Banjo Pilot is a fun cartoon racer similar in style to Mario Kart by Rare. One of my favourite games of old was N64's Diddy King Racing, again by Rare.
The 8 racers have a variety of weapons that are all very uninteresting and unoriginal. There's a golden feather that makes you invincible, Mumbo's head that disables your opponents, turbo trainers give you a speed burst, saucer of peril takes out the leader, red eggs fire in front, blue eggs that fire behind you and stick in one spot to hinder the opponent. They are all clearly derivative of Mario Kart, though they are all at least relevant to the Banjo universe having appeared in older Banjo games.
From the start you can choose from a choice of 4 racers- Banjo, a Jinjo, Kazooie and Mumbo Jumbo. A further 5 characters are hidden and unselectable initially, though the mystery of who the hidden characters are is somewhat spoilt by their identities being revealed in the manual
Each has three ratings, acceleration, top speed and ability to bank.
Banking in the game is very important. Rather than taking the Mario Kart approach of blocking enemy projectiles by deflecting said projectile with your own, in Banjo you have to actively avoid it. The avoidance is done through banking. Hold L and left, the pilot will roll left, right and you will roll right. Holding L and down will perform a barrel roll which sees you loop up and behind the enemy attack. Getting used to it is a little difficult, but after a while you should be able to block most enemy attacks, even the powerful saucer of peril.
Before the game came out it supported control by tilting the GBA, similar to the control seen in Made in Wario 2, Happy Penachu and Yoshi UG. However it's been dropped from the final game, which is very disappointing. Rather than just flying left and right, you can also go up and down to collect objects. The other big difference to DKR is that you can only control planes. There are no karts or water crafts of any sorts, again disappointingly.
The lack of ground based vehicles has also meant no secret technique for cornering. In other games a speed burst is obtained by performing a technique at corners, there is no such trick for Banjo Pilot. This leaves very little scope for time trial times improvement, and for a very sedate time trial as the pilots don't go very fast in the 1st place. There is an injection of speed when you go through speed burst symbols, but it's still very sedate in Time Trial.
The other real mockery of time trial is the suggested time by Rare. They recommend times for best lap and total time and you earn extra music notes. Get enough music notes and you can unlock extra stuff from the pages of Cheato's book. The problem with the suggested times is they are ridiculously easy to beat. On my very 1st go I smashed both the lap and best time records. And I'm far from being a racing game enthusiast or expert. HMM.
The other modes are where the game does start to shine though. There's the obligatory Grand Prix mode, and the real star, Jiggy Challenges. GP mode predictably sees you race against 7 others in gradually harder Cups. There are 4 cups, each containing 4 races on different courses. All the
courses are based around old B-K levels, so you have things like Spiral Mountain, Freezy Peak and Treasure Trove Cove. You get points for your placing, and if after 4 courses you are top of the table, you get something slightly different. What you get is a face off dogfight against the courses leader.
The dog fight involves working the opponents energy bar down, you take it in turns to fly behind and ahead the opponent. The perspective changes for this and when you're being attacked from behind you get much stronger weapons through the pick up's to even it all up.
Rather bizarrely Rare have left a retry option in the game. Select it and you can try the race or fight again. However you can use this as many times as you want with no detriment, meaning the challenge of finishing 1st in the last race is somewhat nullified as you can retry the race as many times as you wish. A totally bizarre oversight.
Where that oversight isn't an issue is in the games best mode, Jiggy Challenges. In this mode you have to only race one opponent, the mole Bottles. He's very fast, and to make it harder you have to collect jigsaw pieces around the track. They start off dotted fairly close to the racing line but get progressively more and more obscure. You have to really go out of your way to get some and still win the race.
The main criticism I've read is the graphics. From screen shots they look a total mess. In reality they look quite decent. Whether it's because I'm playing it through the superior DS screen or not, the game is certainly much more pleasing when it's in hand.
Extra battle modes, racers, tracks and speed boosts can all be bought from Cheato's book by collecting enough musical notes. I haven't played multi player as it requires every player to own a cart.
The game isn't a patch on Mario Kart or DKR. However, it's fun and priced alarmingly cheaply at Tronix. I paid ?10 for mine, and before it arrived I doubted it wouldn't be worth that from some of the screen shots and reviews. After a good play I was pleasantly surprised. It will appeal if your a fan of Banjo as it keeps all the little jokes and quirks from the series.
The 8 racers have a variety of weapons that are all very uninteresting and unoriginal. There's a golden feather that makes you invincible, Mumbo's head that disables your opponents, turbo trainers give you a speed burst, saucer of peril takes out the leader, red eggs fire in front, blue eggs that fire behind you and stick in one spot to hinder the opponent. They are all clearly derivative of Mario Kart, though they are all at least relevant to the Banjo universe having appeared in older Banjo games.
From the start you can choose from a choice of 4 racers- Banjo, a Jinjo, Kazooie and Mumbo Jumbo. A further 5 characters are hidden and unselectable initially, though the mystery of who the hidden characters are is somewhat spoilt by their identities being revealed in the manual
Each has three ratings, acceleration, top speed and ability to bank.
Banking in the game is very important. Rather than taking the Mario Kart approach of blocking enemy projectiles by deflecting said projectile with your own, in Banjo you have to actively avoid it. The avoidance is done through banking. Hold L and left, the pilot will roll left, right and you will roll right. Holding L and down will perform a barrel roll which sees you loop up and behind the enemy attack. Getting used to it is a little difficult, but after a while you should be able to block most enemy attacks, even the powerful saucer of peril.
Before the game came out it supported control by tilting the GBA, similar to the control seen in Made in Wario 2, Happy Penachu and Yoshi UG. However it's been dropped from the final game, which is very disappointing. Rather than just flying left and right, you can also go up and down to collect objects. The other big difference to DKR is that you can only control planes. There are no karts or water crafts of any sorts, again disappointingly.
The lack of ground based vehicles has also meant no secret technique for cornering. In other games a speed burst is obtained by performing a technique at corners, there is no such trick for Banjo Pilot. This leaves very little scope for time trial times improvement, and for a very sedate time trial as the pilots don't go very fast in the 1st place. There is an injection of speed when you go through speed burst symbols, but it's still very sedate in Time Trial.
The other real mockery of time trial is the suggested time by Rare. They recommend times for best lap and total time and you earn extra music notes. Get enough music notes and you can unlock extra stuff from the pages of Cheato's book. The problem with the suggested times is they are ridiculously easy to beat. On my very 1st go I smashed both the lap and best time records. And I'm far from being a racing game enthusiast or expert. HMM.
The other modes are where the game does start to shine though. There's the obligatory Grand Prix mode, and the real star, Jiggy Challenges. GP mode predictably sees you race against 7 others in gradually harder Cups. There are 4 cups, each containing 4 races on different courses. All the
courses are based around old B-K levels, so you have things like Spiral Mountain, Freezy Peak and Treasure Trove Cove. You get points for your placing, and if after 4 courses you are top of the table, you get something slightly different. What you get is a face off dogfight against the courses leader.
The dog fight involves working the opponents energy bar down, you take it in turns to fly behind and ahead the opponent. The perspective changes for this and when you're being attacked from behind you get much stronger weapons through the pick up's to even it all up.
Rather bizarrely Rare have left a retry option in the game. Select it and you can try the race or fight again. However you can use this as many times as you want with no detriment, meaning the challenge of finishing 1st in the last race is somewhat nullified as you can retry the race as many times as you wish. A totally bizarre oversight.
Where that oversight isn't an issue is in the games best mode, Jiggy Challenges. In this mode you have to only race one opponent, the mole Bottles. He's very fast, and to make it harder you have to collect jigsaw pieces around the track. They start off dotted fairly close to the racing line but get progressively more and more obscure. You have to really go out of your way to get some and still win the race.
The main criticism I've read is the graphics. From screen shots they look a total mess. In reality they look quite decent. Whether it's because I'm playing it through the superior DS screen or not, the game is certainly much more pleasing when it's in hand.
Extra battle modes, racers, tracks and speed boosts can all be bought from Cheato's book by collecting enough musical notes. I haven't played multi player as it requires every player to own a cart.
The game isn't a patch on Mario Kart or DKR. However, it's fun and priced alarmingly cheaply at Tronix. I paid ?10 for mine, and before it arrived I doubted it wouldn't be worth that from some of the screen shots and reviews. After a good play I was pleasantly surprised. It will appeal if your a fan of Banjo as it keeps all the little jokes and quirks from the series.
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