Some Banjo-Tooie Picking
Please note that this piece contains spoilers, some of which are significant.
Banjo-Tooie (2000) marks a significant place in 3D platforming history, yet it appears to be somewhat forgotten now, perhaps buried amongst its own brand obscurity. To be fair, the Banjo-Kazooie “brand” doesn’t lend itself to ubiquity in the first place—Banjo began his life as a character in developer Rare’s 1997 racer Diddy Kong Racing, along with other throwaway sentient animals such as Timber the tiger and Drumstick, an overall wearing chicken. The ulterior motive behind DKR, it seems, was to use the game as a vessel to lay the groundwork for future character-specific Rare titles (the only one to succeed was Conker the squirrel, famously), but, really, there doesn’t seem to be anything significantly endearing or memorable about, well, a bear with pants. Granted, sticking clothes on an animal mascot may not be the oldest trick in the book, but it sure seems that way, and I think that’s enough to result in Rare’s IPs getting glossed over with the same kind of dismissal that seems to befall every new Saturday morning cartoon show that isn’t specifically tied to an already popular product. Banjo the bear and his bird sidekick Kazooie had a very, very, very steep hill to climb when their first game, Banjo-Kazooie, was released in 1998—and despite its popularity (popular enough to warrant two sequels, at least), in the face of that OTHER franchise competing for consumer dollars on a Nintendo system, there really was no way that Banjo’s first solo effort would seem like anything other than an ostensible conglomeration of every other non-Mario mascot in existence.
Faded characterizations aside, however, I’m happy that Banjo-Tooie exists as both one of the platforming swan songs of the Nintendo 64 and as a recent re-release on Xbox Live Arcade, because it is a fascinating video game relic, a resolute and finite amalgamation of the N64’s capabilities and Rare’s boldness to address the trappings of a genre that it helped to define, even doing it with an almost parodistic zeal.
Treating Banjo-Tooie as a “sequel” to BK, however, may not be wisest approach. Granted, the game certainly aims to improve upon the first title in concrete technical ways like graphics and camera control and, for the most part, succeeds admirably—there is some clever “elasticity” tech, for example, that gives soft and squishy environments an appropriate bounce: this isn’t the first N64 game where you end up inside of a sea creature’s stomach, but it’s much more impressive to traipse through intestines that have grosser jiggle to them. And the variety of mini-games tucked away within each level shows that the development team was making a solid effort in trying to craft a more robust experience for the player than its predecessor (never mind that most of these gameplay sidebars are either boring or, in the case of the first person seek-and-shoot timed missions, downright annoying). But underlying all of my assessments of the game and its nature as a “continuation” of BK is this ecstatic revelation that came to me during my recent play-though of the 360 remake, brought on by my desire to follow the Stop N’ Swop arc to its deserved conclusion (read here for a little history of this esoteric feature).
It feels to me as if Banjo-Tooie was the game that the developers wanted to make all along but weren’t able to until they constructed Banjo-Kazooie as a kind of prelude, since BT presupposes your involvement and familiarity with the first game in delightfully fecund ways. This is apparent from the first screen of the game, picking up from where the last screen of BK left off, with the evil witch Gruntilda trapped under a huge boulder—the direct result of the player’s assumed job well done. What’s more, when Banjo and Kazooie begin their adventure, they already have their entire previous move-set intact, and things only progress from there as each new world offers at least one new special technique or item or weapon to use. This actually led to a very frustrating moment for me—I was required to use a specific beak attack in order to gain a jiggy (the equivalent to Mario’s stars), but in order to correctly execute the move, I had to tap a shoulder button instead of hold it—a variation on an attack from the first game that I wasn’t even aware I still had. The assumption is that you can remember every ability from BK, and the new move-set is simply mapped on top of that (luckily, strict XBLA requirements mean that the “Help and Options” section has an onscreen guide to all of the moves, or else I would have been totally stymied without the original instruction book or an FAQ). It’s an incredibly ambitious development tactic that results in a game that, while not necessarily “deep,” is certainly impressive in terms of breadth; Kazooie can shoot and lay eggs as before, for instance, but now there are no less than five different egg types to use in various situations…and one of those eggs actually hatches a miniature Kazooie that is controlled remotely and is used to get into small crevices and squeeze past large path-blocking enemies, among other things. I smiled.
A core aspect of Tooie’s improved gameplay derives itself from the new ability to separate and individually control both Banjo and Kazooie (in BK, Kazooie was permanently tethered to Banjo’s back via his rucksack), which could have made for some deep and interesting puzzle solving, but unfortunately falls back on the “simultaneous switch hitting” trope found everywhere in everything. The bird and the bear both feel properly unique, however, and each character builds up their own individual abilities as the game progresses, so it just manages to stay fresh enough through completion. Kazooie can glide on her own without a flight pad, for example, and Banjo can use his empty backpack as a kind of potato-sack hopping vehicle and zip himself up inside in order to gain health. Again, these gameplay aspects aren’t necessarily implemented in a masterful way, but the fact that so much is nascent makes Banjo-Tooie a curious experiment in uninhibited design.
The true appeal of the game, however, lies in the inter-connectedness of the environments. I know I’ve written this before, but it bears is worth repeating again: for 3D video games, environment is KEY to an enjoyable experience, especially in a game where exploration is a core aspect of gameplay. And I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that had its levels reveal themselves as smaller branches of a larger overarching design as often or as well as Banjo-Tooie: you truly get the feeling that, as new areas are unlocked or discovered non-linearly, Rare constructed a master blueprint that was meticulously mapped out and designed to fold back onto itself at specific points like a complicated origami sculpture. In short, the whole game is a virtuoso’s ode to platformer backtracking, and in my opinion it’s done spectacularly. One of the very first jiggies earned, for example, requires Banjo to travel from a Mayan inspired treasure chamber in the first world to a prehistoric cave in the fifth world, where a sleeping caveman is guarding a golden idol he stole from the vault. This is an instant and jarring transition; you simply walk through a door and are transported into a completely different time and place, a time and place that you won’t see again for quite some time, when you unlock the area proper. I didn’t even put the pieces together until I found my way into that specific cave again and spotted the hiding spot where the idol once stood. Rare has taken the setting of Spiral Mountain from BK and developed it into a fully realized, Byzantine universe that somehow feels more easier to navigate than the endless array of cavernous spaces that constituted Grunty’s lair, the overworld of the first game.
The issue of methodological collection has to be addressed as well, since it’s the bane of Banjo games specifically and Rare games in general (even Diddy Kong Racing had the player riding around and collecting balloons in a hub-world to unlock courses). Gamespite’s article on the matter does a fine job in summing up the problem with most 3D collectathon platformers, in that the burden of having to use the game’s programmed and technical limitations to look for something in these gargantuan areas is disproportionate to the incentive for actually getting them. The stats alone for Donkey Kong 64 (1999) should incite a tsk from almost any gamer. While Banjo-Tooie doesn’t reduce the amount of acquirable trinkets in any significant way, there is definitely more thought put into how exactly they are distributed within the areas. The 100 golden notes scattered throughout each world are now grouped into bunches of 5 and 20, lightening the load somewhat, and I didn’t have to comb through every nook and cranny in the way that BK required me to. And while shamans Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba (…) each require a tiny animal called a Glowbo to perform their level-specific spells, these creatures are always found near their respective dwellings, and the game makes it a point to mention that to you via one of many hint signs strewn everywhere.
What’s more, Rare seems to actually be toying with the cliche of item collecting, making disarming jabs at their own fastidious audience. There are many NPC’s throughout Banjo-Tooie that will ask you to find this or that item or recover this or that offspring…but then, about three-quarters into the game, you encounter Mildred and George, a couple of “square” and star-crossed ice cubes who ask you to reunite them. Unfortunately, due to a necessary item tucked away inside Mildred, and a pre-designed “accident” that befalls George–which the player has to inadvertently set into motion—the only way for Banjo to acquire all the necessary jiggies necessitates that the pair is destroyed. So, Mildred and George actually are reunited, but in a unspoken, existential, and oddly beautiful way. The multi-colored Jinjo creatures also return, as expected, but about halfway through the game, a new enemy type is introduced—Minjos, who are actually evil doppelgangers of Jinjos—requiring the player to now be on their toes when they discover a Jinjo, since it may actually attack them instead of fill out a pre-determined quota. It’s another daring and meta move on Rare’s part; by subverting the very idea of item collecting that the developers introduced by using false Jinjos—and then, in the last world, the ultimate, a false Mumbo—they seem to actually be redefining somewhat what it means to play a “Rare game,” but specifically for those who have been following their games long enough to identify what it means to play a “Rare game” in the first place. It’s a defiant statement for both the fans and the critics, and undeniably original.
- Sorry, George, human nature
While one can surely see in Banjo-Tooie the groundwork being laid for Conker’s Bad Fur Day (2001), Rare’s N64 swan song—there is plenty of PG level toilet humor, large breasts and non-PC characters—the game isn’t simply a bridge or a contractual obligation. There was a surprising amount of “breadth” and ambition put into it, using expectation as a means to expand upon, and even satirize, itself. For all of the frustrating and characteristically Rare things I came across, I was compelled to continue playing, if for any other reason than a desire to see if my criticisms would be addressed or mirrored back to me. I don’t know if these thoughts equate to a positive review, but it is certainly an interactive study that I’m happy to have invested in. I came to Banjo-Tooie for Stop n’ Swop (which I’ve not unintentionally neglected to mention altogether), but once I arrived there, I found something more.
Screenshots from Spiral Mountain and GameFAQs.
Posted by Kurt Shulenberger on December 4th, 2009 :: Filed under Features
Tags :: Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Diddy Kong Racing, Environment, Nintendo 64, Platformer, Rare, Review, XBLA, Xbox 360
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