Looking back at the bygone era of platform games, one gem always occupies my nostalgia: Banjo-Kazooie.
A game released at the pinnacle of Rare’s abilities pushed the Nintendo 64 to its limits and was a flagship for the console itself during an incredible summer of 1998. This is a title so many hold dear to their hearts because they too were offered an amazing experience that was captivating, creative, and just downright fun to play from start to finish.
Regrettably, I missed out on the initial tail-end of this game’s glory days. My reason primarily was that the planets in the system of not owning an N64 didn’t exactly align.
The first time I saw Banjo-Kazooie remains etched in my memory. It was a balmy summer day, and my buddy Tommy had just obtained the game. He had been conversing endlessly about it, lauding the bright visuals, goofy personas, and tough problem-solving it contained. I was curious and ready to be impressed. So, I showed up at his house, and not just to kindly shut him up, I sincerely wanted to lay my hands and eyes on what he was positively blathering about.
When I entered Tommy’s living room, the first thing I noticed was the dazzling, vibrant, and whimsical world of Spiral Mountain playing out on his television. He offered me control of his character, a nifty-looking furball wearing goggles who was perched on a rocket. He immediately rocketed up, and I guided him as he launched into a sky filled with attacking blackbirds. When the furball came back down, he had more controlled momentum on his descent. He didn’t just come down anywhere, though. Tommy had “found” a location, a landmass even, beneath the location of a bidirectional slope. His furball descended there. When he bounced on his hind legs, he now had two fields of action: the furball could move forward-backward, and the furball could attack (with his body or butt). And this is where our fun actually began.
From the very beginning, the dastardly plot unfolding in the opening sequence of Banjo-Kazooie warmed me right up to the bear and bird’s plight. Banjo’s sister Tooty has been…
Navigating the 3-D world with the variety of moves and attacks allotted to the two characters was, for the most part, facile and full of whimsy. It was a real joy to play with Banjo and Kazooie. Not only that, but also, in the design realm, the world pushes forward the state-of-the-art for what can be done with a gaming console—to the point where you feel a sense of sweet, delicious satisfaction when you play. Almost everything, from the first moment you start zigzagging up the game’s central puzzle (a coiled, multilayered mountain) to the very end, is great stuff.
The deeper I got into the game, the more astonished I became at the sheer breadth of imagination in the level design. Every new stage had its own meticulously crafted twists and aesthetic surprises, from the rain-soaked, cipher-strewn Mayahem Temple to the dizzying, vertiginous Cloud Cuckooland. This game held my attention because its practice of always building the next strange thing kept it from ever getting, well, stale.
My favorite memory of playing Banjo-Kazooie was the excitement inherent in exploring each new level. The game was chock-full of hidden secrets, puzzles, and a multitude of items to collect. And the best part, for my anxious preteen self? These secrets, my friends, were not simple to find! Ignoring a series of steps to follow could result in a disastrous “Game Over,” and often enough, that’s what happened. My other overwhelming memory of the game was the time my then-young brain spent completely immersed in the half-exasperated, half-giggling, all-fun mental state required to complete a challenge.
Banjo-Kazooie was memorable for many reasons, chief among them its unbelievably detailed and varied level design. Every one of its many areas was obviously the product of intense effort and planning, as well as no small amount of talent. Unlike in some other games, where “worlds” can feel just like differently decorated versions of the same basic rooms, each one in Banjo-Kazooie helped provide the player with a sense of exploring a unique and particular space.
The adventure started perfectly in the first world of the game, called Mumbo’s Mountain. This level was the ideal beginner’s area, introducing the player to the whole variety of characters and the types of fun platforming challenges that lie ahead. The environment here was relatively trouble-free compared to what was to come, but each unique world held its own sort of sparkle and draw. At this point, I knew I was in a special game.
I advanced in the game and found myself in an array of worlds, each with its own clear, immediate premise. I think back fondly to one of the first worlds, Treasure Trove Cove. It was a pirate world. There were pirate characters who lived in structures at the margins; there was a huge pirate ship; there was water—all elements of a premise that worked to make an enjoyable play experience. I loved climbing on stuff there. I loved finding the hidden things. I loved exploring.
Yet another world impossible to forget was Freezeezy Peak, resembling in every respect a winter cosmos as pictured in a children’s book and situated mostly outdoors; it hardly took place in caves or the like, in contrast to what was seen in other television game worlds. The landscape was filled with ice. Great platforms of ice were tile like in that they possessed both danger and slip, a nonsense expression in a truly dangerous way. One quickly got to know this landscape and the dreadful shapes it could assume.
The figures that populated the realms of Banjo-Kazooie were just as, if not more, unforgettable than the stages themselves. Banjo and Kazooie, the two main characters from whom the game derives its name, were endearing in a way that subverts the sarcasm-tinged absurdism of the N64 era. Their playfulness, just on the right side of not taking themselves too seriously, was a beacon unto itself that attracted gamers like you and me. And the second part of their appeal came from the diverse set of moves that made them more than just another Mario-like clone.
The primary antagonist of the game, Gruntilda, was quite a remarkable character. She was as creatively schlocky as the rest of the game, constantly provoking laughter with an insidious blend of truly horrid-but-humorous rhymes. Meeting her in final combat atop the lair was the perfect way to culminate our adventure because the layout and design of the lair, like the hilarious battleground built on the side of the thing, added obscene amounts of personality to the fight.
The Banjo-Kazooie video game was essentially about gaining joy and satisfying the child within through the act of amassing—mostly amassing the bizarre array of objects that caught my eye. Each item, each jiggy, each piece of music, each jinjo, represented a reward of my mechanical competency in both the environs and the characters I met. I was no longer rusty but freshly engineered to the manufacturer’s consumer-play-play-standards to press some combination of buttons. Of course, I now understand Banjo-Kazooie as a work of late-capitalist propaganda, which has zero consequences for anything in the real world in or out of games. College students and latchkey kids in the 2000s, like me, really were mostly consumers.
An aspect I adored in Banjo-Kazooie was the sense of superiority achieved from item collection in the game world. Playground-like game “levels” were, in reality, facets of a multifaceted world (like, say, our world is the “real” world and we enjoy a linear hand-held story through mostly television-like storytelling), and the world of Banjo-Kazooie was like a collection of capsules along a branch of a meta-narrative, wherein Banjo and Kazooie were, in Macchiavelli’s terms, prince and princess. And the “Banjo-Kazooie” world had such appeal.
The pacing of the game and the difficulty arc struck an almost perfect balance. As I moved through the Freshly Baked and Scrooge McDuck levels of the game, for instance, I could feel myself becoming not just comfortable with the hard, complex platforming and environment navigation, but actually good at it. New abilities, such as carrying and pushing objects, were introduced slowly and naturally. When you use a newfound ability, it’s never because the game has tricked you into doing it via entitlement comedy; instead, you can almost look across the path and see how you would do it, and when you pull it off, it’s immensely satisfying.
An additional facet that gave me pleasure in collecting was the game’s humor and appeal. “Banjo-Kazooie” boasted snappy and spirited dialogue, charming characters, and fun situations that kept me playing and enjoying the various activities of each overworld. It had a cartoony style of animation that, when combined with the wacky and at times over-the-top antics of the characters, made for a delightful lark after a long day. The whole experience was overlaid with that of a world of amiable personality and forceful “pop,” mainly provided from the “Fantasia” of overworlds that brought together a wonderful ensemble soundtrack and a sociable cast of characters.
Considering the inheritance of Banjo-Kazooie, it is apparent that the game has powerfully affected the platform and the entire gaming industry. The game was revolutionary both in terms of its gameplay and the visual experience it brought about. As a 3D platformer, it achieved what seemed then like the holy grail of the transition of 2D platformers to 3D in the mid-1990s. It became a major hit on the Nintendo 64 and was lauded with a number of favorable reviews.
Banjo-Kazooie affected the gaming landscape in some major ways. First and foremost, it was instrumental in creating the collect-a-thon subgenre of platformers. (Don’t remember that term? Well, it’s a bit of a relic anyway.) The setup of Banjo-Kazooie was just perfect for showing this new form off to the world. From its start in a pleasant honey-themed hub, both main characters were completely visible on the level, creating an exciting sense of exploration unparalleled in platformers at the time. And the structure of the “action-adventure” base was also just endlessly fun — the perfect inspiration for the base of other games.
The triumph of Banjo-Kazooie ensured that Rare was considered one of the top game developers of the time. The reason was simple: The studio could create games that were beautiful. In an era where many games had plain and unadorned graphics, Rare’s had delightful richness and charm; they even had graphics that looked suspiciously close to what Microsoft would later call “next-gen.” But what Rare did was enough to earn a loyal and capable fanbase. It also won over some critics. And if you want to know the secret of how they wooed fans and videogame critics back in the 1990s, it’s this: It did more of what didn’t work than what did.
The influence of Banjo-Kazooie is visible in many modern games. Developers of these games, as well as some others, have talked about how they look back to Banjo-Kazooie as a kind of blueprint and influence on what they do. You can certainly see that at work in Yooka-Laylee. And A Hat in Time is another throwback to a different-era 3D platformer. It might seem odd to see someone inspired into making games based on another game at which they had groused when they were younger. But that is all part of the ongoing life of games as an artistic medium.
Banjo-Kazooie holds a special place in not just my personal gaming history, but the history of many gamers. When people think back to which games they attribute their love of gaming to, Banjo-Kazooie is one of the games that so many would point to. It’s got heart, warmth, and a wonderful sense of humor to it, even though the protagonists don’t really say very much. Yet here they are, years later, still so very worth experiencing.
As I sit here, pondering my Banjo-Kazooie involvement, I feel quite nostalgic. At the same time, I am grateful, too. The game was never some mere amusement but a virtual place of might and magic that led me on a Carrollian adventure. Doing so primarily—really, you could say, beyond all the other pleasures to be distilled from the experiences (some of which I’ll also discuss below)—filled me with an unparalleled sense of delight. I don’t think there is a higher compliment to be paid to a video game than to say the game was just that damn good, and that was my experience with B-K.
The platforming classic Banjo-Kazooie is an excellent example of why video games are good. The N64 title made its way into not just the library of every Nintendo 64 gamer back in the late ’90s but also their hearts. It was—and for many still is—the epitome of a great game by which all others were compared. When modern video game giants like “Uncharted” or “The Last of Us” come out and are praised for their “never seen or done before” qualities, they are merely because Banjo-Kazooie had already set the bar really, really high for everyone in the days when N64 was “it.”
Banjo-Kazooie was, for me, a formative occasion. It’s clear that I was not the only one who had this experience. My brother loved it too. We were only allowed to play video games for roughly an hour each day after we finished our homework. But Banjo-Kazooie often kept us clamped to our seats (or, more accurately, laying on the floor next to the much-coveted hot vent in the corner of the basement) for far longer than that. The velvet Revolution-era world of Banjo-Kazooie, which looked as if it had been hand-sketched in the corner of a creative kid’s algebraic notebook, contained so many delightful and inventive landscapes that the payoff for exploring it often felt much greater than solving the problems of Baron von Blubba.
When I consider the influence of Banjo-Kazooie, I am struck by the powerful and enduring effect it seems to have had on gaming—particularly when I think of its descendant in the modern platformer genre. Its innovative mechanics made it something of a standard-bearer, and since its release, it has served as a model of both what to do and what not to do in platformer design. The game’s influence can now be seen across not only the games that were very closely modeled after its design, but also the more recent platformers and various indie titles that try to give their own twist to what a platformer can be.
Let’s raise a glass to Banjo-Kazooie, the lovable game where we went on an adventure we’ll never forget. The world where this odd duo of bear and bird really came to life on the Nintendo 64 was a magical wonderland of color and sound. It had lush green hills in Spiral Mountain and the lily pad pond full of frogs which made up Bubblegloop Swamp. You could pan the camera on the swivel hinges of rusty old walkways to make sure you didn’t miss any secrets on your path. Each new baddie was a step in the right direction because each one was entirely unique and full of character. And its music, as in the next part of this ode to pure evergreen platformers, still is untouched in my Arcade Hall of Fame.
