Ringing In the New Year With Delays

Time to brush up on your GoldenEye 007 or buy up those Player's Choice games when they come out at the end of the month, because another round of game delays is on the horizon for Nintendo. Revealed on Nintendo's official web site, release dates are becoming even more spread out, with just about a game a month.

Here's the schedule as of today:

Yoshi's Story - March 9, 19981080° Snowboarding - April 1, 1998NBA Courtside - April 27, 1998MLB Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. - May 25, 1998Cruis'n World - June 29, 1998Banjo-Kazooie - July 27, 1998

The odd thing here is that Banjo-Kazooie is delayed until July 27(!). It's now slated for release over a year since we saw a playable (and finished-looking) version of the game at E3. It's speculated that originally, Banjo-Kazooie was planned to be a 64DD title. The game was then changed to a cartridge title, and, at last year's E3, the release date for BK was set as November 23. When BK was delayed and Diddy Kong Racing took its place, the game fell into a spring release, and now, summer. Because the DD is probably coming in the summer or fall, Nintendo needs a strong title to launch with the peripheral in North America. Pocket Monsters or Mother 3, no matter how well those games are going to do in Japan, won't be the kind of stellar game Nintendo needs on the DD - Banjo-Kazooie is.

While as of press time we could not confirm the existence of Banjo-Kazooie on DD, it certainly would make a lot of sense.