Banjo-Kazooie is a fantastic platform action game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo in 1998 for the N64 console. The game was re-released in 2008 for the Xbox Live Arcade.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY A bear called Banjo and a bird called Kazooie live their lives in a fictional location called Spiral Mountain. A witch called Gruntilda kidnaps Banjo's sister, Tooty aiming to take away her beauty via a magical transformation device. Banjo and Kazooie set out on a dangerous task to rescue poor Tooty. The game looks like Super Mario 64 (remember the fat Italian plumber?) and is a platform masterpiece. The game features Impressively wide worlds, lush backdrops, funny characters, satisfying puzzles, top control scheme, ingeniously clever level design and fun boss fights. It actually includes all those elements a serious platform game should always have.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The game features particularly wide and colorful 3D worlds with fantastic textures (as Rare Software was a specialist to this). The action is fast and the animation is as smooth as water, without any issue while the game's sound features impressive music tunes, funny character shouts and awesome sound effects. Overall, Banjo Kazooie is a true masterpiece on the Nintendo 64 games library!
Screenshots
Sounds
Intro/Menu music:
In-game music sample:
Gameplay sample
Hardware information
Nintendo 64 (N64)
CPU: MIPS R4300i-based NEC VR4300 at 93.75 MHz (connection to the system via 32-bit data bus) MEMORY: 4MB of RAMBUS RDRAM (expandable to 8MB with the Expansion Pak) with 562.5 MB/s peak bandwidth. GRAPHICS: 64-bit SGI co-processor (Reality Co-Processor) at 62.5 MHz chip split internally into two major components, the "Reality Drawing Processor" (RDP) and the "Reality Signal Processor" (RSP). 64-bit SGI co-processor (Reality Co-Processor) at 62.5 MHz chip split internally into two major components, the "Reality Drawing Processor" (RDP) and the "Reality Signal Processor" (RSP). Supports: 235x224 to 640x480 flicker free interlaced screen resolution. Hardware Z-Buffering. Hardware Anti-aliasing. Hardware Texture Mapping (32x32 pixel texture maps). Tri-Linear filtered MIP Mapping. Environment Mapping SOUND: Stereo 16bit PCM audio capable of 64 channels at 44Khz