The Making of Banjo-Kazooie Abridged

 

 

BACK IN 2007, RARE DID AN INTERVIEW WITH RETRO GAMER. ISSUE 36 FEATURED A "THE MAKING OF BANJO-KAZOOIE" SEGMENT. I READ THE FACTS AND I'LL POST THEM HERE.

 

While you can probably find the article on Rare Gamer, it's images are unreadable and some of the text is easier to read while squinting. I am not reposting the article word-for-word, that's illegal, just the facts as they come. I'll also post the concept art featured on the article, but a lot of it is sourced from places such as Ed Bryan and Gregg Mayles' twitter accounts.

PROJECT DREAM

• Project Dream started as an adventure on the Super Nintendo.
• Edson (incorrectly called "Edison"), was a boy that was replaced for being too generic.
• The 2nd character was a Rabbit that ran on two legs.
• The final version of the character was of Banjo.
• Captain Blackeye led a crew of no-good but also inept pirates.
• Project Dream took the ACM technology of the SNES to the next level, but it became obsolete with the Nintendo 64.
• Project Dream was only on SNES for a few months.
• Banjo had a backpack exclusively to keep his items in.
• A lot of code from Project Dream was reused for Banjo-Kazooie, this allowed Banjo and Kazooie to be completed in less than 15 months.
• Banjo-Kazooie was developed for 17 months total.
• The team grew from 10 people to 15. 7 Engineers, 5 artists, 2 designers and one musician.
• Nintendo never put pressure on the team to make Banjo-Kazooie successful.

 

 

ADDING KAZOOIE

• The game became a collectathon because every other platform game mascot was collecting at the time.
• Connecting collectibles to opening a game world led to completing pictures of it, which led to the missing pieces of the pictures being jigsaw pieces.
• Jinjos came from an unused idea of hard to get collectibles in Donkey Kong Country.
• Some of the ideas for Jinjos were they'd run away, or camouflage themselves instead of waiting around.
• Most of the collectibles such as Eggs, Feathers, Musical Notes and Honey were based around Banjo, Kazooie and the game's musical theme.
• The purpose of Banjo-Kazooie wasn't to make a better game than Super Mario 64.
• Nintendo did not understand Banjo-Kazooie's humor and had a difficult time with Kazooie's characterization.
• Nintendo emphasized very little control over Banjo-Kazooie.
• Initially Kazooie did not exist and only became a character when Banjo needed a double jump.
• The team wanted a sprint ability so they added legs coming from the backpack.
• A list of transformations were made prior to the levels being made, then the transformations were chosen that were interesting and fit the level theme.
• The purpose of Mumbo's Mountain was to make Banjo feel very small, they had previously just shrank Banjo but instead they came up with the termite transformation.

 

OTHER CHARACTERS

• Bottles was based on the thick-rimmed glasses kid that was clever that could be found in every school.
• Gruntilda was inspired by Grotbags from Emu's Pink Windmill Show.
• The game originally featured voice acting but voiced dialogue in video games was new and they didn't want the character to not fit how people see them.
• The team couldn't name Kazooie, Kazoo, because of trademark issues.
• Donkey Kong 64 was supposed to be more serious than Banjo-Kazooie.

 

 

 

WORLDS

• The backgrounds of some worlds were very large that they needed to cut them into several 64 x 64 piece textures.
• They used a decal technique that blended areas and layered textures onto each other giving them a detailed look which looked great in contrast to the simple clean characters.
• Banjo-Kazooie pushed the Nintendo 64's memory hard, the game suffered from many memory issues.
• To avoid memory issues, the game itself reshuffles the memory consistently making it easier to put more polygons and textures on the screen.
• The worlds were made to be larger than life but still believable in a fantastical way.
• Treasure Trove Cove was based on everything a deserted island would have: crabs, pirates, wrecked ships, sandcastles, and buried treasure.

 

SCRAPPED WORLDS

• Fungus Forest and  Mount Fire Eyes weren't needed.
• Hammerhead Beach was related to Stop 'n' Swop.
• Fungus Forest became a level in Donkey Kong 64.
• Mount Fire Eyes was incorporated into Hailfire Peaks.
• Glitter Gulch Mine and Witchyworld were transferred to Banjo-Tooie.
• After completing the game the players would unlock a new game mode to play as Tooty.
• Tooty's game mode takes place after Banjo-Kazooie where Banjo is hit with Grunty's spell and turned into a frog.
• Tooty then goes back to through the levels to find enough Mumbo Tokens to transform Banjo back.
• Grunty's spell was changed so it missed and the idea for the Mumbo Tokens was going to be reused in Banjo-Tooie.
• Gregg Mayles went on a forum to tell people the truth about Stop n Swop but was dismissed as a fake.
  
• They regretted making Banjo-Tooie so big that fans complained, but personally thought everything was better.
• They believe the unnamed Banjo-Kazooie game (which would be Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts) retained a lot of the stuff Banjo-Kazooie fans liked about the original two.