Banjo-Kazooie

From thecrankyhermit

Banjo-Kazooie
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Companies Rare, Nintendo
First release date June 29, 1998
Original platform(s) N64
Current official platform(s) XB1 Store (Rare Replay)

3D platformer adventure

Banjo-Kazooie
Rare's first N64 collectathon rides the coattails of Super Mario 64 without shame, and improves in some areas, but never quite reaches the highs of its inspiration. Levels are significantly bigger, though there are fewer of them, and are more structured, less sandboxy, with an emphasis on puzzles with concrete solutions that often involve completing tasks in interlinked locations. Thankfully, you can collect all of the hidden doodads in a level in a single session, and both the level design and overall game design encourage this. The collectathon aspect can get to be too much at times, with musical notes the worst offender as you must collect all 100 per level in a single go, and the emphasis on collecting everything can lead to much time spent retreading areas in search of that last lousy note/jinjo/jiggy/skull. Of special note are impressive visuals, which use clever texturing tricks to work around the N64's meager texture cache.

The Rare Replay port on XBox One, in addition to improved performance, partly alleviates the hassle of note collecting and also restores the infamous "Stop n Swop" feature.

Key people Gregg Mayles, Grant Kirkhope