Review #606: 64 Memories - Banjo-Kazooie

 Not a music/rhythm game.

Part 1: The Flashback

 I used to love this game, yo! I can clearly remember that we rented this game at least twice before I finally got my own copy, and boy oh, boy was it swell. I played this game oh so many times that I dare say I knew it by heart. Not so much now, I actually had to look up the locations of a few things!
 I don't know if I knew it then, but Banjo-Kazooie was easily one of my favorite N64 games, and I'm oh so happy to report that the game has held up spectacularly.

Part 2: The Review
 Super Mario 64 established what a 3-D platformer should and could be for its era, but Banjo-Kazooie built upon it to cement what a 3-D platformer collect-a-thon is. You have an overworld Hub and 9 levels, each with 10 Jigsaw Pieces, 100 Musical Notes, 5 Ginjos, 2 Honeycomb pieces and a Witch Switch that unlocks a Jigsaw Piece on the overworld. Not to mention the plethora of extra moves, supplies and Mumbo Tokens left to collect. Yup, you've got your work cut-out for you.

 Thankfully, most of the time it's pretty easy to figure out what you have to do on each level to collect the jigsaw pieces, and you don't have to go too far out of your way to collect every musical note.  Progression is locked behind both of those, the pieces being required to unlock new worlds and the musical notes are needed to open gates on the overworld. You need about 810 notes out of 900 and 94 jigsaw pieces out of 100 in order to beat the game... but if you collect everything you'll have access to nifty, but pretty much unnecessary by that point, upgrades.

 Banjo and Kazooie travel together, Banjo being a bear that carries Kazooie, a bird, on his backpack. One of the coolest things about the game is how they both work together. Pressing A makes Banjo jump, but pressing A again makes Kazooie flap her wings to help him gain air.  Banjo can attack by swiping or rolling, but Kazooie can shoot(or fart) eggs or use her wings to shield Banjo, as long as your Golden Feather supplies last. There are a ton of different moves for the pair, including free-form flying around levels, if you find a flight-pad and the now-mandatory ground pound, and every single ability has its uses, not a single one goes unused.

 One thing that did leave a bit to be desired were transformations. By collecting Mumbo Tokens and entering Mumbo's hut in a level, Mumbo will transform you into something: A Termite on World 1, an Alligator on World 4, a Morse on World 5, a Pumpkin on World 7 and, finally, a Bee on World 9. These transformations will be required, mostly, for a single Jigsaw piece on a level. Which is a waste! The Termite, the Pumpkin and the Morse only have the ability to jump, at least the Alligator lets you bite and the Bee lets you fly. Transformations could've added so much more to the game than simply access to a very few Jigsaw Pieces that only require you getting there in a transformed state.

 Controls are, for the most part, pretty tight, but they can be a bit lacking when it comes to flying around the stages. Aiming the 'Beak Bomb' attack can be particularly finicky. The camera is pretty good of its era, sometimes I wished I could get full 360 degrees of movement, as opposed to 90 degree shifts, but you can work with it.  A bigger annoyance would be dying on a level, which makes you lose all your collected musical notes for the level. On the flipside, and this was a huge deal back in the day, collecting a Jigsaw Piece doesn't boot you back to the overworld, unlike Super Mario 64.

 One of the best things about the game is that you can completely finish 7 levels on your first attempt. Freezeezy Peak and Gobi's Dessert require having an unlockable move found on each other before you can finish them, but you can simply enter either level, find the unlockable move, travel to the other level and finish it, and then return with the OTHER unlockable move to the first level you visited. I kinda wish all levels could've been finished on your first go, but it's alright. Stages are pretty well designed, but Level 8, Rusty Bucket Bay, is a bit unnecessarily tough, with a large body of water that depletes your oxygen a bit too quickly and moving engines from which Banjo slips too easily. There's also an Event near the end of the game, 'Grunty's Furnace Fun', which is all kinds of annoying, featuring questions that have different answers for every playthrough, and the only way to figure out the answers, besides trial and error, is to find an NPC on the overworld and talk to it multiple times. Annoying. 'Grunty's Furnace Fun' comes right before the game's climax, putting a huge damper on what had been an excellent game until now.

 Banjo-Kazooie is easily the best game I've replayed for this Nintendo 64 series. Its designed has aged like a fine wine, with but the tiniest of blemishes here and there. Banjo-Kazooie is one of those games that needs to be on any Nintendo 64 collector's shelf.
 9.5 out of 10