|
|
|---|
 First flight |  Happy Halloween |  Time for church |
|---|---|---|
 Autumnal forest |  Cavernous lair |  Wintry village |
 You aren't a leaf... |  Christmas tree |  Project Dream? |
Incensed to learn that she is not the most attractive resident of Spiral Mountain, Gruntilda von Winkybunion kidnaps Tooty the Honeybear with the intent of stealing her good looks. Tooty's brother, Banjo, and his red-crested breegull partner, Kazooie, enter Gruntilda's lair to break Tooty out.
Bright colours, catchy music, fun sound effects, addictive gameplay; how Rareware was able to do better than Nintendo in the 3D platforming game department is still open for debate. What isn't debateable is how this game manages to appeal to everyone, including people who had never played a Nintendo 64 before. While not officially considered an N64 killer app, its popularity sent the N64 rocketing past the Sony PlayStation and whatever dregs of the Sega Saturn and Atari Jaguar were left in the market.
A scrapped feature from this game, internally called "Stop'n'Swop", served as a major source of myth and disinformation on the early internet's rumour mill. The rudiments of this feature involved the slow speed at which the N64's Rambus memory chips wiped themselves. During this time, the player was supposed to stop playing Banjo-Kazooie and quickly substitute another "Stop'n'Swop" enabled game (which most likely included Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, and Jet Force Gemini, but may have also had some effect in GoldenEye 007 as well). However, Nintendo was concerned that players would damage their consoles by changing out games while the console was still running. Eventually, the "Swop" mechanic was made moot by a new generation of RDRAM that later N64 consoles had built into them, but Nintendo had already ordered Rare to drop the matter by the time the next game in the line was produced. Rumours circulating online at the time spun wild tales of "Stop'n'Swop" compatibility in such unlikely games as Super Mario 64, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. One tale I personally fell for involved collecting the extra life on top of Ticker's Tower, then swapping out for Mario 64, whereupon Luigi would be waiting for you inside a heretofore invisible box on top of the elevator hut in Big Boo's Haunt. Oh well.
I'm not totally sure what drew me to this game in the first place, but it was one of my favourites. When it came time to start selling my N64 games to EB Games in order to finance a new Sims expansion pack, Banjo-Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing went first because, I was in middle school! I wasn't a kid anymore! Those games are for babies! Pfft. Well, anyway, I started playing this game again promptly in 2011 when I got my Mayflash N64 USB adapter and could use my yellow N64 controller to play on the emulator, a mere 8 years later! Anymore, it's the Logitech F310 on M64Py.
1000/10, would absolutely recommend for everyone, regardless of age, gender identity, or skill level. This game's physics are more forgiving than Super Mario 64, in that Banjo moves more slowly, won't often take more than 1 unit of damage (except in the case of very high falls), and can even increase his available health by collecting empty honeycombs (1 additional unit for every 6 honeycombs found). Also, for people unfamiliar with the controller (though who plays with the 3-armed monster anymore?), the player can choose to have Bottles the Mole give them a tutorial. This may prove a bit strange on Nintendo Classics, as the button names have not been updated for alternative controllers (or on emulation, where the button names could not be updated for archival reasons), but I'm sure you can figure it out.
