Welcome to Part 2 of The Retro Review Series’ fourth episode, covering Banjo-Kazooie. If you’re just joining us now be sure to check out Part 1 ‘The Intro‘ first!
Rare was founded in Twycross, Leicestershire, England in 1985, by Tim and Chris Stamper. It started as Ultimate Play The Game, a developer, which created games for the UK only ZX Spectrum Home Computer. Although they had some critical and commercial successes in Europe (Jetpac, Sabrewulf, and Knightlore being the big ones), Ultimate Play The Game felt like the Europe-only home console market was a dead end. After figuring out the programming for Nintendo’s Famicom (soon to be known as the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America), the newly dubbed Rare team presented Nintendo a tech demo, and were promptly hired as a developer for the NES.
The list of games Rare developed for the NES is staggering. They worked with several different publishers, including Nintendo, Acclaim, GameTek, Hi Tech Expressions, Tradewest, Milton Bradley, LJN, Ultra Games, and Mattel. Highlights from this 60 game list include: Wizards & Warriors, R.C. Pro-Am, Marble Madness, Cobra Triangle, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Snake Rattle ‘N’ Roll, and (the mighty) Battletoads! If you’ve never played Battletoads, and like beat-em-ups, NES games with gorgeous graphics, and/or games with ruthless difficulty, play it!
With the release of the Super NES, Rare decided to focus on quality over quantity. Not to say many of their NES games aren’t classics, but they spent many years working on their ACM (Advanced Computer Modelling) graphics engine. This engine bore two children on the SNES: Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct. Both games sold like nuts, and spawned very successful sequels.
Although there were many great games created by Rare for the NES, and SNES, it was the N64 where they became arguably the top video game developer of the 90s. About half of those 30 or so at least good N64 games were made by Rare. And several of their games are (the definition of) game-changing classics.
Rare’s first N64 game, other than a port of the arcade sequel to Killer Instinct, was the criminally underrated Blast Corps, where players used vehicles to complete puzzle-based challenges, disguised as vehicle demolition extravaganzas! Their next game, GoldenEye 007, made first-person shooters what they are today. Seriously, only Halo 2 has had a comparable impact on the genre since its inception. GoldenEye is the reason I don’t like first-person shooters; I played it a ton, and the genre got stale for me after one game. Then Rare released the best cart racer of all time, Diddy Kong Racing, which also introduced the characters Banjo and Conker to the world. Afterwards came Banjo-Kazooie (plenty more on that in a bit), and the amazing third-person shooter, Jet Force Gemini. Donkey Kong 64 was created using the overall design of Banjo-Kazooie (and even had some in-game crossover). If you’ve ever heard from anyone “Banjo-Kazooie is just a big collect-a-thon”, they’re wrong. Banjo-Kazooie is balanced and wonderful, and as much as I like Donkey Kong Country 64, it is totally guilty of having too much to collect in too large of levels. Perfect Dark was the spiritual successor to GoldenEye (it was originally developed as the James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies IP), and perfected what was already basically perfect. Then came the forgettable cart racer, Mickey’s Speedway USA (the only blemish on Rare’s near perfect N64 record), and Banjo-Kazooie’s direct sequel, Banjo-Tooie (more on it later). Rare’s final game for the Nintendo 64 was Conker’s Bad Fur Day, the most expensive N64 game on the retro cart market. It was a wonderful platformer with shooter elements, which got an M rating for its crude humor. Everybody loved it. All of these games were released in a time period from late 1996 to early 2001, and sold extremely well.
The final game Rare was developing for the N64 ended up getting released on the GameCube. Originally called Dinosaur Planet, this final game was titled Star Fox Adventures, after Shigeru Miyamoto asked Rare to rebrand it. Even though it was a Legend Of Zelda-style adventure game, the character designs were close to those of the world Star Fox had established.
Going back to 1995, Rare had successfully developed the Donkey Kong Country series for Nintendo, and right after the release of Donkey Kong Country 2, began development on a game titled Project Dream for the Super Nintendo. This game was intended to be a Japanese-style RPG, with Lucas Arts point-and-click game elements. It was about a boy named Edison and his clashes with a pirate named Captain Blackeye. After suffering many setbacks due to software performance issues, Project Dream’s team, joined up with another Rare development team, working on a game for the N64 called Twelve Tales: Conker 64. Neither of these games saw the light of day, but the resulting project of their efforts was a Mario 64 inspired platformer called Banjo-Kazooie.
Click on thru to page two for more on the history of Banjo-Kazooie…