PixlBit

Number 19

I remember going to my local video renting place in the 90’s and early 2000’s. It was great. It was the place you went to on weekends to rent a movie to watch at home with your family, or yourself if you had your own tv in your room. Video renting places had all kinds of movies, from classics to more current movies, to low budget stuff and even some of those movies that were meant only for grown-ups. They even had games you could rent too.

I never had a Blockbuster nearby, so we always went to a video renting place near my neighborhood for our video renting needs. It wasn’t very big, but it had a ton of videos to choose from. Remember those grown-up videos? They had them tucked in a corner near the entrance in a booth behind a curtain. That was the first thing you saw when you entered the place. Then there were the shelves of videos, they almost reached the ceiling. They even had arcade cabinets of Marvel vs. Capcom and Metal Slug. Then there was the front desk that was behind a giant wall of glass, and you took the video box, you handed it to the workers via a small slot, and one of the other workers went to the backroom to fetch your video. Heck, the 2 people that worked there looked like Mario and Luigi from the SMB movie. I even called them that.

Then you had the games. They had all the game boxes mounted at the top of a wall because of the limited space. You had N64 games on one side, and across the room you had PS1 titles. So with that, you couldn’t read the back of the box to see what the game was about, so you only had the boxart to go by. You had to be careful which game you rented, because your choice either made or breaked your weekend.
My little brother (at the time) and I rented games often on weekends, one of them was Conker’s BFD which I already talked about. Besides that, there were the South Park games on the N64 and Pokemon Stadium. They also had Superman 64 which I came so close to renting it, if it wasn’t for this game called Banjo-Tooie.

I had no idea what this game was about at the time, all I had was the boxart to go from. It said on the front that the Bear and Bird are Back so I assumed it was a sequel. We rented it instead of Superman 64 and went home. We booted up the N64 and we were greeted by a song played with a Banjo, no not the bear. Upon starting the game, you find out that it’s a sequel. But I don’t really think it’s necessary to play the first. When I played it, I was blown away at how big this game was and how different it was from Super Mario 64. The game is just packed with stuff to do.

First I’ll talk about the worlds you can explore. They are huge. Massive. I’m not sure how big but they are bigger than all the worlds from SM64. Each world is divided by sections and you can warp to these sections thanks to warp pads, that way you wont have to go all the way back to a certain area. Each world is based around a theme, like a mine, to an old Mayan temple, to even a carnival which is my favorite level. Each world has its own set of challenges in order to obtain Jigsaw Pieces or Jiggies, which are this game’s equivalent of Stars like in a 3D Mario Platformer. Some Jiggies are easy to obtain like helping an npc or fighting a stage boss. For example, Witchy World, the carnival level has attractions like those things were you test your strength. Hit it with different moves and you win a Jiggy. What’s neat is that a lot of the worlds are connected. Yes there is a hub world that you can use to get to the stages themselves, but rather than exit a level to go to another, all you need to do is find an area that connects to another world. There’s even a train that takes you to other worlds in certain areas.

             
For those wondering, yes aside from Jiggies, there are more collectibles. You’ll need a certain amount of Jiggies in order to open up new worlds. Music Notes make a return and they are like the currency for the game. You can use them to buy or learn new moves and for more stuff. You also have Cheato Pages which you can use for cheats. Jinjos also make a return. Jinjos of a certain color belong to a family of Jinjos, like one color might have 3, while another one might have like 7 or 9 and they are all scattered in the hub worlds and levels. If you find all of them that belong to a family, you earn a Jiggy. There are also these creatures called Glowbo and you exchange those for transformations and spells which I’ll get on in a bit. Each world also has their own collectible that you’ll need for a sidequest, like tokens in order to go on Witchy World rides. 

Banjo and Kazooie this time come with all their moves from the first game, but this time they also have a ton of new moves. Well they technically have to learn them considering they have enough Music Notes. Their moves are pretty cool and it’s what separates the game from other platformers. One of the new moves they have allows them to go into a first person mode in special areas with Kazooie acting as a gun and you shoot eggs. Heck, in one of the boss fights you have to go into first person mode because the whole area to reach the boss requires you to switch into that mode. Also, one of the most interesting new moves they learn is to split up. As the move implies, Kazooie can now get out of Banjo’s backpack and move freely, complete with her own set of moves too. You can also switch to Banjo and he can explore without Kazooie too, and what’s neat is that he can use his empty backpack for all variety of things, like using it to go inside to cross over hazards, to sleeping in it to recover, to carrying other npcs too.

        
Transformations here make a return too, except that Mumbo from the previous game doesn’t handle transformations this time. You know why? Because you can now play as him too. It’s pretty neat as the game adds 3 playable if you count Banjo and Kazooie’s split up move. Mumbo can attack too and you need him because some levels require him to use one of his shaman spells to activate things in levels. Like resurrecting a giant statue that you could control, to making it rain and so forth. But you’re wondering, if Mumbo is a playable character, how do you transform? Well this time, transformations spells are handled by a medicine woman named Humba Wumba who has a huge grudge on Mumbo. She handles transformations for Banjo and Kazooie this time, and I think the transformations themselves are the best from the first game. You could transform to a submarine, to an armored van, to a giant t-rex. Although you can’t transform if Banjo and Kazooie are split up.

As for the story, well it’s a direct sequel from the first game. Without giving too much away, Gruntilda, the games main antagonist wants revenge on Banjo and Kazooie from her defeat in the first game. So basically you need to collect jiggies in the games different worlds in order to reach her new lair somewhere in Isle o Hags, which is the name of the world or land the games take place in. As with any Rare game, it’s really funny. There are also some hidden innuendo’s in some of the jokes and dialogue from characters. Think of it like Animaniacs. It could also be Rare’s way of moving out of kid friendly games since this game came out before Conker’s BFD.

            
There’s also a multiplayer mode for 2-4 players. You just play mini-games that you would play in the single player mode. They’re fun and my favorites are the fps mini-games and the traditional series quiz game, the Tower Of Tragedy. It’s a quiz based mini-game that quizzes you on stuff about the game and the previous one. It’s fun but it could be a problem if your friends never played the games.

As for my final thoughts, it’s one of the best games that the N64 has to offer. It’s a vastly superior game to the original that improves on it in almost every way possible. The levels are huge and have neat designs to them, you have a variety of moves to get through the worlds, the music is probably one of the best from the series that sounds like music you might hear in a Disney movie, the humors is really funny, and most of all, the Bear and Bird are Back. This was one of those rare cases that I played the sequel first before the first game.

I did try the first game years later though. I first learned about the first Banjo-Kazooie game before I tried this one. You see, back when I was in elementary school, the landlord said he had to fumigate the apartment we lived on. I had a friend who’s mom was a good friend of my mom, so she suggested we stay at their house till they finished fumigating our apartment. My friend had and I were good friends, I’ve known her since we were in kinder and she had a younger brother who I was friends with too. He had an N64 and had 2 games. One of them was Banjo-Kazooie, but we didn’t play it because we were playing that Star Wars Pod Racing game. I’ve always been curious about it, but never played it till after I had gotten and beaten Banjo-Tooie. I had to buy a used copy of Banjo-Kazooie years since finding it new was almost an impossible task. I liked it, but I liked the sequel more. Perhaps I would of loved it equally if I had played B-K first. But it doesn’t matter, I like both games, plus Banjo-Tooie saved me from ruining my weekend with Superman 64.

          
It’s hard to find a copy in a good price these days, but you can get it at a way cheaper price on the Xbox 360 as a digital title. It’s a great port of the original game, but for some reason they left the Gameboy in Banjo-Kazooie. Both games are available on the Marketplace, so if you never played them, and if you have an Xbox 360, then you can give them a try. The controls might seem dated though, which is to be expected of 3D games from the 90’s. But if you wanna play some of Rare’s best, then go ahead. And if you're worried about collecting stuff, well at least it didn't go too overboard like Donkey Kong 64.

Have you ever played Banjo-Tooie? Have you played both, or other games from the series? Thanks for reading and later.