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.
This post originally appeared 5/11/15. Weāve bumped it up for the 20th anniversary of Banjo-Kazooie.
To properly appreciate the greatness of Banjo-Kazooie, fellow aficionado Patrick Klepek and I had the following chat. Hopefully at least half of the gameās humor and brilliance comes through.
We loved the game from the first time we played it on our N64s in the late 1990s. Hereās why:
Stephen Totilo: Patrick, before we can discuss Banjo-Kazooieās greatness, we must first acknowledge that the love for any N64 game from someone who owned an N64 back in the day might be like the love a man stranded in the desert has for a newly-discovered and nearly-empty canteen. I owned no systems other than an N64, and when BK came out, I was quite thirsty. You?
Patrick Klepek: Hah! I owned more than an N64. At the time, I would do my best to convince (trick?) my brother into funneling our Christmas presents into one big one, which would allow us to keep up with the big, new systems at the time. We had an N64 first, though, which meant every few months, weād make a trip to the Kay-Bee-Toys to get whatever the new game wasāor to learn it was delayed.
Stephen Totilo: Right. I mean, back then I had probably convinced myself that Turok: Dinosaur Hunterās campaign really was worth playing multiple times. The first Iād heard of Banjo-Kazooie was from IGN. They were calling it Project Dream and…it was delayed! Got bumped out of the N64ās second Christmas in favor of Diddy Kong Racing, another Rare game. Which was super-annoying because Mario Kart 64 had come out earlier in the year. We were bereft of games but getting TWO Nintendo-published Kart games in the same year. Ugh. Do you remember when you first saw Banjo-Kazooie in action or played it? I donāt.
Patrick Klepek: No, but I remember when I saw Mario 64 for the first time. My family used to frequent a particular theater together, and it was right next door to a place called Die Hard Game Club. This was when the N64 had come out in Japan, and wouldnāt be out in the US for some time. Remember when things came out in Japan first every time? They were actually CHARGING for you to play Mario 64. It was worth it. I bring that story up to tie together how I initially fell in love with the 3D platformer. When I was that young, I didnāt know the distinction between Nintendo and Rare. If Nintendo, the creators of Mario 64, were putting out a new platformer, I was there.
Stephen Totilo: Yeah. I remember seeing a Japanese version of Mario 64 through the window of some import shop near Penn Station. I was stunned. I think Iād seen Virtua Fighter through that same window. Polygonal gaming was mind-blowing. I was excited for Banjo because Iād loved Mario 64 and wanted something, anything to play. By the time it came out, Rareās game GoldenEye had come out, so this was somehow the geniuses behind GoldenEye doing the design of Mario 64 and I for some reason expected that to be amazing.
And, holy shit, it was.
Patrick Klepek: Ever since this Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter took off, Iāve been trying to think about what I loved about that game so much, since I became rightly obsessed with it for months. I played it multiple times, and found everything the game was hiding. It was one of the first games where I would read GameFAQs message boards to discover fan theories about what secrets went beyond what the game was asking you to do. And I think Banjo-Kazooie gets a bad wrap, in retrospect, because we accuse Rare of being responsible for collect-a-thon design. Banjo-Kazooie is what kicked off that trend, so far as I remember, but Banjo-Kazooie did it so well. I wanted to collect everything, because it was hidden in fun, out of the way places. The designers were playing tricks with you, and finding them meant you were playing along.
Stephen Totilo: Ok, first of all, to be a high-minded critic for a moment, fuck that. The collecting in Banjo-Kazooie was fine.
Super Mario 64 has coins in it, and it needed coins, since you were no longer on a 2D plane. The collectibles helped guide players toward things. Breadcrumbs, basically.
BK had musical notes, puzzle pieces and Jinjos (note to people reading this… this is all from memory, so if I get anything wrong, thatās why; if I get anything right, thatās how much I loved Banjo-Kazooie).
Anyway..
The musical notes were Banjoās versions of coins. They were like little characters or something, werenāt they? I remember them seeming friendly.
Patrick Klepek: Like so much of Banjo-Kazooie, everything was infused with character!
No one talked in Mario 64, but everyone talked in Banjo-Kazooie. The world felt alive.
Stephen Totilo: The puzzle piecesāthis was coolāthey unlocked the worlds, and that fed into the whole idea that the overworld was itself a very tricky, puzzle-filled world that you had to go through and solve.
The Jinjos… they made noises, right? So there was sound-based gameplay to finding them.
Patrick Klepek: Gosh, I canāt remember. Sure, probably. Everything made noises in those games.
Stephen Totilo: And didnāt you pay Mumbo Jumbo, the witch doctor guy, some of this currency to transform? You could turn into a washing machine! (Or was that Banjo Tooie?)
Patrick Klepek: I get those games confused because I became utterly captured by the way the two games were supposed to connect with one another. Remember how there was going to be a Sonic & Knuckles-style contraption that let you bring your saves over between the games, and the sequel would actually unlock hidden areas in the original game?! That stuff drove me up the wallāin a good way.
I think they actually made good on those promises in the Xbox 360 version.
Stephen Totilo: Do I remember Stop N Swop? Dude, off the top of my head, I can recall a blog post about… was it subfrog and icemario? Did it begin āIn the best of times, in the worst of timesā? Letās google and find out!
Patrick Klepek: Wow, yes. I havenāt heard that phrase inā¦15 years? Probably more. Banjo-Kazooie came out when I was 13.
Which helps explain how I had no problem collecting everything and anything
Stephen Totilo: It was subDRAG
And here I am in 2008 reminiscing:
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/05/23/stoā¦
Do you know what Stop N Swop refers to? If not, stop reading. This post wonāt mean a thing. If you have heard of it, then you, like me, probably played
(Hey, 2008, thatās when we last worked together!)
Patrick Klepek: Synergy.
It drove me nuts because Iād have to read about this stuff in EGM rumor columns or GameFAQs message boards. There wasnāt much real-time authority back then, so it was all playground rumors.
Stephen Totilo: But, yeah, letās talk about the ending. And by ātalkā, will you allow me to wax nostalgic for a moment?
Patrick Klepek: Iām not going to tell my boss no.
Stephen Totilo: Good man. Hang tight in that backpack for a second.
I remember thinking I was at the end of the game, right after the amazing game show sequence that we should discuss. But back to that later. Iām playing the game, and I think Iām done. Iāve obtained a lot of the puzzle pieces, a lot of the notes. Iāve cleared the desert world and the haunted world and the goddamn brilliant four-seasons world. And Iām thinking Iām done, but, no, thereās a fake-out ending. If I go back and get more jigsaw pieces then I can get to the real final battle.
So I do thatāand I assume you did too. I wind up on top of some castle or something, fighting Gruntilda. And what do you know, right as Iām about to lose, right as sheās about to crush me, all those Jinjos I collected swoop inābaby-Metroid-saving-the-day-in-Super Metroid-styleāto kick her ass. A vindication for all that collecting.
Then the credits.
Then… oh man, Patrick, then that moment.
Banjo lounging in a deck chair or something. And Mumbo Jumbo shows up with polaroids and starts showing him (me) areas of the levels that we could never access. And then says we can only access them when the sequel comes out. And then NAMES THE SEQUEL.
Patrick, I think that might be the most mind-blowing thing in games of all time.
(Aside from the Dagobah mission in Force Unleashed II, of course)
Patrick Klepek: I completely forgot thatās how it worked, and it explains why I lost my shit.
I thinkā¦look, Donkey Kong 64 was a bad gameāis a bad game. What I loved so much about Banjo-Kazooie is that it encouraged and rewarded exploration. Yes, there was platforming, and some of it was challenging, but it wasnāt a game of dexterity and controller finesse in the same way as Super Mario 64. And while I didnāt know it at the time, I can appreciate now that itās the reason Banjo-Kazooie was such a lovely, wonderful game. It was funny, winked at the player, and wanted you to enjoy what itād built in a way most games tried to keep you on-the-trails. The way the ending plays out epitomized this approach, but it was sprinkled in every level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ZuPO3CVP0
Stephen Totilo: Yeah, it wasnāt as fun to control as Mario 64. Which is like saying your current favorite NBA player isnāt as good as Michael Jordan. Nothing in gaming will likely ever feel as good to input as Marioās triple-jump in that game. But BK had that sense of humor. Mario was confident and sweet. Banjo was confident and goofy. You knew that from the start when its all-time-great soundtrack started playing. High-energy, silly music. (And adaptive music, too, right? The instrumentation of the music in the hub area changed depending on where you were, if I recall correctly).
What worlds stand out for you?
Patrick Klepek: Going by pure memory, there were two that stood out, and I make no guarantees one of these happens to be in the sequel.
One, the stage with the huge submarine. Stages like that underscored what was so incredible about Banjo-Kazooie, at least at the time. The camera would swoop through these justā¦enormous areas. It was hard to take in, and thatās what made it so exciting. Whatās up there? Whatās up there?! In the case of the submarine world, it wasnāt just what was UP there, but what was beneath the surface, too. It was just such a big game, and that was both novel and exciting at the time. Games were opening up!
Two, I recall an Egyptian-themed stage that involved lots and lots of careful floating from platform to platform. That was the other thing I loved about Banjo-Kazooie: you had a freedom of movement, an ability to cross vast distances, that wasnāt possible in other games, thanks to the limited abilities of your bird friend. In that stage, if you used him correctly, you could make it to places that seemed unfathomable when you first entered.
You? I know you mentioned four-seasons, which I donāt remember very well.
Stephen Totilo: Patrick, Patrick, Patrick. Huge submarine?
Patrick Klepek: Uh oh.
Stephen Totilo: Or do you mean, Huge Submarine Shaped Like a Giant Shark?
Patrick Klepek: Holy shit, yes. Itās even better than I remembered!
Stephen Totilo: Mario had the sub, and I think some of the Banjo worlds where basically Mario 64 levels but funnier.
So instead of a sub, we had Clanky or whatever he was called. Clanker, maybe? And he was held by a chain that you had to loosen while also exploring inside him, I think.
Patrick Klepek: Yes, yes, yes.
Stephen Totilo: And, yeah, Kazooie gave you the flutter jump. Basically, if all Mario 64 was going to do with Yoshi was stick him on the roof for a useless cameo, Banjo-Kazooie was going to put Yoshi/Kazooie in play to give you a proper flutter jump. It was very helpful.
I liked those levels, but the level with the seasons. The big tree level… Click Clock Wood, was it called? That level is one of the most smartly-designed levels Iāve seen in a video game.
Patrick Klepek: Man, I gotta play this game again.
Stephen Totilo: Do you remember what season you started in? Iām thinking it might be spring.
Patrick Klepek: That sounds right.
Stephen Totilo: I didnāt get the concept at first. You couldnāt. Because it seemed like, okay, the final level of this game is based on climbing a big tree and dealing with some chipmunk-looking enemies who patrolled around and on it.
Then you figure out that you can leave and re-enter and have it change seasons. All four seasons.
In the spring, the branches have leaves you can stand on. In the fall, the leaves have fallen into mounds you can climb up. In the winter, the water at the bottom of the tree is frozen, so you can walk over it.
But the best was those little enemy guys. In the summer, they wore no shirts!
Patrick Klepek: Rare was really funny before they were forced to make Kinect games.
Iām sure it had a great soundtrack, too, though none of the tunes immediately come to mind. The Donkey Kong Country soundtrack was one of the first gaming soundtracks I listened to completely outside the game.
Stephen Totilo: Yeah, that levelās music changed with the seasons, I think. I was so charmed by it in part, because Mario had laid so much of the template for platforming worlds. So many games had had snow worlds and fire worlds and desert worlds. A world based on a cycle of seasons was a nice fresh final world, and a reminder that they werenāt just re-jiggering Mario ideas but pushing platforming ahead.
I think thatās why people liked the game so much. It didnāt just feel like a me-too, even though it seemed to emerge as a project designed to ape Mario 64. It wound up exuding so much personality of its own.
Patrick Klepek: Re-jiggy-ing.
Stephen Totilo: Yes! Do you know why I remember so much of the game?
Patrick Klepek: Were you one of the people obsessed with Nuts & Bolts?
Stephen Totilo: Well, yes. But thatās not it! Do you remember the game show at the end?
Patrick Klepek: Vaguely, as has been the case with most of this chat.
Stephen Totilo: I think only one of us wasnāt doing drugs when this game came out, Patrick. I wonāt judge.
Patrick Klepek: 13-year-old Patrick really wanted to live it up.
Stephen Totilo: Ha ha. Ok, so to remind you of what your teenage self probably loved…
The supposed finale of the game (before all the other stuff I described above) involves the main bad guy, Gruntilda, putting you in a game show.
Itās a quiz show, and sheās asking you questions… about the game you just spent many, many hours playing. Hereās a sound effect. Which character made it? Hereās a zoomed-in bit of graphics. What level is it from? I loved this, because itās a very special, smart exampleāand a rare example, no pun intendedāof a game incorporating into its design the idea that, when we play a game for dozens of hours, we absorb a lot of its sights and sounds into our brain. Subconsciously. A lot of it sticks with us (well, some it sticks more with SOME of us, clearly). And as the game show happens, the designers at Rare are essentially letting you wind the game down with a fun nostalgia trip. Remember this? Remember that? It rewards an awareness that players who enjoy a game have.
And what weāre seeing now on a meta-level in 2015 is that Stephen Totilo, who had no other systems to play games on, must have played Banjo-Kazooie through many more times than Patrick Klepek who had other systems. I had but this game to stare at. I had no PSX to distract me. Just my N64 and playing Banjo-Kazooie one summer again and again. Oh, the sad sad memories (it was great!).
Patrick Klepek: Not a bad game to play over and over, though. And who knows, maybe youād be the one to solve the Stop ān Swop!
Stephen Totilo: It brings us back to that, huh? And maybe that at some level is part of the reason thereās all this love for the Kickstarter. Because think about the narrative for Banjo post-BK. The sequel, Tooie wasnāt as good, but what I remember more frustratedly is how Stop n Swop wasnāt in it. A poor version of it was inserted instead, to appease people.
Patrick Klepek: The ending of Banjo-Tooie promised Banjo-Threeie, but it never happened.
Stephen Totilo: Ha, and that. You could sense that a company had pushed back on these designers. The rumors online were that Nintendo didnāt want to support the original SnS idea because it might break the N64 (it involved removing one cartridge and inserting another without powering the system down). And if you think Nintendo derailed Banjo greatness, look what Microsoft got blamed for!
So now these guys are free to FINALLY make Banjo without a corporation limiting them.
Patrick Klepek: And if the not-really-convincing-but-who-knows rumors about a new Banjo from Rare pan out, weāll be swimming in Banjo games soon enough.
Stephen Totilo: Yeah, could be! I wouldnāt mind that. And to be clear, I donāt quite buy the idea that companies held the Banjo team back. But seeing them have a chance to do their thing againāand seeing them have the chance to make a kick-ass 3D platformer at a time when even Nintendo seems hesitant to fully commit to that genre, well, I get why people are psyched.
I am going to play some Banjo this weekend. I hope itās as good as I remembered it!
Patrick Klepek: Letās ruin our memories of a great game together.
To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.
All assets in this post captured by Kotaku from the Xbox 360 re-release of the Banjo-Kazooie, with the exception of the YouTube videos for Click Clock Wood and Gruntyās game show, which we found from Letās Play folks on YouTube.
