"Dingpot, dingpot, by the bench... Who's the nicest looking wench?" Gruntilda the witch asks her outspoken brewing pot as per her everyday morning wake-up ritual. To her horror she is no longer the sexiest witch in all the land. Indeed, the young bear Tooty's good looks would be better to have. Disgruntled Grunty abducts Tooty to sap her beauty and give herself a bewitching makeover. Although Tooty's brother Banjo would rather catch some Z's and munch on delicious honeycombs, his birdbrained buddy Kazooie will have no such nonchalance with her lust for adventure and the urgency of the offense at hand. As the bear-bird duo make their way through the witch's lair to save Tooty, they must solve magical jigsaw puzzles, fight vegetables, fall into lava, unearth giant sandcastles, and even get flushed down the toilet.
Banjo Kazooie further improved on the 3D adventure genre where Super Mario 64 left off; the game added witty humour, better graphics and more items to collect among other things. The title (along with Goldeneye 007, released shortly after) helped solidify Rare's position at the time of being one of the most loved and respected console game companies.
Trivia
- Tooty was originally going to be Banjo's girlfriend, and was to be named "Piccolo".1
- Banjo-Kazooie started development as "Project Dream" for Super NES, using a similar pre-rendered graphics technique to Donkey Kong Country.2
- The game was re-released on Xbox Live Arcade on the March 12, 2008. All Nintendo properties were removed from this release including the walking Nintendo 64 logo and the Nintendo logo on Mumbo's Xylophone has been replaced by a Microsoft Games Studios logo.
Stop 'n' Swop
Stop 'n' Swop is a scrapped hidden feature intended to be a transfer mode between Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie.
At the end of Banjo-Kazooie, if the player has collected all 100 Jiggies, Mumbo will show off three animated photographs which show Banjo and Kazooie entering previously inaccessible areas in the game and the secret items within. These items were intended to be collected in Banjo-Kazooie, and transferred to Banjo-Tooie by turning off the game and quickly inserting its sequel. It would utilize the Nintendo 64's Rambus RDRAM to have Banjo-Tooie read the leftover memory from Banjo-Kazooie, allowing the player to use the items to unlock things in the game.
Unfortunately, changes were made to the N64 hardware in 1999 that would have made Stop 'n' Swop impossible on later models of the N64, causing the feature to be scrapped during Banjo-Tooie's development.
The items are still able to be collected, however, thanks to in-game codes found by game hackers in 2001. They do not, however, do anything other than sit in the inventory screen, spinning.
In the Xbox Live Arcade port of Banjo-Kazooie, the items unlock secrets in both Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Banjo-Tooie XBLA.3
The game also runs natively in 1080p resolution and comes with Live Arcade titles, achivements and leaderboards (so you can see just how hardcore some people are). The title also makes musical note and jinjo collection permanent rather than session specific. It also brings in the Stop 'n' Swop functionality that the original title missed out on.4
