Nearly Thirty Years Later, the Rare Magic Is Still There
Revisiting the Games That Shaped a Lifetime of Gaming
Gruntilda had been defeated.
Every Jiggy had been collected. Every musical note had been found. Every Jinjo had been rescued. The final Honeycomb Pieces were mine.
There was nothing left to collect.
After working my way through Grunty’s Furnace Fun and climbing to the top of the lair for one final battle, Banjo and Kazooie’s adventure was over.
Nearly thirty years after the game was first released, I had completed Banjo-Kazooie again.
And somehow, the magic was still there.
Following Super Mario 64
In 1998, Banjo-Kazooie was released to the world, two years after Super Mario 64 had helped establish what a 3D platformer could be.
Rare have never been shy about the fact that Banjo-Kazooie took inspiration from Mario’s first 3D adventure, and playing the two games makes some of those influences fairly easy to see.
Both send you into self-contained worlds filled with objectives. Both gradually open up a larger hub as you progress. Both are built around exploring 3D spaces in a way that was still relatively new at the time.
But Banjo-Kazooie never felt like it was simply trying to copy Super Mario 64.
Rare took that foundation and built something with an identity of its own.
Nearly thirty years later, the obvious question is whether Banjo-Kazooie still holds up in the same way.
For me, the answer is yes.
That Rare Magic
There was something about Rare during that period that gave their games a character all of their own.
It is difficult to properly define what that Rare magic actually was.
The characters were part of it. The music was part of it. The humour certainly helped. Even the way their worlds were designed had a particular feeling that was difficult to find anywhere else.
You just knew when you were playing a Rare game.
Banjo-Kazooie has that feeling running through almost everything it does.
Even Yooka-Laylee, developed many years later by a team that included former Rare developers, carries some of that same DNA. It isn’t a Rare game, but there are moments where that familiar feeling manages to break through.
Going back to Banjo-Kazooie reminded me just how strong that identity originally was.
Every World Had a Personality
One of the things that still impresses me is how different each world feels.
Mumbo’s Mountain doesn’t feel like Treasure Trove Cove.
Bubblegloop Swamp doesn’t feel like Freezeezy Peak.
Mad Monster Mansion couldn’t be further removed from Rusty Bucket Bay.
They might all follow the same basic idea of exploring, finding Jiggies and collecting musical notes, but Rare gave every location its own personality.
The music changes.
The enemies change.
The characters change.
Even the way you interact with the world changes depending on where you are.
Freezeezy Peak has you climbing an enormous snowman and helping a family of polar bears. Mad Monster Mansion turns Banjo into a pumpkin and sends him squeezing through places he normally couldn’t reach. Rusty Bucket Bay replaces bright open landscapes with polluted water, machinery and the inside of a cargo ship.
Then there is Click Clock Wood.
Rather than simply creating one final large world, Rare built the same location around four different seasons.
Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter all use the same basic landscape, but what you do during one season can affect what happens later.
Something planted in Spring grows by Summer.
Characters change as time passes.
Paths open and disappear.
By Winter, you are still standing in Click Clock Wood, but the world feels completely different from the place you first entered.
It remains one of my favourite ideas in the entire game.
The Little Details
Then there are the things that don’t really matter at all.
Those might be some of my favourite parts.
One example is the Blue Jinjo.
Something I have always noticed is that whenever a world gives Rare the opportunity, the Blue Jinjo has a habit of appearing in or around water.
It became one of those little patterns I found myself looking for whenever I entered another world.
Freezeezy Peak and Click Clock Wood don’t really follow it, but by then the association had already been made.
Blue Jinjo.
Find the water.
It doesn’t affect the game.
There is no reward for noticing it.
Rare didn’t need to do it.
But those are exactly the kinds of details that make the worlds feel like somebody was having fun putting them together.
A Collectathon That Still Works
At its heart, Banjo-Kazooie is absolutely a collectathon.
There are Jiggies.
There are musical notes.
There are Jinjos.
There are Honeycomb Pieces.
There are Mumbo Tokens.
There is always something else waiting around the next corner.
What surprised me was how rarely that collecting felt like I was simply clearing items from a checklist.
Most Jiggies have something attached to them.
A character needs help.
A puzzle needs solving.
A new ability opens somewhere that couldn’t previously be reached.
Mumbo turns Banjo into something increasingly questionable and suddenly the world can be explored from a completely different perspective.
There were still moments where the collecting fought back.
Apparently my greatest enemy throughout this expedition wasn’t Gruntilda.
It was groups of five musical notes.
Bubblegloop Swamp left me wandering around trying to work out where the final five had gone.
Then Rusty Bucket Bay decided to do exactly the same thing.
There is something uniquely frustrating about knowing you have collected ninety-five notes and that the remaining five are sitting somewhere in a world you have already searched.
Still, I found them.
Eventually.
Always Looking Ahead
Something else I appreciated more during this playthrough was how often Rare seemed to be looking towards whatever came next.
Gobi provides one of the more memorable examples.
After spending the game having his water taken from him, he finally reaches his limit in Click Clock Wood and runs off, declaring that he is heading for the lava world.
He seems fairly confident Banjo and Kazooie won’t follow him there.
Anyone familiar with Banjo-Tooie knows how well that worked out for him.
Whether Rare always intended that line to lead directly into the sequel or simply returned to the idea later, it now feels like a small thread connecting the two games.
Mumbo gets in on it as well.
Although it didn’t happen during my playthrough, his magic can occasionally go wrong and transform Banjo into a washing machine.
He also talks about being able to turn Banjo into a T-Rex, before deciding that transformation is too powerful and should be saved for the next game.
Both ideas would eventually return in Banjo-Tooie.
Even after Gruntilda has been defeated, Rare isn’t quite finished teasing the future.
Banjo, Kazooie and Mumbo are already talking about the next adventure.
The game gives you an ending.
It just never really says goodbye.
Grunty’s Final Examination
Before reaching that ending, there is one last obstacle waiting inside Gruntilda’s Lair.
Grunty’s Furnace Fun.
I had forgotten how much I liked the idea behind it.
Instead of immediately throwing you into another difficult platforming section, the game effectively gives you an exam.
Questions test your knowledge of the worlds you’ve explored, the characters you’ve met and the sounds you’ve heard throughout the adventure.
Even Brentilda’s strange pieces of information about her sister suddenly become useful.
After spending the entire game travelling through Gruntilda’s Lair, Furnace Fun asks whether you were actually paying attention.
Then, once that is finished, the game tests something else.
Your ability to play it.
The Final Battle
By the time Banjo and Kazooie finally reach Gruntilda, there are no more moves left to learn.
You already have everything you need.
The final battle expects you to prove that you know how to use it.
Eggs become important.
Golden Feathers become important.
Flight returns.
The Beak Bomb returns.
Eventually even the Jinjos you’ve spent the game rescuing become part of the fight.
I like that structure.
Grunty’s Furnace Fun tests your knowledge of the adventure.
Gruntilda tests the skills that should have been honed throughout it.
One tests what you remember.
The other tests what you’ve learned.
It makes the final stretch feel like an examination of the entire game rather than simply another boss waiting at the end.
Then Gruntilda falls.
And suddenly there is nothing left.
The Journey
This journey through Banjo-Kazooie was recorded as a complete no-commentary playthrough, following Banjo and Kazooie from Spiral Mountain through every world of Gruntilda’s Lair and eventually into the final battle itself.
Every Jiggy was collected.
Every musical note was found.
Every Jinjo was rescued.
Every Honeycomb Piece was collected.
If you’d like to follow the expedition from the beginning, you can watch the complete Banjo-Kazooie expedition on YouTube.
New expeditions begin on the Survivor Incognito Facebook page, where videos are released first before joining the weekly YouTube archive.
Still Magical After All These Years
So, nearly thirty years after its original release, does Banjo-Kazooie still hold up?
For me, absolutely.
That doesn’t mean everything has aged perfectly.
The camera can occasionally decide that cooperation is optional.
Some of the platforming shows its age.
Searching an entire world because five musical notes remain unaccounted for isn’t an experience I’m desperate to repeat regularly.
But none of those things came close to taking away from what Rare created.
Every world still has its own personality.
Grant Kirkhope’s music gives those worlds even more character.
Banjo and Kazooie remain a brilliant pairing.
The humour still works.
The transformations are still memorable.
And the constant little details make Gruntilda’s Lair feel like a place somebody actually enjoyed creating.
Super Mario 64 helped establish what the 3D platformer could become.
Banjo-Kazooie took that foundation and did something unmistakably Rare with it.
By the time I entered Winter in Click Clock Wood, I knew the journey was coming to an end.
Then the final Jiggy was collected.
The final musical note was found.
The last Jinjo was rescued.
The final Honeycomb Piece was mine.
Grunty’s Furnace Fun was completed.
Gruntilda was defeated.
The expedition was over.
It didn’t hit me in quite the same way as finally defeating Wizpig during my Diddy Kong Racing journey.
But the tears were still there.
Maybe that says more than anything else could.
Nearly thirty years after Banjo and Kazooie first left Spiral Mountain, Rare’s strange little bear and bird adventure can still make me feel something.
That magic hasn’t disappeared.
It was waiting in Gruntilda’s Lair the entire time.
