No, you're not suffering from déjà vu; this article originally appeared on the site in June this year, and we're republishing it as part of our 'Best of 2018' series which celebrates what we feel were our finest features of the past twelve months. Enjoy!
Here is a sobering thought. It’s been twenty years since developer Rare’s famous bear and bird first burst onto the video game scene. Yikes. Making its debut on the Nintendo 64, Banjo-Kazooie is an iconic platformer, chock-full of humour, pioneering spirit and ambitious ideas. A masterclass in the 3D platforming genre, the game is right up there with the likes of Super Mario 64 and other first-party Nintendo titles of the era.
In it, you play as Banjo and Kazooie, a bird and bear, exploring the lair of wicked witch Grunty in a quest to save Banjo’s sister, Tootie. You traverse nine (it's technically eleven, including the hub and training area) super-immersive worlds collecting items - lots of items! - that open up yet more content and secrets. It’s early days 3D platforming at its best, before the advent of DLC and the internet holding your hand every step of the way.
We caught up with two of its developers, Chris Sutherland and Steve Mayles, now the head honchos at Yooka-Laylee studio Playtonic Games, to chat about Banjo-Kazooie’s origins, its development and the secret to the game’s enduring popularity.
Codename: Project Dream
Rare was a special place in the '90s. Pre-YouTube and pre-online gaming news, the development studio almost had a mythology surrounding it, a small team of developers operating out of a converted barn in sleepy Twycross, Leicestershire. Chris recalls a number of special factors coming together, both “creative and situational” that eventually gave rise to Banjo-Kazooie, which grew out of the legendary 'Project Dream'. “At the core, we were a small team that had worked together for some time. Before Project Dream started, we’d been working on Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Country 2, which were games that were developed in one year, so we were all itching to finish something as soon as possible.”
Project Dream started out as an experiment in “2.5D platforming”, where the main character had undergone a massive transformation, from pirate to bunny to bear. “Thankfully the bear was chosen, else you’d all have been playing ‘Bucky McBunny and the Quest for the Golden Carrot’. Or something,” says Steve Mayles. “The influence of Mario 64 showed what could be done on the N64 and we felt the 2.5D game wasn’t a big enough step forwards.”
Opting for a fully 3D game and agreeing on its protagonist, Banjo, Kazooie wasn’t far behind. Originally conceived as a means of simply giving Banjo a double-jump, she would evolve into the shade-throwing and hyper sassy “Red-Crested Breegull” we’ve come to know. Starting out as a quirk in Banjo’s backpack, Chris says, “we added legs for a fast run move, so with wings and legs already coming out of the backpack, the logical step was to have a whole bird in there.”
Other scrapped content, characters and themes from Project Dream would later make their way into the game’s sequel, Banjo-Tooie. In the game, if you go to the tavern in Jolly Roger Bay, you’ll find the scrapped antagonist for Project Dream, Captain Blackeye, drowning his sorrows. Speak to him enough and he’ll eventually fall over, lamenting:
I were in this fine game… Arrr! I had a dream once. A bear stole me glory… Looked a bit like you ‘e did.
It’s a clear nod to the early days of the cancelled project. And twenty years later, Rare has finally developed its long-anticipated pirate game, Sea of Thieves, although Blackeye is yet to make an appearance.
The Birth of Banjo (and Kazooie)
On its release in 1998, the colourful, eye-popping visuals and memorable characters of Banjo-Kazooie were on a par with the likes of Mario 64. Graphics, gameplay and controls were super-tight, Rare's development teams having had two extra years to get to grips with the N64 and learn how to squeeze the most out of the console. The sheer size of environments like Freezeezy Peak, experiencing Click Clock Wood in four different seasons, exploring the grounds of Mad Monster Mansion and playing the piano with a giant hand… It was impressive in the relatively new space of 3D gaming. “For me, it was the freedom to explore the whole world,” says Mayles. “When we got things working like swimming underwater, and flying for the first time in Treasure Trove Cove, it was great. I’d fly as high as I could above the Jinjo on the ship’s mast and beak buster straight down – you’d either collect the Jinjo or die. It kept me amused for hours.”
Other memorable characters, like Clanker “the giant metal shark thing” were not easy to pull off, pushing the N64 to its limits. Not only was the character huge, but he was also animated - throw in the player being able to interact with him and it added up to major challenges with frame rate. Mayles recalls it being a persistent problem, working with small texture sizes of 64x64. “We overcame this by manually cutting up larger textures into usable pieces. Sure, you might have got a few more seams, but the result was worth it. We’d seen earlier N64 games with blurry, muddy textures and really wanted to improve in this area. Something we did a lot of was render hi-res models with lighting then apply these textures to the in-game models. It definitely helped give the game the rich, detailed look we were after.”
Alongside its environments, the characters you meet are what make Banjo-Kazooie one of the N64’s most memorable titles. As with all Rare games of this era, it was often the company’s own developers and staff that voiced their creations, giving them the most authentic voice possible, even if - as in Banjo-Kazooie’s case - that was simply a bunch of well-edited sounds. Sutherland, AKA: the voice of Banjo, recalls the origins of the character’s famous “Guhuh” and the decision to go with sounds, rather than voice acting. “I think it may have even been Tim [Stamper] that suggested the “Guhuh” style noise. When we switched from developing Dream to Banjo, there was a focus on getting the game finished as soon as possible, so we knew that one thing that could save us development time would be to swap prerecorded speech for text. We did want to maintain the feeling of speech though, thus the development of the vocal noises that play as the text appears. I probably spent many a drive to/from work muttering strange sounds in my car!”
Cut Content and Easter Eggs
The internet has found the majority of Banjo-Kazooie’s secrets and extras, including extensive exploration of the scrapped Stop ’n’ Swap feature, but there are a couple of more subtle references you could have missed, such as a screenshot (portrait) of Project Dream hanging in Banjo’s house, and the 1881 barrel in Mad Monster Mansion being “a reference to the ZX Spectrum game Atic Atac.” Pretty deep cut.
“There were plenty of ideas, of course, some which made it over into Banjo-Tooie, but in terms of assets, we wasted very little,” says Mayles. “There was an awesome new idle animation for Banjo-Kazooie, ‘cack bad egg’, where Kazooie hilariously pooped out a rotten egg which gassed Banjo. But Chris didn’t put it in. I’ve never forgiven him. Did I ever tell you how he always removed frames from my Donkey Kong animations to save his precious memory from being used up?”
Clues of a scrapped post-game adventure also exist, Grunty being trapped under a rock, which the player can interact with, and the witch firing a spell at the end of the game that, seemingly, does nothing. “There were a couple of mad ideas thrown around near the end of the project,” says Mayles. “The spell Grunty fires was going to hit Banjo and turn him into a frog and you’d have to play again, as a frog…and also multiplayer.” Multiplayer, of course, made it into Banjo-Tooie, but not the frog. Although, playing as a T-Rex in the sequel was arguably cooler.
Legacy and Nostalgia Factor
The popularity of Banjo-Kazooie has endured. Search the game’s title in YouTube and you’ll be greeted with pages of 'let’s plays', reviews and soundtrack compilations. Part of that success is, at least in part, due to its first generation of players coming of age and looking for very specific content on YouTube, but there is a lot to be said about the game's brand of humour and cartoonish visuals that surely have helped it stand the test of time. “It will date less quickly,” says Sutherland. “Added to that, it was one of the more visually advanced N64 titles of its time, aided by us choosing a 30Hz (mostly!) frame rate,” and all the other tricks the team used to achieve it. “Those returning [to Banjo-Kazooie] will often spot jokes in the visuals or dialogue they didn’t quite ‘get’ first time around. I think the way the game appealed on multiple levels to kids and adults helps show the game in a positive perspective for those looking back.”
Whereas visuals can age and become dated, relationships between characters hold up for far longer. Banjo and Kazooie’s contrasting personalities created something distinctive that, when players return, is still amusing by today’s standards. “Having two characters, rather than a single protagonist, also helps,” says Sutherland. “Because each has quite a different attitude, and the interactions between them [are more relatable] in the players’ minds. We weren’t the first to do this of course, and even then it wasn’t deliberate from the start, but it can be very effective.”
Mayles appreciates character development but cites Banjo-Kazooie’s special kind of world-building immersiveness as a primary reason the game still has a fanbase and that there is a market for Playtonic’s flagship title, Yooka-Laylee. “Banjo-Kazooie was one of the earlier games, certainly on the N64, that created a fully immersive, believable 3D world, which players could get lost in and just have fun. We tried to ground things in reality a bit more than Super Mario, give everything a reason for being there, a story, and I think people really appreciated it. The nostalgia factor is very strong [with these same people] and is part of the reason Yooka-Laylee had such a successful Kickstarter.”
Sometimes when you go back to N64 titles, the experience can easily fall short of expectation. The pioneering days of 3D gaming were not always the most pleasing to look at, with players being able to count the number of polygons that made up their protagonists and a lot of games suffering from short draw distances. Despite this, Banjo-Kazooie - with it’s popping colours, relatable characters and solid gameplay - holds up really well. “I often see messages on Twitter of people doing playthroughs of the game for the umpteenth time,” says Mayles. “Very occasionally I’ll break it out, drag the kids off Fortnite and we’ll have a go. I’m usually consulting the internet to help me remember by World-4 though!”
It’s easy to see the impact that Banjo-Kazooie has had, especially from the very first screen of Yooka-Laylee. Even the game’s menu is lifted directly from the N64 outing, now rendered in beautiful HD and is a nostalgic treat to look at. Throw in some “Pagies” (the game’s equivalent to Banjo’s Jiggies), some massive sprawling worlds, as well as humorous characters and you are on to a pure Banjo-Kazooie nostalgia trip, which fans of the original series will have no problem subscribing too.
To celebrate Banjo-Kazooie’s twentieth year, dust off your N64, slam in your battered cartridge and experience a piece of history; when Rare worked for Nintendo, 3D platformers were all the rage, and controllers had three handles.
Comments 66
So, Banjo games on Nintendo Switch ?
Aw, I thought the article was going to be about Rare finally collaborating with Nintendo again for a second...
A great game on a great machine. It's a shame they haven't been able to recreate and update that magic for modern gamers. But I do hope they keep trying.
I really should play this game one day. I’m pretty sure I have it on my Xbox One and I definitely have access to it via emulation.
Twenty years... bloody hell!!! I can remember eagerly awaiting the release of this... so eagerly, in fact, that I bundled down to my local GAME in Romford a week too early! I can still remember my disappointment! Funny how such events linger in the memory.
I really didn't think Yooka-Laylee captured the nostalgia of Banjo-Kazooie that well but it was kind of close I guess. It was a good game, just not an amazing one. I must remember to replay it at some point actually and Banjo-Kazooie too of course. 😄
Please Microsoft, let them do a Crash Bandicoot style re-vamp of the original games for all platforms.
Now that would be the best, I think it would probably out-sell the upcoming Smash game
@Anti-Matter you never know. Nintendo Andy MS seem to have a good relationship at the moment
Best characters ever.
Rare Replay for the Nintendo Switch. While a long shot it does seem like it could happen more then ever!
It would probably sell better then what the Xbox sales of it were.
Awesome article and great to read this on my lunch break at work. Still one of my most loved games of my younger years and at 28, I still look back at it fondly. Never got round to playing 'Tooie, though
I’m more of a Conker guy but Banjo was pretty cool too. A friend of mine would always use Banjo on Diddy Kong Racing back in the day. Good times.
That sound effect for collecting a music note is edged into my DNA.
The characters were quite lame actually. A generic bear. The IPs of Rare were never that strong (boring character design, think Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, Joanna Dark, Grabbed By The Goulies), but they had some amazing games.
Banjo Tooie was and still is one of my most favorite games out there. I go back to it every now and then for pure nostalgic bliss.
Also goes without saying its soundtrack is superb.🤙🏼
Never played this game, a big regret. Hope this makes a comeback, hopefully modernized r at her than bit to bit port. I can say that couldn’t stand the Yooka game. Maybe was not the best game to play on Mac.
hope they bring the game to the Nintendo Switch. they can't just show us this article and give us nothing...
One of the greats
I have very fond memories of this one.
I really wish Microsoft and Nintendo could work out a deal to get Rare Replay to Switch.
I remember this game. It and Tooie were some of the highlights of the series for me. Yooka-Laylee was good, but not as good as the first two Banjo games.
Too bad everything went downhill after Tooie...
Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie have aged really well as far as I'm concerned. Yooka-Laylee was, in my humble opinion, the Banjo-Threeie we never got.
"20 Years After The Release Of Banjo-Kazooie, We Speak To The Guys Who Made It"
I heard they can be a bit slow to return their calls.
Eh, I always thought that the BK games were overrated. Full of character and humour, but the core gameplay was identical to Mario 64 - apart from having to replay the entire game just to play the best bits. I also always preferred Mario opting for the “kick you out the stage once you grab the star/jiggy” approach to BK’s “keep going til you feel like quitting”. Not quite sure why.
And the frame rate in Banjo-Tooie is one of the few times I’ve actually complained about FPS (returning to Goldeneye’s Frigate 10+ years later being the ONLY other case).
That being said, the Unlimited Flying cheat in BK1 was untold amounts of fun.
@GeminiSaint Sorry but Yooka-Laylee was complete junk IMO thanks to the game mimicking the awful camera system from the Banjo-Kazooie N64 games, and also, to me, the N64 Banjo-Kazooie games have aged worse than something like Super Monkey Ball on the GameCube.
Splendid game still after 20 years! If you haven't played it, you must. You won't believe it's 20 years old. Much of the gameplay Is timeless and that's a testament to the excellent programmers who worked on it. Graphics still hold up - a rarity for the N64 - and Grant Kirkhope's music is sublime!
Banjo 64 was basically why I stopped gaming as a kid - didn't officially come back for decades. In my memory, the game set more horrible precedents than it did good ones. DK 64 and Banjo rubbed me so wrong, specifically the collectathon bloat or the feeling of "collecting things IS the purpose of the game itself" that I didn't buy another modern console for 2 decades (borrowed GC for Zeldas/Kart/Smash - owned a DS for MM Zeroes and IGAvania's only).
Banjo set 2 horrible precedents; 1) "every MPC is super smug and sarcastic and kind of an a-hole or meta" in 3d games (see the recent RARE pirate game DLC commercial); 2) annoying padding that stops the flow of the game: specifically boring collectathoning and characters yapping on and on and on, when you just want to play the game - both of these things giving you little reward (felt like Mario Odyessey FINALLY fixed/perfected that style).
Banjo and DK 64 were important because they showed strong attempts of personality injection into these new HUGE open 3d space (Grant Kirkhope is a god and really helps this). Mario 64 may have been way more fun, but it felt a little "quiet". DK and Banjo were hugely important in this regard. But as far as games as games go...as a kid they gave me my final great existential crisis of "why, what's the point of this".
Yooka reminded me of everything that pushed me out of gaming for almost 20 years - and I couldn't believe they didn't evolve their formula into something special. But at the end of it all...just like with the original Banjo designs, all these character designs felt sooo second hand and uninspired. The release of Yooka was shameful.
I mean, it wasn't no Bomberman 64 but whatever.
I liked Yooka-Laylee, but Gregg Mayles' creative direction and level design were sorely missed. He was pretty much Rare's Miyamoto, but he's busy with Sea of Thieves now.
@GamingDude800 I believe there are far worse games that are much more deserving of being called "complete junk", like, say, Superman 64. Yooka-Laylee, while not perfect, certainly did a lot of things right, and I know for a fact I had a metric ton of fun playing it to 100% completion. As for its camera system, yeah, it did have some quirks, but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the game at all. The august 2017 patch added in a more modern camera system anyway, so there's that.
As for Kazooie and Tooie, I replayed them both to 100% completion last year (thanks to Rare Replay), and I still stand by what I said; that they both aged like fine wine.
@GeminiSaint I don't know whether the GBA version of Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge would be considered as Banjo-Threeie. If I remember correctly it was made by Rare after they had departed from Nintendo when Rare had stopped making games for the N64, but were allowed to still make games for the GBA.
@wazlon I feel that one was more of an "interquel", set between B-K and B-T.
@GeminiSaint I guess there was Nuts and Bolts on the X360 but let's not go there.
Nintendo should never have sold Rare.
I have rare replay for the Xbox one and still love the game. Unfortunately rare has changed a lot. Most of those employees are not even there anymore.
@mgnoodle It would be pretty cool if Microsoft would at least allow Banjo-Kazooie to be playable in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
How the great have fallen....
@GeminiSaint totally agree with you about how the games aged. They're still excellent, superb! And I do have to play Yooka Laylee. Not that I expect the same quality, but if it's fun with nice challenge and content, it'll be ok.
The first Banjo brings me such nice memories to mind. Everything in the game is very well crafted and it's really full of content with some great challenge. Everything rounds up perfectly. No loose ends. It's very very very hard to see this level of game being released these days unfortunately...
I really don't get the appeal on this...Too much dialogue.
Banjo Kazooie was amazing, nuff said!
As per my previous comment on this, surely Nintendo and Microsoft can get a dialogue so we can get a re-make, or even a port of the Rare collection to switch
What a wonderful game!! I've just noticed that I had bought it 20 years ago on my N64. I was between Yoshis Story and Banjo, i bought Yoshi to be honest, I finished it in the morning and I returned it back to the store the same day afternoon for buying Banjo!! Best choice of my early life!!! <3
"We speak to the guys who made it"
The game designer is Gregg Mayles, you didn't talk to him, he works at Rare and not at Playtonic, just to make it clear. This is also the main reason why Yooka-Laylee is not as good.
@Bunkerneath [About your Rare Replay on Switch comments] If so Nintendo should allow Xbox to get Diddy Kong Racing, Donkey Kong 64 and the DKC trilogy on Xbox as well as part of the agreement but Nintendo would never be that generous even if it meant having the wonderful Rare Replay collection on Switch.
@BlueOcean No, all I was saying is, the games that originated on Nintendo consoles should be alowed to be released again on the newer Nintendo platform. Not Nintendo IP on a different platform.
@Bunkerneath So first Nintendo sells their shares in Rare to Microsoft (and after that Stamper brothers sell their shares too) and now Nintendo "should be allowed" to release Rare's games on Nintendo's consoles? Nintendo didn't develop any of the games and some of them were self-published by Rare.
All that Nintendo deserved and was legally given was their IP properties games: Donkey Kong and Star Fox. They also got the new Kong characters designed by Rare in the process, basically all of them, because even Nintendo's Donkey Kong was redesigned from scratch and Rare's Diddy (replacing DK Jr) became a video games star.
The N64 was the second Nintendo home console I ever had (after the NES in the 1980s). I never had a SNES. It was quite a shock playing this game (and Super Mario 64) for the first time after spending so many years playing 8-bit games on the NES. It was almost like I had stumbled into an alternate dimension or something (😆).
Anyway, Banjo-Kazooie has remained one of my favourite games of all time. I must have played it (to 100%) about 10 to 20 times over the years (including on the XBox). ❤️
@gatorboi352
Yes. I was in college when Bomberman 64 came out and my friends and I played the heck out of it (along with Mario Kart and Goldeneye, of course). I know you were kidding, but I actually got more out of it personally than Banjo-Kazooie. Banjo is definitely still one of the top games for the N64 though.
@BlueOcean this is 100% true.
Nintendo didn't want to purchase Rare and already got many freebies out of Rare leaving them.
DK wasn't even an evergreen IP before Rare got their hands on it.
I feel like nostalgia goggles and the internet have blinded us a bit with regards to these games. Yes they were great games. But we seem to have elevated them to almost mythical levels.
It might be because it's something people want but can't have.
I want an N64 for this, mystical ninja, and castlevania 64.
Im so mad I ever got rid of my Christmas morning 64 :/
@Razer Yeah they were and still are awesome games the ones that Rare made and most of the times surpassed Nintendo's own efforts.
Just replayed it again over the Christmas weekend. Still a charming game above all else, it always has a special magic for me no matter how old I get
@Koudai1979 I think RayMan has a better chance due to the UbiSoft games. I would rather face Banjo or RayMan over a Rabbid.
New banjo comming??😊
Put rare replay on switch god damb it!
Rare Replay on Nintendo Switch would be incredible.
@Anti-Matter only reason I came here
@Pazuzu666 So, Banjo-Kazooie for Smash now ?
@BlueOcean #47
This makes logical sense. I slightly doubt that Nintendo would even the games on their console, as they're basically just advertising the IP of one of their biggest competitors.
I know there's Minecraft., But that's a different situation, as Microsoft purchased the game for its education potential rather than for exclusivity.
Banjo Kazooie was one of the best games on N64 and surpassed Mario 64 in many ways. I miss old Rare... Has anyone with an Xbox One played Sea of Theives and is it any good?
@FarkyValentine The visual style, sound and character design of Sea of Thieves is brilliant. The water is the most beautiful that you've ever seen in a game. At launch the game lacked content but now it has tons of things to do.
It is a great game for relaxing but you can also have a lot of fun and face very dangerous situations with friends or people that you meet in the game. When you meet people in the game you can try to befriend them and then evade or fight other ships or form an alliance.
You can go treasure hunting, exploring islands, sailing the seas, fighting skeleton ships (these are not controlled by humans but skeletons!) and sea monsters, dive into a sunken ship while escaping the sharks and find mysterious skulls and chests. One of the friendliest things that you can do is the merchant quests which entail collecting and delivering crates or animals.
One of the things that make the game immersive is the unusual realism in spite of the cartoon art style. You have a big map in your ship and a compass and island maps in your pockets but there is no satellite navigation system so you are sailing for real! You can't see where the others are on the map so you have to communicate with them by several means or stick together. I like using the lantern and you can turn it off and on repeatedly like a SOS code (but really meaning "I am here"). If you all use the microphone communication is easier. There is also a text wheel that automatically translates the defined messages (like in other online titles). It's an awesome game, really beautiful and fun.
Oh, and you can't die. Well, you can but you respawn. The worst thing that can happen is that someone or something sinks your ship because with it there goes your loot, but you still can try to repair it or, if that's not possible, recover the treasure swimming and/or using a rowboat. In the meantime, of course, someone can try to steal it. Better to sell your stuff as soon as possible (money can't be stolen). Another good thing is that your crew can't betray you. Well, they can, but they don't win anything and you can scuttle the ship if they do. The possibilities are almost infinite in this game but the gameplay is balanced and even if human beings can be naughty, a much bigger threat can emerge from the water...
Banjo-Kazooie for Smash Ultimate. Im 100% certain its going to happen. Im even hyping it right now, without Nintendo having it confirmed. Its just... After everything: The hints, the recent figmas of Banjo-Kazooie, all these interviews... This must be it. They are doing something, and i believe this will be for Smash. They wouldent be advertising this for no reason.
Banjo Kazooie was tightly designed. The levels were big without being confusing. There were clever puzzles. Any mini-game type affair was completely playable.
However Yooka Laylee (And Banjo Tooie), completely lost this magic.
Banjo Kazooie changed my life
I don't think I actually played much of the N64 games. I probably should.
I played the GBA game almost 100% but didn't beat the final boss, I think.
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