Banjo-Karting/Banjo-Kazoomie (lost prototypes of "Banjo-Kazooie" racing games; mid-2000s)

The logo of Banjo-Kazoomie.

Status: Lost

Banjo-Karting and Banjo-Kazoomie are two lost prototypes of Banjo-Kazooie racing games. They were developed by British video game developer Rare Ltd.

Banjo-Kazoomie

Sometime in the early 2000s, after Microsoft's purchase of Rare, Rare started to develop two new Banjo-Kazooie games for the Xbox. These games were Banjo-Threeie/Banjo-X and Banjo-Kazoomie. Development of Banjo-Kazoomie started sometime in 2004 after the release of Grabbed by the Ghoulies.^[1] Banjo-Kazoomie would have been a game where players would construct their own vehicles and race against characters from the Banjo-Kazooie franchise and other Rare series. The prototype was cancelled, but the concept may have evolved into Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, which was released 4 years later on Xbox 360. Brendan Gunn, the prototype's developer commented "I’ve always wanted to do a racing game. I got to spend two weeks working on a prototype racing game for the Xbox. It was codenamed ‘Banjo-Kazoomie’, and it was a kind of kart racer, but you constructed the karts out of different parts, so I guess it was kind of a precursor to Nuts & Bolts. But for those two weeks, I was doing the driving mechanics for it."^[2] It was originally thought that Banjo-Kazoomie was a working title for the 2005 Game Boy Advance video game Banjo-Pilot.^[3] No builds of the prototype has been leaked online and no gameplay is available.

Banjo-Karting

Banjo-Karting (also known as The Fast and The Furriest) was a prototype for the Xbox 360 that was made shortly before the release of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts in late 2008. The prototype was built upon the racing parts of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. However, in the early 2010s, Microsoft ordered Rare to shift to Kinect projects only, leading the project to be cancelled. One of the cars designed for the prototype was used in the Xbox 360 version of Sonic & Sega Allstar Racing, and concept art for the game is also available online.^[4] No builds of the prototype have been leaked online and no gameplay is available.