I'll always have fond memories of Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64. The game was fun, it had different vehicles, there was a story mode, and it provided a ton of kart-racing mayhem. I never thought about it as a kid, but I would have really loved to play a sequel.
As it turns out, a follow-up titled Diddy Kong Pilot was in the works for the Game Boy Advance, but due to Rare being sold to Microsoft, that project was scrapped and turned into Banjo Pilot. And we all know how that one turned out. According to RareWare Central, all that's left of Diddy Kong Pilot is a beta cartridge which shows off some colorful graphics and rough gameplay.
The game was originally meant to feature characters from the Mario and Donkey Kong franchises, and tilt controls were being implemented into it. Both ideas were axed early on. According to Paul Rahme, who worked on developing the game, Rare was about five months into the project when it was told to switch it over to the Banjo series and finish it up. Obviously, developing a game isn't such a speedy process, so we ended up getting the underwhelming Banjo Pilot.
According to Rahme, Rare spent five months attempting to make changes and fix bugs, but it couldn't add new music. As a result, Banjo Pilot still uses the music of what would have been Diddy Kong Pilot. It's a shame Diddy Kong Racing never got a proper sequel. Well, at least we'll always have this lost beta footage.
