What a game. This was my second time through Banjo-Kazooie, nabbing all the old collectables and new achievements. It is the best collectathon on the N64, and you can fight me over that! I'll be talking about the XBLA version's differences, cause some were good and some were not so good.

The models still look amazing in HD and have held up very well. I appreciate the updated HUD, but I prefer the original spritework. The colors of the Jinjos don't match their appearance and I think Banjo's face looks uncanny in the health meter. Minor issue. The widescreen was lovely and well worth it.

Lets get controversial! Obviously, the big QOL here was keeping music notes and jinjos after leaving a level. Works great for most levels, but I would argue that keeping notes was a hinderance for Click Clock Wood, Gobi's Valley, and Rusty Bucket Bay. There are so many small rooms with 3 or 4 notes together that I would prefer getting the notes in one run, instead of backtracking through every part of the stage trying to remember where you have and havent been. Click clock wood especially since each season is quite large and it's very easy to forget where you already looked. When I completed the N64 version, I made a route to get every note, but I had to double or triple check locations in the XBLA version. It's a 'me' issue, I'm sure most players won't feel this way, so lets move on.

I liked the inclusion of stop n' swop and achievements this time around. I never bothered with Bottle's puzzle on the N64 since it wasn't tied to completion, but it needed to be cleared for an achievement this time. Actually not the worst thing in the world. Yeah, the controls were overly sensitive, but it only took half an hour and it could've been much worse than that.

Overall, I really love this game. It's one of the few collectathons that would make me consider completing it more than once. The N64 version is fantastic, but the XBLA version is definitely superior. I legit wish there was an xbox controller with c-buttons for this game. If you haven't played Banjo-Kazooie yet, give it a go! It's easy to pick up and play for short sessions and is a great time.

Go check out my Review of the N64 version of this to get my full feelings. In short, it is an improvement to what is already an amazing game. I'll copy any info about this version from my original review below.

I suggest playing the Rare Replay Version/Xbox Version as it fixes some of the flaws. Or emulate and save state often. It's not a hard game to complete or beat. Mostly a chill fun experience. One of the biggest improvements is keeping your note count, on death or exit. It brings it in line with Tooie in that regard. It also improves some of the controls and just looks prettier.

The remaster even adds the fabled Stop N Swap feature. Sadly it amounts to nothing in the end due to Nuts n Bolts being a mediocre game. One last thing the remaster offers is a bonus mini game in Banjo's house. If you like putting puzzles together, it's fun. Be warned it get stupidly hard though.

Here it is, my 100th review. I wanted this one to be very special since ever since I did this gaming cleanse I feel like i've been able to really appreciate and go into a more in-depth look on the way I feel about videos games. Banjo Kazooie is the prime example of what it means to be a strictly fun game with very little fluff in between. Right off the bat you learn of this games world and setting quickly, and when you leave Banjos house it doesn't matter if its your first time playing, the game asks if you know all of banjos moves prompting you to select yes or not, basically meaning you can skip the tutorial. And I mean just something like that really goes a long way in feeling like the devs care about you, they don't treat you like the dumb fuck babies most modern games do, they believe if you've got it down, then why hold you back any further. Get out there and beat that Grunty.

Anyways, Banjo Kazooie is a game that's very near and dear to me, I could easily just do a general review on the game but its all good, like even the quote on quote "Boring" levels are still fun to play through. The music is amazing and the world and the characters are so charming, full of childlike wonder and whimsy. It really is one of those games you just don't find in todays era. I want to specfically mention the bear and bird duo, I love everything about their dynamic, Banjo the calm but sort of naive one, and Kazooie the hot headed and mean one, but both still help each other out at the end of the day. And get this, they're 3D Platforming mascots who TALK. Yep, crazy right, in an era with mostly silent protagonists hearing the characters REACT to their environments and the world around them does wonders for keeping me engaged. And I care about these two goofballs so much.

I'm not sure what else to even say, this may be like my 10th time replaying this game and every replay is as good as the last. If you still haven't experienced Banjo but are a fan of 3D platformers, then what are you waiting for?

I mean, what can I say that hasn’t already been said? It’s a Mcfreakin classic!

I will say though, I feel like as time goes on, Banjo Kazooie starts feeling like less of an adventure and more like an obstacle course. I know this game like the back of my hand, so it just kinda boils down to planning out the fastest routes.

But I can’t hold that against it. It’s fun, funny, just an absolute delight.

One thing that I really liked this time, and I don’t know why it stood out to me now, is the Sandcastle in Treasure Trove Cove. I love areas like this, giving cheats a CONTEXT in this world instead of just putting in button combos on title screens and stuff. Tooie does this too, really just an extra step for world building. Very cool.

Yeah, Banjo-Kazooie, awesome, yadda yadda.

U spend twenty thousand hours dealing with the shitty water controls and the bad camera and the annoying sfx and the fact that u gotta go to mumbo to take away ur power and the cheap hitboxes and the fact that the hub world IS TOTAL ASS and then when u get a game over bc of the cheap hitboxes u gotta go all the way to the start of the castle and u dont ever know where to go. And u gotta find ur way with the shitty water controls to go back where u are. And then the horrible final boss and the only reason i win is bc a big blue dude who youve never met slams into the witch anyway this games great

Banjo? More like BANGER. Rare at their very best - despite starting so many tropes about collectathon platformers, it still does it so well to this day. It's hard to explain what exactly makes it so good, but just the movement is satisfying somehow, and that makes it fun to explore each stage, combing for notes and Jinjos while running into challenges to complete. The soundtrack is of course incredible as well. It fits so naturally that it doesn't even feel like anyone wrote it, it just has to exist in this world.

For "one of the greatest collectathon platformers of all time", I enjoyed it about as much as I expected to. I think this game's strengths really only lie in its presentation. All the characters are intricately designed (well, for an N64 game) and animated with a ton of squash-n-stretch. The witty dialogue and distinct funny noises everyone makes keeps them weirdly memorable in the long run. I feel like Grant Kirkhope went too far in on a single leitmotif, to the point where it becomes a grating earworm, but I have to praise how instruments dynamically change depending on where you are and what you're doing. This is particularly effective in Gruntilda's Lair, the massive, labrynthian hub world that brings all the levels together. The scale of these worlds must've been insane on N64.

Alas, a platformer is only as good as its platforming challenges and controls, neither of which stack up in my eyes. Most of the "moves" you learn are context sensitive actions. You can only initiate flight off of one panel type, or do a beeg jump off another type. All moves except the Talon Trot bring you to a dead stop when using them, and the former's only use is going fast! Aiming the Beak Bomb mid-flight is stupid and bad. The hardest "puzzles" I had to solve were ones where you had to fire eggs at things, because that move is so situational that I constantly forgot I had it. The game often focuses more on solving environmental puzzle solving for most objectives, and when put in situations where actual platforming is required, it's usually a do-or-die scenario, like climbing Click-Clock Wood's tree.

Also, I don't care if it was harder on the N64 because your note count reset upon death, Rusty Bucket Bay is just a shit level overall. It alone knocked half a star off my opinion of this game. On top of the cheap obstacles, you also have exhaust pipes you just have to infer that you can jump down, and windows that you just have to know that you can break. It straight up sucks!

Definitive version to the greatest 3D collect-a-thon platformer ever made. Rare was such an incredibly talented developer during the 90's. Any genre they touched, they were almost certainly adept at nearly perfecting it. To convey how impressive this game was for the time, keep in mind, Super Mario 64 was released in 1996, this came out in 1998, ONLY TWO YEARS LATER.

While the movement is arguably not as incredibly satisfying, the amount of moves and abilities the game offers you makes up for it. On top of that, instead of having the collectables be segmented one at a time throughout a world, they managed to create some of the best level design to make it so you can collect every Jiggy in one go within a single world. The sheer ambition, and charm this game oozes helps it to surpass Super Mario 64, and still hold up to this very day.

With the 360 port, this game honestly still holds up. The writing is fantastic, the art is fantastic, everything about it is perfection to me. Banjo and Kazooie prove to be a truly iconic duo within the 3D platformer genre, even securing a spot in Smash Bros. which is something I'm still in disbelief about to this day.

If you've got an Xbox, or a NSO membership, give it a shot. It's objectively Rare's magnum opus. Although, personally, I'd still give that title to Conker's Bad Fur Day any day.