Be it for promotional reasons, re-familiarising people with the characters, or just a plain old money grab, Microsoft, Rare and 4J Studios have teamed up to release a polished up version of the original Banjo-Kazooie to coincide with the recent release of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. The first outing of bear and bird still continues to please even 10 years after release, but it also serves as a reminder of just how far we’ve come.

The evil witch Gruntilda, dissatisfied with her current lack of beauty, decides to kidnap Tooty, the cutest girl in the land. Tooty also happens to be Banjo’s sister, and he’s none too pleased about her abduction. Banjo teams up with best friend Kazooie, and runs off to rescue his sister and save the day.


Rather than rushing a quick emulation job out the door and whacking it up on Xbox Live Arcade, Microsoft and Rare decided to polish up Banjo-Kazooie. 4J Studios (who previously did a rather good port of Oblivion to the PS3) were brought in to improve the game’s textures and text, remaster the soundtrack, improve the frame rate, add widescreen support and increase the resolution up to 720p. All references to Nintendo’s involvement in the original product have been omitted. The result is a much cleaner looking game, though simplistic geometry, low polygon models and muddy textures ensure that Banjo-Kazooie retains its late 90s look.

Banjo-Kazooie follows the basic platform formula that was standard issue in 1998. Each of the game’s nine levels contains ten jigsaw pieces (or jiggies) and one hundred musical notes. Ten additional jiggies are hidden in Grunty’s Lair, which serves as the hub world. Jiggies are used to create pictures to open up new levels, while notes will open doors to new parts of Grunty’s Lair, getting you further towards the evil witch’s location.

Collecting jiggies usually requires you to find them laying around the level, collecting the five hidden Jinjos or performing a small task. The worlds are non-linear, so you’ll be doing quite a bit of exploring. Bottles the Mole will help you out by teaching you all sorts of new powers. You’ll get the basics down when you leave Spiral Mountain, but moves like egg shooting, flight and wonderwings are only earned by tracking Bottles down, and are vital to your progress. Mumbo Jumbo is also on hand to transform you into a number of different creatures when the situation calls for it, though you need to pay him first.

There are a few minor annoyances with the XBLA version of the game. The controls, arguably clunky due to the age of the game, could have been tightened up a bit. Camera control is on the right stick now, but arguably doesn’t give you the level of control you need. Note collection has changed to reflect the Banjo-Tooie model; rather than your note total being the aggregate of your note scores from each level, your note total is now cumulative, so you only need to collect each note once. It would have been nice if Microsoft were charging the standard 800 points for the game, but since it’s going to cost the same for a copy of the original cartridge, the point is really moot.


While Banjo-Kazooie still has a moderate length, the game does seem smaller and easier in the modern day. The stages, huge in 1998, seem tiny by modern standards, and the change to the note scoring makes the game noticeably easier. There are a few surprises for veterans of the original game, the most notable of which is the Stop ‘n’ Swop feature, which was originally supposed to link Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie together. Here it unlocks a bunch of vehicle parts for Nuts & Bolts.

4J Studios have done a good job of polishing Banjo-Kazooie, though it does have a tendency to show its age, mostly due to dated technology and design. Some other areas of the game like control and the camera could have used a little attention. Still, the game fills a long standing gap in the Xbox 360’s catalogue, and provides an excellent opportunity for gamers to re-experience one of Rare’s best efforts.