10 Kart Racing Games You Won't Believe Exist

4. Banjo-Pilot

Muppet Race Mania
THQ

With news that Banjo-Kazooie will be joining the ranks of Super Smash Bros., it's time to revisit one of the beloved duo's less-favoured games.

Everyone's favourite bear and bird combination first appeared on the Nintendo 64 back in 1998 and have laid dormant since 2008's disappointing Nuts & Bolts.

Before our furry and feathery friends vanished from gamedom, they were involved in 2005's Game Boy Advance exclusive racer Banjo-Pilot, which, as you can probably figure out from the title, saw our heroes take to the skies rather than to the track.

The game was originally supposed to be called Diddy Kong Pilot and serve as a sequel to 1997's Diddy Kong Racing. However, the rights to Diddy Kong and other Nintendo characters were lost when, in 2002, Microsoft purchased Rare. This led to Diddy and his pals being replaced, and this version of game was eventually released three years behind schedule.

Sadly, all this extra development time didn't result in rave reviews. As we've seen many times on this list, this game was tarred with the "Mario Kart clone" brush, averaging just 68 on Metacritic.

Still, if you want a bit a variation in your karting games, at least this has planes in it rather than cars. That's got to count for something, right?

Contributor
Contributor

Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.