong Pilot allowed players to control the characters by tilting the system, as the cartridge contained the same accelerometer technology used in Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble (2000).

Rare chose to focus on planes rather than cars because it wanted the game to stand out against other GBA racers. Nintendo and Rare announced the game at E3 in May 2001, and presented demos to attendees there and at Nintendo Space World in August. Journalists reacted positively to the demos, with particular praise for the visuals.

According to Metacritic, a video game review aggregator, Banjo-Pilot received "mixed or average reviews". Many reviewers thought the game lacked originality and believed placing the characters in planes was not enough to set it apart from other kart racing games on the GBA. GameSpy and Nintendo World Report (NWR) noted the planes still had behaviours traditionally associated with go-karts, such as slowing down when not on the track. NWR also argued the manoeuvres the planes could do were worthless and did not add anything to the experience.

Eurogamer thought the planes made the game feel more 3D but reduced it to favouring luck over skill. C. com wrote that removing Nintendo characters and the tilt controls prevented the game from bringing innovation to the kart racing genre.