Banjo-Kazooie is a 1998 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. Controlling the player characters, the bear Banjo and the bird Kazooie, the player attempts to save Banjo's kidnapped sister Tooty from the witch Gruntilda. The player explores nine nonlinear worlds to gather items and progress. Using Banjo and Kazooie's traversal and combat abilities, they complete challenges such as solving puzzles, jumping over obstacles, and defeating bosses.
Rare conceived Banjo-Kazooie as a role-playing video game, Dream, for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System following the completion of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995). The 15-member team, led by Gregg Mayles, transitioned development to the Nintendo 64 and retooled the game as a platformer after the role-playing format proved too complex. Banjo-Kazooie was inspired by Super Mario 64 (1996) and designed to appeal to a broad audience, similar to Disney films. Grant Kirkhope composed the soundtrack; Banjo-Kazooie was one of the first games to feature vertical remixing, where various sound layers fade in and out depending on the player's location.
Released in North America in late June 1998 and in Europe the following month, Banjo-Kazooie sold over three million copies, making it one of the bestselling Nintendo 64 games. It received acclaim from critics, who said it surpassed Super Mario 64 as the best 3D platform and adventure game. The game was praised for its visuals, soundtrack, characters, writing, humour, and level design, while criticism was directed towards lack of originality and the camera system. Banjo-Kazooie received numerous year-end accolades, including two from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences: "Console Action Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics".
In retrospect, Banjo-Kazooie has been cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. It spawned a series which includes two sequels, Banjo-Tooie (2000) and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (2008), and two spin-offs, Grunty's Revenge (2003) and Banjo-Pilot (2005). Following Microsoft's 2002 acquisition of Rare, 4J Studios developed a port for the Xbox 360 in 2008, later included in the Xbox One compilation Rare Replay in 2015. It was released on the Nintendo Switch via the Nintendo Classics service in 2022, marking its first rerelease on a Nintendo console. A new port was released for the Evercade line of systems in 2026.
Gameplay
Banjo-Kazooie is a single-player platform game in which the player controls the titular protagonists, an easy-going brown honey bear named Banjo and a troublemaking female red-crested "Breegull" Kazooie, from a third-person perspective. The game features nine three-dimensional worlds where the player must gather musical notes and jigsaw puzzle pieces, called Jiggies, to progress.
The player travels from one world to another through Gruntilda's Lair, a region that acts as the game's central overworld. Jiggies allow the player to complete jigsaw puzzles which open doors to new worlds, while musical notes are required to open doors to new sections of the overworld. There are a total of 100 jiggies to collect (ten in each world), all of which are needed to view the proper ending, and 900 notes (100 in each world). The door with the highest amount of required notes has 880, although 765 are needed to enter the final section. Like Super Mario 64 (1996), Banjo-Kazooie is very open and allows the player to collect Jiggies and musical notes in a nonlinear order. It is also possible to complete certain worlds out of order, assuming the player has enough Jiggies and musical notes to reach a world earlier than intended.
Each world is composed of a number of challenges that involve solving puzzles, jumping over obstacles, racing, playing a bonus game, gathering objects, and defeating opponents. Tasks include spelling words, helping lights get on a Christmas tree while protecting them from getting eaten, and looking for a pirate's gold. The game features action-adventure elements, and the player must often interact with non-player characters and help them. It is also possible to increase Banjo and Kazooie's health bar by collecting empty honeycomb pieces (of which there are two in each world), and extra lives by obtaining Banjo statues.
Banjo and Kazooie can perform many abilities, such as jumping, climbing, ground-pounding, swimming, flying, and rolling into enemies. The game has a total of 14 special moves, and some cannot be performed until conversing with Bottles the mole, who teaches them. The breegull and the bear have unique assets. For example, while swimming, Kazooie moves faster but also has a harder time turning directions than Banjo, who only swims when above ground. Kazooie can perform the Talon Trot, where she runs faster and up slopes too steep for Banjo, the Beak Bomb, a long and fast hit towards something with her beak that she pulls off while flying, and either shoot blue eggs from the front or rear. In the middle of jumps or falls from great heights, Kazooie can use her wings to glide Banjo down at a slower speed for a few seconds. She can also fly and jump way higher than Banjo, but these moves can only be activated by standing on pads signifying them; pads with red feathers on them activate flying, green Shock Spring pads the extra jump height. Some abilities require specific items to be performed. For instance, red feathers allow Banjo and Kazooie to fly, while gold feathers protect them from damage. There are two types of collectible shoes that provide temporary abilities. The Turbo Trainer shoes provide a speed burst used to reach a destination on time, while Wellington boots allows Kazooie to run on otherwise harmful ground, such as the piranha-filled waters in Bubblegloop Swamp and shifting sands in Gobi's Valley.
Additionally, found in each world are five small creatures called Jinjos that Gruntilda imprisoned and, upon collection of the entire world's population, grant the duo a Jiggy. For the camera, there are three choices of views and the ability to spin the camera around the player character. However, some areas fix the camera to one angle, which sometimes hides items out of view, requiring the player to choose a first-person perspective to see them.
Banjo and Kazooie are also aided by Gruntilda's sister, Brentilda, who provides information about the witch needed to defeat her, and Mumbo Jumbo, a shaman who used to be Gruntilda's teacher. Mumbo Jumbo can use magical powers to transform them into several creatures. These include a termite, an alligator, a walrus, a pumpkin, and a honeybee. Creatures have their own abilities and allow the player to access otherwise inaccessible challenges, some of which are required to collect jiggies. Before a transformation process is allowed, the player must find a required number of "Mumbo Tokens" in the worlds. By finding a spell book called Cheato in the game's overworld, the player may also unlock secret codes that increase the capacity of Banjo and Kazooie's item inventory, such as the red feathers from 50 to 100 and the blue eggs from 100 to 200.
Plot Banjo the bear lives on Spiral Mountain with his bird friend, Kazooie, and younger sister, Tooty. One day, an evil witch named Gruntilda, who also lives on Spiral Mountain, asks her sentient cauldron, Dingpot, who the prettiest girl on the mountain is; Dingpot reveals that it is Tooty who is the prettiest, to Gruntilda's frustration and jealousy. Wishing to be prettier than Tooty, Gruntilda decides to steal her beauty. As Tooty talks with Bottles the mole, Gruntilda suddenly arrives and kidnaps Tooty, taking the young girl to her cliffside lair; Banjo and Kazooie hear the commotion and, upon being informed by Bottles of the situation, they venture to Gruntilda's Lair to confront her.
As Banjo and Kazooie enter Gruntilda's Lair, it is revealed that Gruntilda and her minion, Klungo, have built a machine used to transfer Tooty's beauty to Gruntilda's body. Banjo and Kazooie soon discover how to use Jiggies to warp to other lands, where they rescue creatures called Jinjos, whom Gruntilda captured. As the two progress further through Gruntilda's lair, they eventually find Gruntilda, who hosts a quiz game show called "Grunty's Furnace Fun", which offers Tooty as a prize for winning the game but threatens to kill Banjo and Kazooie in lava if they fail. Banjo and Kazooie manage to beat the game thanks to information given prior by Brentilda, Gruntilda's friendly sister, and they rescue Tooty, while Gruntilda flees to the roof of her lair. Afterwards, Banjo and Kazooie return home and celebrate their success with a barbecue until Tooty, knowing that Gruntilda is still at large, urges the two to return to Gruntilda's Lair and properly defeat her.
Upon arriving back in Gruntilda's lair, Banjo and Kazooie meet Dingpot, who resents Gruntilda for all of her abuse toward him and decides to help the two reach the top of the witch's lair. On the roof, Banjo and Kazooie battle Gruntilda and, with help from all the rescued Jinjos, they knock the witch off her tower, causing her to fall to the ground below. A large piece of rubble from the lair falls on top of her, trapping the still-living Gruntilda underneath. With Gruntilda finally defeated, Banjo, Kazooie, Tooty, and Bottles all relax on a beach. In a post-credits scene, Banjo and Kazooie's shaman friend, Mumbo Jumbo, gives information on an upcoming sequel, while Gruntilda and Klungo vow revenge.
Development Origins
The origins of Banjo-Kazooie can be traced back to Project Dream, a cancelled video game developed by Rare's Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995) team for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Inspired by Japanese role-playing games and LucasArts adventure games, Dream was developed for 16 months and starred a boy who got into trouble with a group of pirates. The game used Rare's Advanced Computer Modelling (ACM) graphics technology, first used in Donkey Kong Country (1994), to an advanced level." It involved the layering of several sprites to provide depth, achieved with "hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of rendering equipment. As development progressed, the boy was considered by the developers to be generic; thus he was replaced by a rabbit for "two or three days," then a bear who wore a backpack, trainers and cap. The bear eventually became Banjo.
Because the introduction of the Nintendo 64 made the ACM technology obsolete, Rare decided to transition the development of the game to that console. When this occurred, the Nintendo 64 was still known as the Ultra 64. The console was also not powerful enough to generate the amount of sprites the ACM technology required, so the graphics were now run by a "pseudo-3D" engine. The project proved to be too ambitious for the developers, who felt the game was not fun. More than a year into the project, out of desperation "like the end wasn't in sight," the project switched from Dream to a Donkey Kong Country-esque 2.5D side-scrolling platformer, with more depth and range of movement than a typical 2D platformer. It was given the names 2.5-D Banjo and Kazoo.
In the 2.5D game, Banjo would have collected fruits, the equivalent to musical notes in Banjo-Kazooie, in five "fruit houses" named after the fruit in them: oranges, grapes, lemons, bananas and cherries. Collecting jigsaw pieces would have also been done. Similarly to the barrels in Donkey Kong Country, Banjo would have used balls from a variety of sports, such as a football, baseball, American football, bowling ball, basketball, and a water-filled balloon, that could be powered up by a balloon inflator, football boot, football helmet and baseball glove. The enemy parts and hub map were also taken from Donkey Kong Country.