In the latest episode of the Nate the Hate Nate the Hate podcast, game developer Modern Vintage Gamer suggested a revival could be on the way, based on some things he had been hearing around the industry.
“I have spoken to a lot of people, and I’m not an insider, I’m a developer, but sometimes I hear things and I was at GDC earlier this year and there were some people talking about Banjo.
MVG doubled down in a follow-up comment, stating how he “feels pretty strongly” that something related to Banjo could be announced during the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase later today (UK time).
The last entry in the series Banjo-Kazooie: Nutz & Boltz was released exclusively on the Xbox 360 in 2008, it was arguably a game that failed to live up to the legacy of the Nintendo 64 originals from 1998 and 2000.
Although the IP is now the property of Microsoft, as Nintendo Switch fans will know – the famous duo have returned on a number of occasions to Nintendo platforms. Three years ago, Banjo-Kazooie appeared as a DLC fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and earlier this year, the original Nintendo 64 classic got released on Nintendo’s Switch Online service.
Banjo-Kazooie isn’t the only old-school Rare game rumoured to be returning. There’s strong evidence that the classic first-person shooter GoldenEye 007 (originally released on the Nintendo 64 in 1997) is also getting revived. Some speculation has even led to theories about a possible Switch Online release of the original title.
@Anti-Matter much the same as the original. But instead of gaining a new ability to be able to get to the next world or stage, ya get car parts to ugrade your car to get to the next world…. i didnt like it so only ever played the first world. Much prefer banjo and tooie.
I’d believe it; 3D platformers have come back more these past few years and it’s been so long since even Nuts and Bolts came out. Even if they just did a Crash or Spyro style remaster of the originals, they’d probably do pretty well here.
I was so excited to finally play Banjo-Kazooie for the first time when it came to NSO in January. Unfortunately, I came down with COVID during that same time period. I tried to tough it out, but I felt absolutely miserable. Now it’s hard for me to think about the game without associating it with one of the worst sicknesses I’ve ever had in my life. Maybe I’ll finish it someday.
If this ends up being a full-fleged remaster, it’d be great to give the game another go under better circumstances. I imagine the fresh coat of paint would make me no longer feel ill from looking at it, lol. While there were several aspects of the game I found enjoyable, it did have a lot of quality-of-life issues bogging down the experience a bit. The game deserves a modernization that fixes these aspects that didn’t age so well, like losing all your music notes when you die. I know the Xbox version fixes this, but do I look like I own an Xbox?
I want to be excited, I really do….but modern Rareware just isn’t the same as when they were with Nintendo. Banjo Kazooie, Tooie, and DK64 are some of my favorite games of all time, but I don’t think they could recapture that magic.
If it ends up being Banjo-Threeie AND it’s directed by Gregg Mayles with a team of people who worked on their N64 collect-a-thons, then I feel like I could actually get excited. It’ll suck if it’s stuck on Xbox though. I would only end up playing it if it came to PC.
@Not_Soos thankfully restore points fix the note issue even better than Xbox’s method (which wasn’t even originally in that version, it was patched in when players started complaining it was too hard). I understand the association with sickness, I’ve had some great games ruined by associating them with bad times in my life, and I do wish one of my favorite childhood games wasn’t ruined for you. I do however hope it’s not a remaster or remake but rather a new game – while it has some rough patches, the original is fine the way it is and any of the tougher sections are fixed with restore points anyways. We haven’t had a true sequel since Tooie though, decades ago – Grunty’s Revenge for the GBA was, at best BK Lite, Banjo Pilot was a spin-off, and Nuts & Bolts… well, I’m kinder than some towards it, I still say it wasn’t a bad game, it was a bad Banjo game and not what fans want from the franchise. So many of us are still wanting the never released Banjo Threeie and I just hope we get that…
@Faruko and you know this how? A pretty big percentage of the BK community are exclusively Nintendo owners, and Microsoft isn’t dumb. They could very well make sure it releases on Switch, it’s hardly a franchise that needs more powerful hardware and Microsoft has been collaborating with Nintendo more and more.
I don’t like making restore points on Switch because, unlike Wii U, there’s no way to delete them afterwards. It’s very easy to accidentally load an old one and lose a substantial amount of progress, potentially across multiple save files. It’s incredibly dumb Nintendo took away this very simple feature that could be done on their last generation of systems.
I do think there’s room for improvement, like the game desperately needs a map screen. As a newcomer, I found Grunty’s Lair incredibly disorienting. I probably spent well over 3 hours running around in circles in the hub world trying to figure out where the next level is. Some of the button combos also feel a little bizarre on a modern console, like having to hold down the ZL button and press a direction on the c-stick to initiate Kazooie’s different moves. Then there’s smaller things like full 360-degree camera control and a list of objectives like in Super Mario 64 that would be really nice to have.
I understand wanting a new game after having to wait for so long. But for me, I like when companies remaster beloved old games as a stepping stone to get to that point. We’ve seen it with Crash N. Sane Trilogy before the release of Crash 4 and Battle for Bikini Bottom before Cosmic Shake, for example. I seem to even remember Aonuma say that he was taking the lessons they were learning from remastering all the 3D Zelda games during the Wii U/3DS era and applying that knowledge to developing Breath of the Wild.
I think remasters of more recent games like Klonoa, Spyro, Super Monkey Ball, and Mario Party Superstars were all necessary steps to train new talent on how to capture the magic of the originals in a franchise that has either been dormant or ruined for decades. I expect each of these franchises to get new entries within the next few years if the remasters sell well enough, and the final product will be better because of that experience. As a hardcore fan of classic Paper Mario, I frankly don’t think Nintendo is capable of making another game in that style right now and at this point believe they just need to remaster Thousand-Year Door so they can go back to the basics and truly understand why that game worked so well in the first place. Kind of like when a football coach makes the team watch replays of the game to better understand where they succeeded and faltered so they can improve their strategy for the next game.
Even if they don’t plan on doing a remaster any time soon, I’m sure I’ll feel up to finishing Banjo-Kazooie someday. I feel like I owe it to myself to do that. I actually did revisit it a couple months ago and got to Rusty Bucket Bay, but after taking such a long hiatus, it was hard to get back into it. I think I just need to put it out of my mind for a while and when I’m ready to come back to it, just start a new file from the very beginning.
It would be a day one purchase and the same goes for Goldeneye, as long as they don’t move it just to Switch Online service- never gonna pay for games I can’t own!!!!!!
@Not_Soos you nearly finished the game then, if you reached Rusty Bucket Bay… I also can’t say the fan name for that stage because it would go against NintendoLife’s rules but let’s just say it’s likely the most hated world in the franchise and incredibly unforgiving. I wouldn’t wish anyone to play that with restore points, and no QoL features will make it bearable.
The button thing simply is because it’s mapping an N64 layout to another controller – it’s button limitations and was fine with c-buttons but there’s just not enough buttons on the Switch for all the moves. The c-buttons map to the right stick, and it sorta sucks and the only fix for that is the N64 controller which is impossible to get and probably overpriced. As for a map… I’ll give you that but I don’t think it’s worth making a remaster over that, nor do I think it’s worth Rare’s limited resources. Rare is pretty small and doesn’t release many games these days, any remaster of Banjo would mean a new entry would be unlikely until the following gen and would delay their other projects. The layout of Grunty’s Lair is confusing but it’s also sorta the point and why it’s fairly small. It’s an 11 hour game (on average for new players – experienced players beat it in a sitting or two), the worlds are pretty tiny, and you only need to backtrack twice for 100% (never for any%) so generally at worst there’s a short fumble between areas.
But still, as a fan of Thousand Year Door I absolutely want a remake, but I doubt they’d learn much from it. Banjo Kazooie I feel that’s unnecessary for even moreso, heck as someone who buys remasters of most games I love it’s one of the few I would refuse to buy. I have it on three platforms and it plays pretty much perfectly. Tooie is the superior game for me and, with your analogy, I’d rather a Tooie remake than Kazooie, similar to how you picked Thousand Year Door rather than Paper Mario 64. A lot was learned from Tooie’s development and using Kazooie as practice for a new game would feel like a step backwards. I’d still prefer a new entry but I at least might buy a Tooie remaster. Not that I think that the remaster thing necessarily, I’m not convinced that helps a series much. BotW feels nothing like older Zelda games, I find the original Crash games pretty horrid even in their remakes, and as for Spongebob I can’t speak on it because I’ve never played those games.
I think we’ll just have to respectfully disagree there is all. If all that gets announced is a remaster/remake, I doubt any announcement for the series could disappoint me more. Sure, in theory they could make a new one if that sells well, but looking at recent attempts to revive collectathons it’s not a mainstream genre and I don’t have expectations it’d perform well enough for Microsoft to want to keep it alive again. I’d rather have a new entry before the series goes back into hibernation for being so niche.
@Not_Soos also I feel like I went past my first point too quickly trying to get to my second point, but I do want to say good job at least reaching Rusty Bucket Bay, you got through most of the game! I hope you enjoyed it at least a bit, despite feeling awful. There’s only really one world after that one and I’ve seen mixed opinions on it, though it’s my favorite. If you do manage to beat RBB without restore points though, hats off to you. I’ve yet to see a newbie manage the game without restore points or save states in quite a few years, that world is brutal and I refuse to even do it without restore points, I suffered enough as a child! 😂
source: Nintendo Life
