Banjo-Kazooie is one of Rare's most beloved properties, and while the series is now firmly entrenched on Microsoft hardware following the company's purchase of the famous British developer, Nintendo fans will always have a soft spot for the bear-and-bird duo thanks to the fact that they made their official début on the N64.
Over the past few days Rare's Gregg Mayles - one of the longest-serving staffers at the firm and the brother of ex-Rare artist and Playtonic co-founder Steve Mayles - has been tweeting various bits of design and concept art which show the genesis of the game.
Mayles reveals that in early design documents, the game was more like Donkey Kong Country and adopted a "semi-3D" perspective rather than full 3D. He also explains that Kazooie wasn't involved right at the beginning. The early focus was collecting fruit rather than musical notes, too.
Gregg Mayles is hard at work on Sea of Thieves, a new Rare title for the Xbox One. Rare is also preparing the release of Rare Replay, an Xbox One collection of its classic games, including Banjo-Kazooie.
Steve Mayles, on the other hand, has teamed together with a bunch of other ex-Rare staffers to recreate the old magic with Yooka-Laylee, which enjoyed an amazingly successful Kickstarter campaign and has been confirmed for Wii U.
[source gonintendo.com]
Comments 15
Guh-Huh!
Can't wait for Rare Replay next week. I totally missed N64 ear due to being a 'cool' teen back then, kinda missed that whole gen.
So much to catch up on, and all the 360 Rare games too. Great collection, such a pity it's not for the WiiU, oh well. Best dust off my Xbone tonight and update it in preparation for this release
Really love Banjo Kazooie.
I would love there to be a collectors art book with all these scraps of early ideas. And making of.
@readyletsgo - Oh you missed n64 gen!? Oh noes! Noooo! It was one of the best revolutionary eras! :'[
@KO-Cub haha, I knoooow.... Yeah I missed it, I have a few n64 games on the VC, but I do find some hard to go back to. But it's ok, I'll keep trying, when I get through my backlog of GameCube, Wii and WiiU games, so many games!
Seeing these pics reminds me of my own short time at Rare.
I have a bunch of original design documents for Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge in a box at home. If I'm recalling things correctly they're actually design docs for an early version of the game that was in development for GBC that never saw the light of day. The game did eventually get moved to GBA however, which is the portable version of the game that everyone knows about.
@Kirk Fancy writing a feature about the game's development? I'm serious!
This stuff is amazing insight.
And his link to @InTimsWorld led me to find out that Tim and Chris still do awesome things.
@Damo @Kirk Yes, please. Would be so interesting. Anything as long as we talk about Banjo! Good idea, Damo.
I recently just got an Xbox one to go along side my Wii U, can't wait to down load Rare Replay next week. Also cool pictures.
@Damo @doomgc I didn't work on the game long enough, or see enough of the rest of it beyond the levels I worked on, to have anything of note to say about it to be honest. All I did was mess around on a couple of backgrounds for some of the levels and then I left Rare shortly after. I spent most of my time at Rare on DKCC.
I could send you the physical documents for that original version of Grunty's Revenge though, and you could maybe put them in an article or something. As long as you pay the postage, because I'm genuinely that skint lol
@Meaty-cheeky I did the same. And i think it's one of the best combinations.
@readyletsgo Or you could try Project64 on PC for the games that you don't have but definitely should try. Project64 emulates the N64 perfectly and can even be controlled with N64 controllers by means of a USB adapter...
Seeing this game for the first time convinced me to buy an N64.
Interesting stuff!
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