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 NO SPOILERS.  On a rainy night two years after the defeat of the conniving witch Gruntilda, a giant drilling machine piloted by the evil witch's sisters wreaks havoc on Spiral Mountain, freeing Grunty from the hole in the ground she'd been trapped under ever since the end of the titular bird and bear's first adventure. Seeking revenge, Grunty interrupts Banjo and Kazooie's poker night, destroying their home and killing Bottles in the process before fleeing to the Isle o' Hags. Following the success of 1998's Banjo-Kazooie, it was only natural that Rare would greenlight a sequel. Immediately after the release of the original title, Rare got right to work on Banjo-Tooie, working hard to refine and improve the foundation the first game laid out. Released in 2000 for the N64 and 2008 for the Xbox 360, Banjo-Tooie's levels are bigger and more expansive and there are even more moves and ways to scour the worlds to collect more and more Jiggies and notes! The game's scope is so massive, the poor N64 struggles to run it, at times! This is not an issue with the Xbox 360 port, however, although the smoothed out framerate does cause some desync issues of its own. Lots of appreciated quality-of-life features have been implemented as well, such as a few different fast travel systems and collected notes being recorded in the player's save file. As these QOL features apply to all versions, we will be playing the N64 version for this LP, as I did not want to buy an Xbox.  This will be a blind LP where I run through the game under the guidance of my co-commentators Artix and Silver Falcon. As a blind LP, it should hopefully go without saying but NO SPOILERS. Updates should ideally be twice-a-week, but no promises. You can follow me on Twitter for updates to this LP or other projects I might be working on while the service seemingly still exists.                                                  
ChaosArgate fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Sep 8, 2023 |
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Jun 18, 2022 00:16
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NO SPOILERS. The N64's library doesn't have a whole lot going for it; outside of Nintendo's own excellent offerings, a lot of other developers opted to pass it over for Sony's shiny new Playstation. Aside from Nintendo's offerings, Rare's output for the console did a lot of heavy lifting both in the way of filling out the console's library and for codifying the 3D Collectathon, with 1998's Banjo-Kazooie being a strong pillar of their contributions. Banjo-Kazooie stars a bear and bird duo, the titular Banjo and Kazooie, who set off to rescue the former's sister Tootie after she's kidnapped by the evil witch (who actually sounds kinda cool based on all the gossip?) Gruntilda, who felt slighted after her magic mirror declared the young bear the prettiest in all the land instead of herself. The adventure is a colorful romp through many vast lands, like forests, swamps, a desert, etc., all connected together with Grunty's Lair as the central hub. At some point, I realized that I've never actually completed any of Rare's games for myself, so I decided I wanted to change that, starting with this game. For this LP, we'll be playing the version offered with Nintendo Switch Online; I do not have access to an Xbox, so the nicest looking version I have access to is on Switch. I'm also told that the sequel, Banjo-Tooie, has a very nice QoL feature that was back-ported to the Xbox version of this game, which is nice for that version, but does nothing for the N64 original, so to save us some grief, we opted to play the release with save states built in. This will be a blind LP where I run through the game under the guidance of my co-commentators Artix and Silver Falcon. As a blind LP, it should hopefully go without saying but NO SPOILERS. Updates should ideally be twice-a-week, but no promises.                           Bonus: Grunty's Revenge          Bonus: A short look at Nuts & Bolts  Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts was released on the 360 back in 2008 and got...well, we will politely call it a "mixed reception". Nuts and Bolts, while still very similar to Kazooie and Tooie in its overall structure, leans heavily into the new gameplay mechanic of letting the player build their own vehicles to tackle the game's challenges. And credit where it's due, the game's physics are surprisingly robust and nuanced, capable of handling just about anything you can throw at it. It is genuinely fun to build and tweak your own vehicular abominations until you embarass the game's difficulty. What is is not, however, is a Banjo game. Or at least, not a very good one. Given the emphasis on vehicles, Banjo's actual moveset has been more or less completely erased, reduced to a simple jump and Kazooie being able to swing her wrench around as an attack. The challenges broadly lack variety (there is only so many ways you can dress up "bring me a thing/take this somewhere" or "race me/go somewhere"), and the game has a pretty major tonal problem, opting to open the first game in almost a decade with what essentially boils down to "Those games were terrible. Why did you ever like them? Why do you even want another one?" This is made worse by the fact that the worlds they build are really good, and have that classic Banjo charm. Showdown Town is a great hub, with goodies hidden around every corner, and the each of the game's six main levels look gorgeous. They're huge, far too big to be reasonably traversed on foot (which is arguably the reason for the vehicles' inclusion), but if they had been scaled down by 25%, there is absolutely no reason that it wouldn't pass as a new Banjo game. We will not be playing all of this game, because to be frank I do not like it. In fact, unless something has gone horribly wrong, we'll be done after I post Part 2 on Thursday. But it would be a shame to not show it at all, given that we played through the entirety of goddamn Grunty's Revenge. Part 1: Lord of Games Part 2: Nutty Acres seriously argate go buy a loving copy of Tooie ChaosArgate fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Mar 21, 2023 |
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Jun 18, 2022 00:16
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You missed your chance when you picked up that honey, a Resident Evil "itchy tasty" reference would have been funny
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Jun 18, 2022 00:27
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Banjo & Kazooie best stay away from Springfield of Simpsons fame. Being a bear and accessory to being a bear are pretty serious crimes there, you know. 
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Jun 18, 2022 00:35
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Good luck!
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Jun 18, 2022 01:51
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One who's never played this sounds quite absurd, So this LP looks quite good, spread the word
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Jun 18, 2022 02:30
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The text skip in this game is on a L+R+B, which feels like a debug feature they left in but is very useful for replays anyway.
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Jun 18, 2022 02:36
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Oh man, it's not normally an issue, but when you walked up to the beak barge tutorial I saw that n64 draw distance at work
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Jun 18, 2022 03:42
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I don't think I could even go back to the N64 version after playing the Xbox remastered version, there's a few QOL changes that I'd REALLY miss.
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Jun 18, 2022 05:09
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Judge Tesla posted:I don't think I could even go back to the N64 version after playing the Xbox remastered version, there's a few QOL changes that I'd REALLY miss. Hello yes this is me and we will be making this point *very clear* later in the LP. 
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Jun 18, 2022 05:32
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Cowards. *Definitely did not have the exact scenario described in the video occur on the last level last time he played. Except it was closer to 90% done*
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Jun 18, 2022 05:40
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The only Rare game I’ve ever completed or even played was Donkey Kong Country and that was because it was on the Gameboy Advance. Sometimes it seems like everyone else on the forum has played every Rare game ever made.
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Jun 18, 2022 06:22
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DK64 is the only Rare N64 game I managed to play so I will be very interested to see its predecessor!
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Jun 18, 2022 08:55
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White Coke posted:The only Rare game I’ve ever completed or even played was Donkey Kong Country and that was because it was on the Gameboy Advance. Sometimes it seems like everyone else on the forum has played every Rare game ever made. That's not really difficult when most of the memorable N64 games were made by Rare, Nintendo really hosed up by selling their shares to Microsoft.
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Jun 18, 2022 12:48
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I really hope you enjoy all that Banjo Kazooie has to offer. It's a great game, even if it suffers from some early 3d jank.
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Jun 19, 2022 22:03
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Cythereal posted:One who's never played this sounds quite absurd, Ree-raa-ree-rah, ree-ra-ree, Ree-raa-ree-rah, ree-ra-ree? What the hell does that mean?
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Jun 20, 2022 05:59
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This is my favourite platformer on the N64. You'll find for sure, it's not a bore. A bird and bear make for a great team. Banjo Threeie? Maybe not just a dream.
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Jun 20, 2022 17:04
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I'll take my preference for the original hardcore note collection system with me to the grave. Always a delight to see new people experiencing this king among games, though.
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Jun 21, 2022 10:59
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Jun 21, 2022 19:23
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Just going to mention if anyone else wants to see another renowned LPer play this game Blind, Chuggaaconroy is playing it with NintendoCapriSun and ProtonJon helping him over on their Collab channel. He's up to World 7 right now.
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Jun 21, 2022 19:47
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So do you have anything to add or did you just think "Hey if you want to watch someone else entirely play this instead, here's who you can check out!" was a good contribution to the thread?
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Jun 21, 2022 19:51
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Artix posted:So do you have anything to add or did you just think "Hey if you want to watch someone else entirely play this instead, here's who you can check out!" was a good contribution to the thread? 1. The thought was "as well" rather than "instead". 2. I'm sorry if my post came off as rude, it wasn't intended to be. Just thought if people liked this series they'd like to watch more of the same.
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Jun 21, 2022 20:27
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I can't resist watching LPs of this game, because I keep waiting for one of them to help me understand why everyone loves it so much. It's one of the most popular games from its era, and everyone constantly raves about how wonderful it is/was, and I just... don't see it? I had this game back in the N64 days, and it's one of the few N64 games I owned that I bounced so hard off of that I never finished it. In fact, I don't think I ever played much past Mumbo's Mountain? And this isn't because I dislike 3D platformers, because I loved Mario 64 and went on to play most of the 3D Marios. Part of it, I think, is that this game is the most obvious precursor/genre codifier of the "collectathon", and I've always found them rather off-putting. (Though some people put the 3D Marios in that genre, too, and it's not precisely wrong, they've always felt a bit different to me. At least until Odyssey, anyway, which definitely is one, but I managed to enjoy in spite of that.) To me, there's a substantive difference between "we use objects as mission goalposts" (SM64), and "we dumped all this random rubbish everywhere, gather it up because we said so" (Banjo et al). Spraying collectibles everywhere does get the player to see and touch the whole level, but it also makes these places feel much less organic, and (IMO) makes exploration feel less fun. It's not that I don't like collecting things; it's that I don't like the game's primary objective being "we spilled confetti for you to clean up". I also remember finding the controls clunky (in particular, the way the C buttons were used), but I think some of that was me being young at the time, and to the extent they are clunky, I find it a lot more forgivable nowadays given this was before any kind of consensus about 3D game design could develop. (Also, nowadays, I find this game's particular flavour of humour to be unpleasantly puerile, but I certainly wouldn't have complained about that at age nine or ten, so that doesn't explain my reaction back then...) Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying this game is kind of a personal bugbear (heh) for me, and I keep coming back to these LPs to see if it'll ever make sense to me. I'm not here to rain on the parade of the LP (this is a popular and beloved game, probably for good reason! I'm just a weirdo who doesn't get it), I'm just genuinely puzzled (oops) by it. Edit: I should add, I'm very curious to see what Argate's final opinion of the game ends up being, playing it blind in 2022. Explopyro fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jun 22, 2022 |
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Jun 22, 2022 01:05
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Pro-tier sequence-breaking TAS strats with the FlapFlip Jump in Ticker's Tower there!
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Jun 22, 2022 09:10
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Explopyro posted:I can't resist watching LPs of this game, because I keep waiting for one of them to help me understand why everyone loves it so much. It's one of the most popular games from its era, and everyone constantly raves about how wonderful it is/was, and I just... don't see it? Even still, BK is one of the densest collectathon there is, avoiding all the issues big games with tons of map markers and "go here do thing get tiny reward" have. Every world is super compact and you can be done with getting everything in a level in about an hour. It's touted as still holding up because it didn't fall into the trap of maximalism. (I personally like Tooie a lot as well, but I can see the argument that it's just too much in comparison)
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Jun 22, 2022 11:07
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Everything has eyes and will talk to you. EVERYTHING.
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Jun 22, 2022 12:08
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Is the theme for Grunty's lair just the Teddy Bear's Picnic? Yes Yes it is.
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Jun 22, 2022 13:08
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Explopyro posted:I can't resist watching LPs of this game, because I keep waiting for one of them to help me understand why everyone loves it so much. It's one of the most popular games from its era, and everyone constantly raves about how wonderful it is/was, and I just... don't see it? For me, a large part of it is the charming art, sound, and music direction. I've felt that a lot of games from this era feel rather soulless and struggling with the limitations of the time, but in my eyes BK oozes personality and character that set it apart from other games of its ilk.
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Jun 22, 2022 13:14
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I'm fascinated by the idea that in 2022, there is someone who both hasn't played Banjo-Kazooie and is interested in doing so. Having had an N64 growing up I have a lot of fond(?) memories of the collectathon genre, but the industry has passed it by for so long that people know where they stand on it at this point. Definitely curious to see how this goes, I do think this is a good game if you have patience for the genre (and good call playing a version with better Note-tracking).
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Jun 22, 2022 16:19
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Wait, the totem respawns? It's kind of fun watching a blind lp because I've played it enough over the years that I can blast through it in a day. Seeing mumbos mountain take 30 minutes edited with the lper exploring the world for the first time is a refreshing bit of extra nostalgia
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Jun 22, 2022 16:22
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Note-collecting chat: The thing for me is that the note door totals are (with a few exceptions) pretty generous, so the game is balanced around not 100%ing each level on a first attempt. Having to go back to earlier levels and grind out an extra few notes after progressing to the later stages of the game gave a nice reason to revisit the early game, and none of the levels are really so big as to make backtracking a pain (again with maybe one or two exceptions.) I can see that it's frustrating if you a) want to 100% everything and b) are not familiar with the game but personally I have really fond memories of managing to get the final few notes to open some of the last doors as a kid. And the very highest-value ones are optional anyway. I suppose it's a difference between it being one of the handful of games that you own and will spend months steadily working through rather than something to be blasted through relatively speedily for the enjoyment of internet strangers.
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Jun 22, 2022 16:30
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Not gonna lie, I winced a little when you took out the whole totem, but I suppose the honeycomb's not really that visible unless you actually look up.Simply Simon posted:collectathons own, clearing out a level of all the stuff is cool. If you don't get that inherent appeal, then the game is probably not attractive to you.
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Jun 22, 2022 16:33
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Quantum Toast posted:Not gonna lie, I winced a little when you took out the whole totem, but I suppose the honeycomb's not really that visible unless you actually look up. It’s not really visible, yes, but in the sense that it’s not visible at all on account of being inside one of the upper segments of the totem. I’m not sure if the honeycomb’s shadow even shows up when there’s still a section of totem left, in fact…
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Jun 22, 2022 17:14
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One thing I've always found amusing is that the "note score" mechanic (and the associated penalty for dying) came about because they didn't have room to keep track of every collected note in the save files. It's not a technical limitation, it's a feature, we swear!
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Jun 23, 2022 01:53
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Quantum Toast posted:Not gonna lie, I winced a little when you took out the whole totem, but I suppose the honeycomb's not really that visible unless you actually look up. Tooie incidentally also has a bunch of minigames but a) they're all different and b) most are actually p fun
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Jun 23, 2022 09:59
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loving beaver bother  I have a fondness for DK64 on account of having played it as a child, but. Game is... not great, on several levels. Absolutely a work of visual wizardry for the n64, though. I've never played the BK games myself, so it's really weird to heard sound effects that got reused either as-is or with very minor alterations in DK64. Not bad, just slightly jarring.
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Jun 23, 2022 15:10
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Explopyro posted:One thing I've always found amusing is that the "note score" mechanic (and the associated penalty for dying) came about because they didn't have room to keep track of every collected note in the save files. It's not a technical limitation, it's a feature, we swear! Frankly I'm surprised the N64 wasn't glowing like a nuclear reactor with how much Rare pushed that system to its limits.
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Jun 23, 2022 18:33
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Like Clockwork posted:I've never played the BK games myself, so it's really weird to heard sound effects that got reused either as-is or with very minor alterations in DK64. Not bad, just slightly jarring. (I don't really hold it against them though. If you've gone to the trouble of making something, why not use it more than once?)
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Jun 23, 2022 19:03
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Quantum Toast posted:Even a few of the abilities are lifted from this game. I remember one of Diddy's was basically identical to something we haven't seen just yet, and I think Lanky had Talon Trot? His chimpy charge is basically the beak barge as well.
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Jun 23, 2022 19:44
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I still think DK64 would've been a lot better if they'd just restrained themselves to one character instead of five. The levels are big enough that they take a lot of time to explore, but then every character has a gun that activates different switches, a body slam that activates different switches, barrels with their faces on them, color coded bananas that you can see but can't pick up for no reason, the list goes on and on. The character swapping gets increasingly complex as it goes on too, so instead of taking 5x as long to complete you're looking at like 10x or more. It's amazing how quickly it gets tedious. Tooie is downright reasonable in comparison.
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Jun 23, 2022 19:56
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