People poured money into a Kickstarter for a spiritual successor to the 1998 Nintendo 64 game Banjo-Kazooie. Why? Because Banjo-Kazooie was a wonderful game and no mere Mario 64 me-too, as some detractors claim.

Banjo and his partner Kazooie haven’t been in a Nintendo game since 2005’s Banjo-Pilot thanks to complicated intellectual property rigamarole that cropped up when Microsoft acquired Rare in 2002. With a new Smash Bros. coming to the Switch, there’s plenty of speculation about new fighters. Microsoft’s Executive Vice…

Speedruns are all about risk and reward, as runners perform dangerous tricks in search of the best time. Cutscenes are usually a safe space where runners can relax before the next big skip. Unfortunately for one Banjo-Kazooie speedrunner, cutscenes aren’t always as safe as they seem.

You’ve spent a handful of hours scurrying around thick jungles, frozen snow fields, and gloopy swamps to find enough shiny gold book pages to complete Yooka-Laylee. But wait! The game wants you to collect even more. Thankfully, with some out of bounds trickery, you can ignore that and skip to the final boss.

Yooka-Laylee recaptures some of the best aspects of platforming. You run, jump, and climb your way around dazzling levels. But it also tries too hard to recreate the past without building upon the lessons old games taught us. We take a closer look in this critical video.

Yooka-Laylee is a bright and enthusiastic throwback to classic 3D platforming. It is adventurous and full of discoveries. It is silly and irreverent, never taking itself seriously. But it also wears out its welcome fast, spiraling players into a ceaseless collectathon full of frustrating puzzles, technical…

Yooka-Laylee captures all the good and bad of a Nintendo 64 platformer. It doesn’t just take the gameplay. It also takes the urban legends as well.

The bad news: Yooka-Laylee is delayed to 2017. The good news: It looks wonderful. New trailer above.

Before Banjo-Kazooie was Banjo-Kazooie, it was Dream, an RPG-adventure hybrid that might have been the best-looking Super Nintendo game ever made.

Rare games meant a lot to the people who played them, so a collection of 30 of (most) of their best works should mean a lot to children of the Spectrum ZX, the Nintendo 64 and even the Xbox 360 eras. Combined, they’re part of a new collection on the Xbox One that is one of the most extraordinary bundles to ever hit…

For about the last seven years, Grant Kirkhope has been trying to convince people in the gaming industry that it’s time to make a game similar to 1998’s Banjo-Kazooie, one of the great 3D platformers of the Nintendo 64 era. Says Kirkhope: “I was told: ‘Grant, you’re talking nonsense. No one wants this game.…

If Rare won’t make a new 3D platformer, the folks at Playtonic Games are happy to. Players seem eager to help out, as Yooka-Laylee has already blown past its original goal of $270,000.

Then this Unreal Engine 4 remake of Banjo's house (via DSOGaming) from the first game likely wouldn't have that graphical wow factor at all. Or the nostalgia.

Banjo is a bear with a bird named Kazooie in his backpack. What is Banjo without Kazooie?