Banjo Kazooie
Price: 1200 MS pts, or free if you preorder BK: N&B at Gamestop or Amazon
Release Date: Nov 10th for people who preordered N&B, Nov 26th for everyone else
What is Banjo Kazooie?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjo_kazooie
Banjo-Kazooie is a platform and action-adventure hybrid video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo in 1998 for the Nintendo 64. The game is the inaugural release in the Banjo-Kazooie series. The game's story focuses on a bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie as they set out on a quest to rescue Banjo's sister, Tooty, who has been kidnapped by the evil witch Gruntilda.
Gameplay:
Banjo-Kazooie adopted many of its central game play mechanics from Nintendo's groundbreaking title Super Mario 64. For instance, the player must similarly explore non-linear 3D worlds and gather tokens in the form of jigsaws (like Super Mario 64's stars) to unlock new worlds. However, Banjo-Kazooie is often considered an evolution of Super Mario 64 as it introduced a number of innovative features. These included the ability for Banjo and Kazooie, with the aid of Mumbo's magical powers, to transform into other creatures such as a termite, crocodile, walrus, pumpkin, and bee; the ability for the characters to learn new moves (as taught by Bottles); the game's extensive use of textures for surfaces where other N64 games would have used plain colors, extensive lighting, and music that dynamically changes style in order to reflect the environment and dangers to the characters. The Banjo-Kazooie central theme music, heard in the main play area, changed to reflect the environment entrance (levels) the player was near, such as taking on music box instrumental-style play near the ice level entrance. The music's notes and play never changed though, producing a seamless integration into the new instruments without stopping the forever-looping song.
Like Super Mario 64 before it, the player proceeds through the game by finding tokens. There are three kinds of tokens that help the player progress through the game, namely jigsaw pieces, musical notes, and Mumbo's tokens. Jigsaw pieces open doors to new worlds by collecting enough to complete the corresponding jigsaw puzzle. There are ten Jiggies (as they are sometimes called) in each world: nine must be sought and found, and one is granted by finding all five Jinjos on each world. (Unlike Super Mario 64's stars, though, the player doesn't have to exit the world every time he collects a Jiggy.) Musical notes open magic note doors that allow Banjo and Kazooie to progress further into Gruntilda's lair. There are 100 notes in each world, and 900 total in the game. Mumbo's tokens grant the player magical transformations at Mumbo's hut when the player collects a sufficient amount. These transformations include termite, crocodile, walrus, pumpkin and bee.
Besides these primary tokens, players may also collect items which are used in performing certain moves. Bottles the Mole must teach Banjo and Kazooie the move before the item can be utilized. Items include blue eggs, red feathers, and gold feathers, which can be held in quantities up to 100, 50 and 10, respectively. Blue eggs are fired as projectiles or ejected from Kazooie's rear, and bounce slowly until they either hit an enemy, or break on their own; red feathers are utilized in flight and flying attacks; and gold feathers are for the most powerful attack, Wonderwing, which uses Kazooie's wings to make her and Banjo invincible and can kill almost any enemy, or at least protect the bear and bird. Furthermore, rarer temporary items can be found which have specialized use in puzzle-solving, namely wading boots, which enable the crossing of hazardous terrain, and turbo trainers, which grant extra running speed, often as part of a race or a time-based puzzle. Finally, there are power-ups such as extra lives, which look like golden Banjo statues and grant one extra life each, and honeycomb energy, which incrementally increases the player's health and can be found in each level. Collecting six hollow honeycomb pieces (called extra honeycomb pieces) gives the player a permanent increase of one honeycomb of health.
What's different from the N64 version?
http://mundorare.com/games/banjo-kazooie-xbla
BK XBLA comes with very minor differences to the original N64 version besides the aspects mentioned earlier. The most important difference being the loss of Nintendo logos and replacement of Microsoft logos; the beginning of the game has the Rare logo circa 2003, with Mumbos xylophone in the opening video having Microsoft Game Studios instead of Nintendos original logo. The Game Boy from the third file is still intact. The icons of various characters look to be changed, as well as the font and Banjo and Kazooies own life meter; they look stretched in comparison to the originals.
Reviews:
IGN: 8.0
Screenshots:
more at http://www.mundorare.com/games/banjo-kazooie-xbla/screenshots
Achievements:
Get Jiggy 10
It doesn't matter which two, just successfully collect any two Jiggies.
Mumbo Jumbo 10
Get yourself transformed by Mumbo Jumbo for the first time. Now that's magic!
Knock out Nipper 15
Come out on top in a dust-up with Nipper the crab. Watch out, he's called Nipper for a reason.
Free Clanker 15
Liberate Clanker, Gruntilda's rusty and recalcitrant garbage grinder.
Chomp Chomp! 15
They're red and no less than 30 of them need chomping. Nuff said.
Move Master 15
Discover and master all Banjo's moves and Kazooie's but nobody else's. Unless you insist.
Show me the honey! 15
Collect all 24 of the extra honeycomb pieces. Yes! Every single one! It's character-building.
The Quiz Master 20
Complete Grunty's Furnace Fun quiz show and win the Star Prize. Been paying attention?
Jinjonatored 20
Fear the Jinjonator. If you're a witch, that is. The Jinjonator lays the smack down on witches.
Jigsaw Maker 20
Bet you thought jigsaws were boring! Bottles disagrees, and has seven of them to be solved.
Cheating Cheato 20
Bump into Grunty's disowned spellbook three times as it hops around the place dishing out cheats.
Music Maestro 25
There are 900 musical notes out there in the world of Banjo-Kazooie. Real gamers collect them all...