Banjo Never Sounded So Good! (Banjo-Kazooie thoughts!)

 Hey friends! Do you ever think about old series? I do constantly... which led me to think about Banjo-Kazooie this week. For those of you not in the know, this series started its life on the Nintendo 64, where the first two (and the most prominent) titles in this series were released. The great thing about the series is that it began as something extremely simple... and then Microsoft came in... and did what Microsoft does. We'll get into that later, but for now, let's begin with this little retrospective, and see where the Jiggies (short for jigsaw puzzle pieces) lie in the end, shall we? 

Banjo-Kazooie's original cover art, one of my favorites.

A Tale of Brotherly Love!

    Banjo-Kazooie begins with a concept that is so simple, it could come from a 5 minute long cartoon. Our main characters, Banjo and Kazooie, are a bear with a backpack, and the bird that lives in said backpack. Gruntilda the witch, or Grunty for short, is tired of being horribly ugly and wishes to become beautiful. To do so, she kidnaps Banjo's sister, Tooty, and puts her in a machine to suck away her youth and good skin and give it to her instead. Banjo, of course, has to set off on a grand adventure through Grunty's castle to collect Jiggies (magical jigsaw puzzle pieces that allow Banjo to travel deeper in the castle) This is really all there is to the first game, he teams up with some friends to achieve his goal of course, being Bottles the Mole, Mumbo Jumbo, a shaman, and Humba Wumba, a competitor of Mumbo. In each level, there are a certain number of musical notes, Jiggies, and Jinjos for Banjo to find. Every level has a new transformation for Banjo to turn into with the assistance of either Mumbo or Humba, Bottles teaches Banjo new moves once you pay him enough musical notes, and Kazooie can execute some of these moves with Red or Gold feathers. It's a collectathon through and through, and there are some really unique collectables for you to get, and some amazing areas to go through before your story draws to a close. In the end, the Jinjos are the ones that really bring the witch crashing down, with the assistance of their invention, the Jinjonator (definitely not referencing anything else there), Grunty falls off her broom and makes a big splat on the ground, covered up by a giant boulder. Tooty is saved, and everyone lives happily ever after... or do they?

A Tale of Revenge!

    Banjo-Tooie is the sequel to the original game, with far larger areas to explore, and a darker, more dangerous plot. It begins in the same place that the first game ended, with Gruntilda in a crater, as she has been for the past two years (It took two years for the team to make this game after the first one). Grunty's sisters, Mingella and Blobbelda, lift the boulder off of her and resurrect her, but she's just a skeleton after the events of the first game. The plot of this game involved Grunty and her sisters building a giant laser to suck the life out of the living inhabitants of Banjo's world to bring the witch back to life. Unfortunately, in a dark twist, the first victim of the laser is none other than Bottles, the mole who taught the heroes their skills in the first game. Banjo and Kazooie have to find their way to the Big O Blaster (Or B.O.B. for short) and stop Grunty and her sisters from returning the witch to her former power. The areas in this game were massive, and I actually never was able to finish this game as a kid, which I should try to go back to now that I'm a bit older, but our heroes do ultimately stop Grunty and her sisters and keep peace around Spiral Mountain where Banjo lives.

A Tale of... Cars?

    The Banjo-Kazooie Franchise fell off the face of the earth more or less following the release of Banjo Tooie (as well as Grunty's Revenge and Banjo Pilot, a few Game Boy Advance games that I've not played), because Microsoft bought out Rareware, the studio responsible for those games, and then didn't do anything with the Banjo-Kazooie license until 2008 on the Xbox 360. What did they make? Well, it has Banjo-Kazooie on the box, but there's truly nothing left of what made the original games so good. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is a game about building cars and other vehicles in order to do different challenges. There is almost no platforming whatsoever in this game, and while it's not a bad game, it just doesn't feel like it should be included in the series. Eight years after the release of Banjo-Tooie, Nuts and Bolts begins by recapping what the first two games in the series were about, then revealing that Banjo and Kazooie have been sitting on a couch eating pizza and playing Xbox since the conclusion of the second game and are now fat. Grunty then shows up, only a skull remaining of her, and they attempt to fight it out, but they are both so out of shape that the "Lord of Games" or L.O.G. shows up and decides that the only way they can settle their conflict once and for all... is to have a competition involving building cars and driving them around. This character actually says something to the effect of, "No one wants to do another Collectathon, I have something much more fun in store." I have no clue how this game ends because I never got to the end, but I looked up the ending to see what was in store, and boy, it's not great. The Lord of Games dubs Banjo the winner of the game and zaps Grunty away to his video game factory where she's supposed to work in the storage room, while Banjo becomes the owner of Spiral Mountain. He even says in the ending, "I don't know if you'll ever get another game," which is depressing, considering they've not made another new Banjo game since this one.

    Banjo-Kazooie was such a staple of the N64 era, it's really sad to see how the series turned out once Microsoft bought the company. That's definitely a common factor in our current game landscape as well, sadly. As I said before, though Nuts and Bolts was not a good Banjo-Kazooie game, I think if it hadn't been incorporated with this series, it could have been remembered much more fondly. I have to take a minute here before I wrap up to discuss just how creative and interesting these games were though. In Banjo-Kazooie, if you got a Game Over, or even if you quit the game, a cutscene would play out showing what would happen if Grunty ended up winning. Grunty becomes young and beautiful again, and Tooty becomes this gross monster looking thing, it's really creepy, but it's such a cool touch. Banjo-Tooie does the same thing, where if you get a game over, it shows the laser being fully charged and Grunty comes back to full power. Donkey Kong 64 also did a similar thing to this, and all of them are just really cool touches. On top of all of these fun and creative ideas, big shout out to Grant Kirkhope for his fantastic soundtrack in this series, which really plays well with the humor and whimsicality involved in this series.

    Rare back in the day was on top of the world in terms of creativity, and it's so sad to see where the company has come to now. They're still moderately successful, making lots of money for Microsoft with Sea of Thieves, but the creativity and wonder of these early titles will probably never be reached again. On the plus side, the characters of Banjo and Kazooie were finally added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate a few years ago, which is still one of the most exciting reveals for DLC characters if you ask me! 

    Thanks so much for reading this post about Banjo-Kazooie as a series. I don't know if these games are as nostalgic for you as they are for me, but this was the game that I stood in Target as a little kid playing for the longest. I did eventually get to play them when I got a bit older, and I was able to understand firsthand just why people loved them so much. Let me know if there's a game that sticks out to you in that way, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks again for all of the support, friends! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Nostalgic Dreamer, and I hope you have a great week!