Banjo-Kazooie

Story

The story begins one day at Spiral Mountain, which is inhabited by Banjo, Kazooie, Bottles, and several other creatures, including giant hopping carrots and other vegetables. On that particular morning, while the sun is shining and the fauna is flourishing, Banjo lies snoring in his bed while Tooty is waiting for Banjo to "go on an adventure" with her.

Meanwhile, Gruntilda is hunched over her cauldron admiring her own beauty; even though she is the ugliest hag of all, she remains convinced that she is the loveliest in the land. Asking her magical cauldron, Dingpot, if she indeed is the fairest of all, assured that she will hear her own name, Dingpot answers that it is in fact not her, but Tooty who is the fairest in the land. Gruntilda is enraged by this and sets out to Tooty's house to kidnap her and steal her beauty.

Meanwhile, back outside Banjo's house, Tooty is talking to Bottles the mole when Gruntilda sweeps down and kidnaps Tooty, who does not go without a fight. Banjo, of course, sleeps through the whole thing and only walks out of the house shortly after Gruntilda has flown away with Tooty. After hearing what transpired from Bottles, the two begin their journey up Spiral Mountain and inside Grunty's Lair to save Tooty.

Gameplay

Banjo-Kazooie adopted many of its central gameplay mechanics from Nintendo's groundbreaking title Super Mario 64. For instance, the player must similarly explore non-linear 3D worlds and gather tokens in the form of Jigsaws in Banjo-Kazooie, and Stars in Super Mario 64 to unlock new worlds. While some considered Banjo-Kazooie an evolution of Super Mario 64, others have criticised Rare for lacking innovation in this respect. However, certain features were perceived as novel at the time, such as the ability for Banjo and Kazooie with the aid of Mumbo's magical powers to transform into other creatures such as a termite, crocodile, walrus, pumpkin and a bee, the ability for the characters to learn new moves (as taught by Bottles), the game's extensive use of textures for surfaces where other N64 games would have used plain colors, extensive lighting, and the music that dynamically changes style in order to reflect the environment and dangers to the characters.

Like Super Mario 64 before it, the player proceeds through the game by finding tokens. There are three kinds of tokens that help the player in his linear process through the game. First, Jigsaw Pieces, of which there are 10 in each world, open doors to new parts of Gruntilda's mansion. Nine of these come in the form of normal Jigsaws which the player must find, but the last one is granted by finding five Jinjos on each world, the fifth of which will give you a Jigsaw upon his release. The second kind of tokens are Musical Notes, which differ in number in each world but are normally in the range of 100-150. By collecting certain numbers of these, secondary bonus doors can be opened. The third kind of tokens are Mumbo's Tokens, which grant the player magical transformations at Mumbo's hut.

Besides primary tokens which have a direct influence on the process of the game, several other tokens are available to the Kazooie part of the duo, all of which are used as ammunition for the various skills Kazooie acquires from Bottles the Mole. Eggs, of which a maximum of 100 can be carried at a time, are fired as projectiles by Kazooie; Red Feathers, of which a maximum of 50 can be carried, enable Kazooie to fly after she is launched from special flight pads; Golden Feathers, for which the maximum is 10, must be used in one continuous boost to gain invulnerability. Furthermore, rarer tokens can be found which have specialized use in puzzle-solving, namely Wading Boots, which enable the crossing of hazardous terrain, and Running Shoes, which grant extra running speed, often as part of a race or a time-based puzzle. Finally, there are powerups, such as Extra Lives, which look like golden Banjo statues and grant one extra life each, and Honeycomb Energy, which incrementally increases the player's health, that can be found in each level.

A large feature of gameplay is that the characters make limited speaking-like sounds when they talk. Previously, no other game had attempted to use any sort of speech for normal dialogs due to size limitations of the N64 cartridges, which ranged from 8MB to 64MB. The voices were not real speech, however, but rather a looping of voice-like sounds when text bubbles were displayed; this added considerably to the atmosphere and uniqueness of the game.

Besides the technical aspects, Banjo-Kazooie's rich characters were what really made the game come alive. Gruntilda the witch always spoke in rhymes such as "you're feathered buddy that you've brung, useless like a pice of dung", Kazooie was always very annoyed at Bottles the mole and various other smaller characters made memorable appearances.

Linkage controversy

An unusual feature of Banjo-Kazooie was that the game contained several items (specifically, a key made of ice and several different-colored eggs with question marks on them) that could not be accessed in a normal manner, or even seen, with the Ice Key being the exception (it can be seen behind a translucent wall in a walrus's cave). However, players may notice some suspicious, unaccessible areas (like a rock jutting out of the ground called "Sharkfood Island," a stone door that never opens, and a locked barrel with an X on it), but some of the eggs appear in places that are commonly accessible; the eggs don't appear until they are unlocked. A completion of the game with 100 jiggies would tease the player with some glimpses of a player entering the (now unlocked) area and standing in front of the item. Rare announced that these areas were only to be reached by completing certain tasks in the sequel, Banjo-Tooie, and linking that game up with the original in some unspecified way to unlock them (this was later to be dubbed "Stop n' Swop" by the screen which lets a player see the items). While the code for this presumably exists in the Banjo-Kazooie cartridge and has been sought after, the rest of it was apparently never implemented in Banjo-Tooie although smaller versions of the Ice Key and the purple and blue eggs could be found in Banjo-Tooie; no way to link the games has ever been found and Rare has said nothing more on the topic except to comment on the Banjo-Kazooie fanbase's fascination with it and to include reference to it in future games. Ways to reach the secret areas in Banjo-Kazooie have been found by entering certain laughter)

• Brentilda
• Klungo

Worlds

There are nine main worlds, or levels, in Banjo-Kazooie, although much of the gameplay happens outside of them, in Gruntilda's Lair. They are, in order:

• Spiral Mountain: Though not a world in the same sense as the rest, Spiral Mountain is where the game begins, after Tooty is kidnapped. Banjo and Kazooie must first learn some basic moves here before they can proceed into the lair.
• Mumbo's Mountain is the smallest world, which basically serves a training ground for basic moves such as swimming, jumping, climbing and others.
• Treasure Trove Cove is set on a hot, sandy island inhabited by pirates.
• Clanker's Cavern is centered around a large mechanical fish underwater.
• Bubblegloop Swamp
• Freezeezy Peak is, as the name suggests, an ice world.
• Gobi's Valley is a desert world; a camel named Gobi plays a large role in it.
• Mad Monster Mansion is a ghosthouse with skeletons, ghosts, gravestones as well as other nasties running around.
• Rusty Bucket Bay is designed as a port, centered around a large ship.
• Click Clock Wood is centered around a giant tree and can be played during each of the four seasons, with different obstacles and objectives.

There were also to be more worlds, which were removed before the game's release. Some include:

• Fungus Forest (a picture of it can be seen in Banjo's house next to his bed)
• Hammerhead Beach (a picture of it can be seen in Banjo's house above a shelf)