How often do gamers commend the bravery of the people who make games for them to play? A gamer might respond: How often do the games they play give them reason to?

How often, though, do gamers, myself included, have trouble distinguishing bravery from stupidity, innovation from mistake?

Bravery is a value developers seldom promote. Bigger, we hear. Better, we're told. More badass, it's hyped.

Bravery? That commodity goes unsold. Yet last year I found bravery through another B-word: Banjo. I found it in a game that I mistook for stupid, for which I was stupidly mistaken. This was Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, a sequel from Microsoft-owned Rare studios, a game no one thought was slavishly copying its predecessors or other games, but a game that was possibly an evolutionary error. Again, my mistake.

The early Banjo Kazooie games, made in the 90s in the shadow of Super Mario 64, were character-based platforming games. You controlled Banjo the bear, who ran around in yellow shorts and a blue backpack that contained his bird-friend, Kazooie. You jumped. You squashed enemies. You collected shiny gold things. And while that all made the game a lot like Mario, it wasn't until Banjo's fourth game, the 2008 Nuts & Bolts, a game I played in 2009, that I realized how those early Banjos weren't just similar to Mario but similar to just about every other game. To put it another way, when I played Nuts & Bolts, I realized how different this new one was from just about every other game I'd ever played.

The difference between Banjo new and Banjo old wasn't what you'd think it was, had you tried the game early like I did or seen an ad or read a preview. The new game was bigger and — here's a nice b-word — beautiful, offering players some of the most vast and gorgeously designed cartoon 3D worlds ever rendered in a video game. Vast as the game world was, it wouldn't make sense to force the player to run through Banjo's world. While the game would require the player to squash enemies and collect shiny gold things, the player would be abetted in that adventure with vehicles: Cars, planes, tanks. Just as the railroad, the automobile and the passenger plane made our great Earth small enough so that we could traverse it like 17th-century settlers in a village, Banjo's vehicles would make his great world down to the scale of his earlier ones.

Nuts & Bolts would be a platformer with vehicles — that was the innovation, yes? Or, to some, that was the ruin. Change our games for sequels, gamers chant, but the backlash sometimes betrays them: Don't change them too much. Banjo needs a floating platform on which to jump to, right? Cars don't jump onto floating platforms, not well.

Rare pitched another innovation with the new Banjo, one that easily aroused suspicion. This new game, they showed, would let gamers create their own vehicles, opening access to a garage of collectible fenders and engines and wings and egg-shooting guns. Wheels, tired, fuel tanks, springs, armor, chairs, trays, rear-view mirrors and rocket engines. Plug them all together and don't think too much about how user manipulation of content might interfere with tight, careful level design. For those of us who liked being led through a Banjo Kazooie obstacle course of a level, it now seemed we'd have to do more of the work ourselves, not only going through the course, but constructing our means to do so.

Rare conceded one cheat: They'd make some vehicles for the player, make it easy. You don't need to build your own, they said. You don't need to customize your cars, trick out your rims, pretend you're playing LittleBigPlanet or do your own mash-ups. Just play with what we give you, if you must. That's how I decided to play.

So early last year, I put Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts in my Xbox 360 and started to play and started to get disappointed yet again. This was not the Banjo of old, the one I knew I liked and had recognized it wouldn't be. But it was also something that didn't feel like a good change. First impressions, thankfully, can be wrong.

I played with custom vehicles, driving my Banjo car or flying my Banjo plane across a field or through some giant innards of a computer, collecting shiny things and hauling stuff. I found some racing levels, and frowned. Rare had said that we shouldn't worry that Nuts & Bolts was a racing game, despite the addition of racing levels. But, oh, here was racing.

Then, a turn happened, both in the game and in my attitude. And it happened on a racing track. The old way you play games — the way I first attempted to play Nuts & Bolts for a few hours — is that you try a level or a mission and, if you fail, you try it again. Maybe you gain experience points, your character levels up and it gets easier. Maybe, more often, you just try it and try it and get better, learn the intricacies of the mission or level, and finally you get it. That's how it normally works. That's how I've approached Mario games. That's how I've approached Banjo games. That's how I've approached racing games.

In Nuts & Bolts, however, in one mission, I kept failing. I couldn't win a race. The other racers passed me every time. I messed up the same turns. And I probably could have overcome all that by trying and trying and trying again. But the lightbulb went on. I went into the Nuts & Bolts garage. I started rebuilding my vehicle. You construct these vehicles as if you're making Lego builds, bolting on cubes and cones, latching one part to the next. I was having trouble making a turn? I'd reshape the fender. A guy was passing me on the sides? I'd add a gun on the side to shoot him away. I was falling behind? I added an extra engine, some extra fuel and then lightened the chassis so I was still swift enough.

I didn't get better at the game. I made myself better at the game — by making something better for myself.

And I didn't only have to do it in racing levels. I could do it in collection levels. I did it in aerial dogfight levels. I made planes when I think they thought I'd make helicopters. I made an absurd transforming boat when I think they thought I'd use a car. I mad a vehicle that could bounce over my enemies instead of fighting them. I took glee and breaking things apart and solving problems my way.

That's how I discovered the bravery. This wasn't a game designed for me to sit back and play it, nor was it a game that allowed me to make some simple tweaks. This was a game that presented some problems and, in a manner of speaking, gave me the ability to break it, to hack it, to re-set the rules by re-setting what my character could do. It would be like allowing a player to give Mario a gun or offer Lara Croft a jetpack. Or, it would be like allowing Master Chief to suddenly be a foot shorter if there was a level in Halo where he needed to be harder to hit or if, in Madden, I could change the shape of the football to match my technique and get the bounce I wanted.

My Banjo discovery changed the way I played the game. It also changed my view of the kinds of problems we face in games and the ways with which we might be given the opportunity to address them.

What I thought was a mistake of design revealed itself to me as bravery, as a developer willing to concede control to its player, willing to let its player mess with its game. This wasn't classic Banjo. This wasn't classing anything. This was new. This was bold. This was brave and maybe the best thing about 2008 gaming I experienced in 2009 or any other year, a breakthrough I couldn't appreciate in an hour of playing time, but that I found at long last.

Pricing for me, in these here United States, is $19.99 USD and the downloadable version of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts necessitates 6 GB worth of bear and bird storage. Me? I already have a copy (or two) and don't feel the need for another, despite liking the game enough to not outright dislike it.

You? Are you on board with these Games on Demand releases? Or would you rather have a disc, a toxic green case and a manual to never read?

Games on Demand: Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts [Xbox Live Marketplace]

The Xbox 360 version looks to have taken advantage of Sega's offer to include bonus mascot characters in the form of Rare's famous bird and bear. And Microsoft has apparently given Sega and developers Sumo Digital the green light to include Xbox 360 Avatars.

Hey, it's not Gum from Jet Set Radio in a kart shaped like an in-line skate, but I suppose it'll have to do. I mean, Sega was nice enough to include Shadow the Hedgehog, so how can we possibly complain?

TSSZ News spotted the pre-announcement reveal of the Xbox 360 version of the box art, which seems to confirm the inclusion of Banjo and Kazooie by putting the Rare pair on the cover. The Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing with Banjo-Kazooie title is another hint that seems to confirm that at least one version will feature a bear and bird battling it out against Sonic the Hedgehog and Ryo Hazuki the forklift driver on race tracks under blue skies.

While it appears that the Xbox 360 version is getting a guest appearance, none of the other platforms show cameos on their respective box arts. Of course, things could change and we could be pitting Sonic against, say, the Echochrome wooden doll next year. But we'll believe it when we see it! On Sega.com!

FIRST @ TSSZ: It's Real…Banjo-Kazooie in ASR [TSSZ]

Rare has definitely been hard at work tightening up the graphics o level three. The split screen shot looks a little darker on Xbox Live Arcade, but sharper and darker is better than bright and blurry, isn't it?

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"The Music Machine" was based on a line of other products, including albums - back when they were, in fact, albums. The seller indicated his elderly mother owned a Christian bookstore, and, while going through her things, came across the game. It puts a real twist on the cliché of your mom chucking out a rare baseball card or comic book you later find out is worth thousands. I

If the guy is taking care of his mom, and it sounds like it, then it sounds like the dough will be put to good use. Or he could be spending it all on hookers and cocaine, who am I to make judgments of people I've never met? C'mon, I'm trying to be a nice guy here.

Sealed Atari Game Sells for Over $5,000 [Hot Blooded Gaming]

CVG's source "close to the platform holder" says that sales of action-adventure eyesore Kameo: Elements of Power are largely to blame for the decision to stop development on a follow-up. According to NPD data, sales of the original Xbox 360 launch title totaled a little more than 300,000, less than half the sales of launch peer Perfect Dark Zero, so that decision may have been a wise one.

(On the bright side, Kameo: Elements of Power sales over the course of four years outperformed two other Rare titles, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.)

But it appears that Microsoft's first-party needs for Project Natal software is taking precedent. Rare is said to be hard at work on a handful of unannounced games for the controller, now under the watchful eye of Microsoft Game Studios creative director Peter Molyneux.

Kameo 2 canned by Microsoft [CVG]

Rare's Mark Betteridge tells MCV, as part of a feature on the first-person shooter, that the company's "sights are trained on Natal." Betteridge calls the Xbox 360's motion and voice controller a "a great opportunity to break new ground with content and gameplay."

Rare has been said by owner Microsoft to be "intimately involved with Project Natal in a number of different dimensions," according to soon to be ex-Microsoft VP Shane Kim. The developer was reported to be staffing up in anticipation of the Natal launch in 2010. Hopefully, that will help give them the identity that Peter Molyneux thinks they so desperately need.

"[Project Natal is] also an opportunity to exercise some genre evolution," Betteridge says, "so hopefully we'll be able to develop something on that front."

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? If the answer is a first person shooter/boxing game based on the adventures of Killer Instinct's T.J. Combo, than it sounds like we are.

Update: Microsoft wants to "clear up the confusion around this topic," saying that Betteridge's quote from MCV was "misconstrued."

"We have not announced an FPS Natal game nor any other specifics about Rare's projects in development," reads a statement from Microsoft. "Rare is currently working on several projects, the details of which will be announced at a later date."

Shoot to thrill [MCV]

4J Studios seems to be doing a fine job of updating the original Perfect Dark to HD for its Xbox Live Arcade incarnation. Elvis is certainly looking healthy, all spruced up and ready to rescue Joanna from the clutches of the vile Skedar. Check out the other two screens below to see how the environments and weapons are coming along.

Asked in the latest RARE Scribes mailbag why Donkey Kong 64 isn't on the Wii Virtual Console, the guy delegated to answer this gave a throw-up-your-hands questions that sounds like earlier answers regarding Goldeneye and whether we'll ever see it again.

I have no idea why DK64 hasn't shown up yet, and whether Jetpac would still be in there or they'd replace it with Mario's Cement Factory (which ate about three years of my life as a child) or something. Or maybe a single-screen 2D shooty version of Jet Race would be more appropriate. Who knows? Not us, obviously, or we wouldn't be sitting here pitching clueless alternatives.

Sounds like a "don't ask me, I just work here," type of response. And who can blame 'em?

Addressing a reader question about Goldeneye ever getting an agreement between Nintendo and Microsoft, releasing it to current generation consoles, Rare said, alas, no.

That was some time ago, my friend. Fate was against us that day. Destiny conspired to raise the hurdles even as we attempted to clear them, resulting in unpleasant groinal injury. I suspect we're long past the stage where an agreement was on the cards, but you never know. Stranger things have happened… somewhere … probably.

Dead is how we'd characterize it for now. It's a shame. It'd be a no-brainer moneymaker, but because Nintendo and Microsoft can't figure out who gets paid first, or the most, a re-release of Goldeneye is not meant to be. Not many things were.

GoldenEye 007 for Wii VC, XBLA "Long Past the Stage Where an Agreement was On the Cards" {Nintendo Everything]

It isn't exactly rare for a game developer to show up on Twitter these days, so why is Rare so keen to get the information out? Perhaps it's their way of reminding us that they're actively working with Microsoft's Project Natal, as seen in the tweet they pointed out specifically in their email?

Rare is recruiting designers. Excited by Natal? Got loads of cool new ideas? Think differently to others? Take a look on our website.

Or perhaps they just want to make sure we don't miss out on their awesome haiku skills?

Red Cliff haiku review... Running time: six years / Even spears through chests get dull / John Woo, moar guns plz

Or maybe they just want to tease fans with unannounced projects?

Three slices so far of Nic's homemade cake to mark his nine years' service at Rare - good man. Nic's team is now hard at work on

Whatever the case may be, they certainly seem to be having fun with it, so you might want to keep track of Rare's new Twitter. Who knows when they'll announce a Project Natal-enabled sequel to Killer Instinct?

Peter Molyneux, creative director of Microsoft Europe, wants to help Rare have more of an identity. Here, let's let him say it in his own words: "Actually one of the things I really want to do is help Rare have more of an identity," says Molyneux. "I was totally blown away from the amount of talent that there is at Rare, but it's just that they come from a background where Nintendo required them to be this very, very secretive company. I just want to give them the confidence to tell the world what they're doing. I hope you're going to see more from Rare and I want to help them get well known."

We thought Rare was already pretty well known — but well, that's just us. While Molyneux is hatching plans for Rare, the company is currently hard at work on numerous Natal Projects. Hey, that's it! Call it Rare's Natal Project. That should do it.

Molyneux: "I want to help Rare have more of an identity" [GI via Eurogamer]

In a word, Perfect Dark looks sharper, thanks to its high-definition upgrades and "sporting a silkier framerate than ever before." In hard numbers, that translates to 1080p resolution and 60 frames-per-second. The official Xbox.com product page also touts "All the original game features are included plus new Xbox LIVE ones."

First screens of the Xbox Live Arcade port of the 2000 classic await you in the gallery below.

We've been looking for Rare at E3. Microsoft's Shane Kim, corporate v. p. at Microsoft for Xbox 360 strategy and business development, didn't exactly tell us where they are, but he did tell us what they're up to.

"Rare is intimately involved with Project Natal in a number of different dimensions," Kim said, referring to Microsoft's controller-free game control set-up that's been the buzz of E3. "They're doing an awful lot of work, even outside the traditional game space, I would say. Unfortunately I can't go into a lot of detail about that. Rare is alive and well and really having a broader impact on the entire Xbox world than just doing the games they traditionally have in the past."

Rare's most recent publicly shown projects were last year's Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise. Rare also created the Avatar system launched last last year across all Xbox 360s.

Previously, Molyneux founded Bullfrog Productions where he created "god games" like Populous. After leaving Bullfrog, Molyneux created Lionhead Studios, which has churned out titles like Black & White and The Movies. That studio was purchased by Microsoft in April 2006.

In his new role, the game designer will oversee the creative direction of fellow UK Microsoft studio Rare, as well as other European external projects. He will continue to be based in the Lionhead offices. And those worried about his involvement in future Lionhead titles, Molyneux tweeted, "thanks for the support everyone. Just to be clear I will still be as involved with the design of lionhead games as ever was."

Molyneux becomes European creative director at MGS [Develop]

According to Hryb, it's running in 1080p, and will be out this "Winter".

The news isn't surprising, since it's been heavily rumoured for a while now, but still. It's pleasant.

[Major Nelson @ Twitter]

First officially unveiled at E3 2008, Microsoft's Avatars were seen by many as an attempt to cash in on Nintendo's success with their "Mii" characters, caricatures that had become wildly popular as the individualized mascots of Nintendo's new Wii system.

Included as part of a wider upgrade to the Xbox 360's user interface, dubbed the "New Xbox Experience" (or "NXE"), the Avatars were designed by the team at Rare to be part-dress-up doll, part-online identity, and, rather than being simple Mii clones, were the product of years of hard work at both Rare and Microsoft.

This is their story.

IN THE BEGINNING

"We (Rare) had been mulling an idea like this for several years", says Lee Musgrave, Rare's lead artist and one of the people primarily responsible for the design of the avatars. "The idea that you could play multiple games, bought separately, with the same (self-styled) character is something that we thought was pretty compelling, and something that would really be a benefit to the console in general".

Rare's initial idea for their avatar system was simple: create a single identity, tied to a user or a user account, that would be represented by an on-screen character of the user's design, and which would be able to be carried over between games.

"We kicked the idea about internally, did some very scant groundwork on the kind of technical work that would be required to get something like this to work, flung a few emails about our thoughts across the Atlantic [to Microsoft's head offices in Redmond, Washington]...and then Nintendo announced Miis".

Oops.

Unsurprisingly, Musgrave says, momentum on Rare's project began to pick up pace after Nintendo first unveiled their own avatar system in May 2006. Rare's thunder was stolen by the Kyoto company's bold, console-wide initiative for their new Wii console.

But with stolen thunder came renewed focus for the team at Rare. "When we heard through internal grapevines that the Xbox platform team were putting together a completely new dashboard interface", Musgrave says of Microsoft's initial plans for the NXE, "we made it our business to get the work we'd already done on ‘shared characters' in-front of them".

Rare's fledgling avatar system (indeed, it can be said Rare itself was fledgling at this stage, with the company having failed to deliver a certified AAA hit since being purchased by Microsoft in 2002) was shown to Microsoft. Microsoft loved it, green-lit the project with a new, greater scope (the avatars would now be bound to the console itself) and things took off from there.

WHO WAS DRIVING?

By this stage, the project was being driven by a select number of Rare personnel: head of production Lee Schuneman, designer Dale Murchie, art head Lee Musgrave and animator Nick Makin.

"The project team working through early ideation," Musgrave says. "And [the] concept [team] worked closely with the Xbox LIVE team to ensure the avatar's became active, living, breathing personas across the consumers' entire Xbox 360 experience."

"Once we moved from pre-development into actual implementation, about a dozen core team members from Rare worked hand in hand with Xbox to bring our shared vision for the avatars to life". These extra hands included Chris Sutherland, Bjorn Madsen, Rod Boyd, Gareth Lough, Ryo Agarie, John Doyle, Will Overton and Rare's internal animation and rigging teams.

NAILING "THE LOOK"

"We labored long and hard on the look of the avatars from the outset", says Musgrave. "Our main goal was to create a style that did not alienate ANYBODY . . . this was about bringing people TO Xbox, not turning them off, and we deliberately went about creating something that was intrinsically human, but customizable to a point where people could express their personality within the system".

"At the same time, we were careful not to make it SO customizable that it became a playground only for highly creative people who wanted to turn their Xbox avatar into a monster. We danced around the exact level of creativity to open up with Avatars several times, and I think we eventually hit a spot with the faces, hairstyles, clothing and accessories that allow people to portray themselves pretty nicely, and with a certain ‘edge' if they are so inclined."

Throughout this piece, you can see examples of early concept work for the Avatars, Rare's art and design team toying with several varying styles of character before slowly approaching the short, stocky figures that would comprise the finished article (final image at bottom of article).

As for what the Avatars wear, Musgrave says that, rather than attempt to dress the Avatars themselves, Rare enlisted the services of a number of fashion consultants. These fashionistas helped Rare "put together hundreds of pieces of visual reference from all kinds of fashion styles and genres", which Rare then modeled and modified to fit the Avatar's art style.

Of course, the avatars didn't launch with "hundreds" of pieces of clothing. And six months on from release, additions to those options have been few and far between. But Musgrave says that the initial range of clothing options available – whose limited nature and range has drawn a little criticism from users – is "actually something that is not fully appreciated yet", with many articles of clothing designed in the Avatar's gestation period yet to see the light of day.

Musgrave is also at pains to point out that the clothing options "can be added to infinitely over time, to give us angles into pretty much any kind of trend or genre that you could imagine." So if happy pants come back in, people, don't worry: your avatars should be covered.

PUTTING THEM TO WORK

So the look and idea of the avatars was coming along. Yet for them to actually mean something, they had to be more than just dress-up dolls. They had to be characters. Avatars that didn't just represent a gamer physically, but could be controlled by them as well.

"We ensured throughout the entire technical development of the Avatar system that we kept one eye on the big prize, which was getting these things into as many places, products and games as possible", says Musgrave. "To this end, we actually wrote TWO avatar systems that are available for other developers to use, and a whole boatload of documentation and guidelines as to how developers should go about using avatars in their own games".

The first of these allows developers to take a console's Avatars and, using the 3D model as a base, rip still images from them in a variety of poses. This is the simpler of the systems, to be used mainly for games or programs that use 2D images, and users can even try it out themselves: it's the same tech employed by the "photo session" tool used to snap a pic of your avatar for a user's gamerpic.

The second system is more complex, and allows developers to lift an avatar model's geometry and textures and use it in a 3D game. While we haven't seen much use of this to date, Musgrave says that this tool can be "slotted into the code of any ‘in-development' Xbox application", so it shouldn't be too long until Microsoft – like Nintendo already has to great success - starts using avatars more extensively as game characters.

THE MUSIC

With the art and technology now sorted, there was one more thing to take care of. The music — which, for an avatar system, sounds meaningless! They're a visual thing, after all, so music…eh, whatever.

Yet anyone who has created an avatar will know that perhaps the most endearing aspect of the whole thing is the music featured, and in particular, the catchy chimes that play when a user saves changes to their Avatar.

This crucial, yet under-appreciated side of Avatar development was handled by Rare music man Steve Burke, with help from Dale Murchie along the way.

GO FOR LAUNCH

The Avatars made their public debut with the release of the New Xbox Experience on November 19, 2008. And while the NXE brought welcome changes to the 360's dour user interface, it quickly became clear that the main attraction of the update were the Avatars, their widespread use and acceptance allaying any concerns that they would be ignored by the 360's less "cuddly" user base.

"The main thing that I think we achieved here, and the main part that really lines up with our initial hopes for the project, is the level of integration and permeation that the avatars enjoy on Xbox 360" says Musgrave. "The success of the Avatars is down to the fact that they have been allowed/forced into all corners of the system. There are Avatars on the very front page of every dash of every Xbox, and when you buy a new box, one of the first things you are prompted to do is make an Avatar".

Indeed, Avatars have become a standard character across Microsoft for the Xbox 360, with executive avatars taking the stage at major presentations, and the characters also taking pride of place on Xbox 360 packaging and promotional material.

THE FUTURE

With the avatars having successfully made the journey from abstract game novelty to console mascots, creators Rare are looking towards the little guys' future.

"We have a list of about twelve million things we'd love to do with the avatars, their clothing and accessories, and how this all might cross over into the real-world . . . and there are several of these ideas that are being worked on behind the scenes right now", Musgrave says.

"Step one is complete: we have the look, the system and the tech. Step two is . . . due."

Alas, the Rare development game doesn't look like it will because of sticky legal issue: Rare is owned by Microsoft so that nixes the Virtual Console, and GoldenEye was first released on the N64 so that makes an XBLA release hard.

GoldenEye designer Martin Hollis certainly would like to see it on the Virtual Console, saying, "There's always someone with some exclusivity agreement, so there's lots of lawyers... I'm not going to hold my breath. I'd love it to happen, but I can't see it."

GoldenEye Designer Talks Virtual Console [Official Nintendo Magazine via VG247]