Banjo-Tooie
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 The Bear and Bird are back!
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Banjo-Tooie is a platform game released in 2000 and is the sequel to the 1998 game Banjo-Kazooie. It was developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. It was released for the Nintendo 64 and later ported as a download for Xbox Live Arcade on the Xbox 360 which was published by Microsoft Game Studios.
It is one of the 30 games included in the Rare Replay compilation for Xbox One alongside its predecessor.
Plot
Two years after her defeat, the evil witch Gruntilda is freed from her boulder by her two sisters, Mingella and Bloberta. Now an undead skeleton, Gruntilda hopes to use her sisters' device, B.O.B. (Big Ol' Blaster) to suck the life out of everything in the Isle of Hags. With Gruntilda a bigger threat than ever, Banjo and Kazooie must defeat their enemy once again.
Why It Rocks
- In addition to Banjo and Kazooie, players can now control the shaman, Mumbo Jumbo who can use magic spells to aid in obtaining Jiggies. Transformations are now done by Mumbo's rival, Humba Wumba. The Bear and Bird even Split-Up at times!
- Using the new Split-Up Pads, Banjo and Kazooie can be controlled separately to solve puzzles.
- Banjo also gets a bunch of brand new abilities for himself, to make up for his lack of abilities from the first game, such as sleeping in his backpack to restore health, and hopping in his pack to cross dangerous terrain.
- A hen named Heggy also has the "Mystery Eggs" gimmick, in which she hatches these special eggs to give the duo more abilities, including Breegull Bash and Homing Eggs.
- You start the game with all the abilities learned from Banjo-Kazooie and get new ones on top of that to combat Gruntilda.
- Humba Wumba turns Banjo into a new selection of creatures, including a Baby T-Rex and a Daddy T-Rex, the Washing Machine (which was originally a joke transformation), a Dragon-Kazooie, a Submarine and a Money Van.
- Since the worlds are much bigger than the previous game, Warp pads are included for quick access between sections of the worlds as well as the hub world. Many routes connect the worlds, allowing for new forms of puzzle-solving to obtain Jiggies.
- Many Jiggies that exist in some world require the skills obtained in other worlds, allowing for some backtracking and exploration.
- Unlike in the first game, you get to keep the Notes when you collect them.
- Transformations are easier to do this game than Banjo-Kazooie. In the first game, Banjo and Kazooie needed to obtain a large amount of Mumbo tokens for transformations, while in Tooie they just need to locate magic creatures called Glowbos and only need 1 per transformation.
- A very special Glowbo exists in the world. Obtaining this Glowbo via Stop 'n' Swop will allow Humba Wumba to transform Kazooie into a dragon.
- Numerous types of eggs can be used, like the Fire, Grenade and Ice Eggs.
- Collecting items is a lot less tedious than before.
- The camera is significantly improved.
- Banjo can use Kazooie like a gun in first-person move-in special sections, similar to GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark.
- Multi-player battle.
- The main protagonists of Jet Force Gemini make a cameo appearance, and so does Captain Blackeye from Project Dream.
- The player can revisit many boss battles.
- New characters are introduced, like Master Jiggywiggy, the infamous Canary Mary, Honey B, Chris P. Bacon, Goggles (who owns a Donkey Kong plush), and Alph and his alien family.
- Just like the first game, you play a quiz show before the final boss.
- Impressive graphics for Nintendo 64 standards.
- Cheat codes to increase player speed, meaning the world size becomes less of an issue.
Bad Qualities
- The Nintendo 64 version suffers huge frame rate drops, usually when entering a new room or viewing a large area, and most levels have a very low frame rate making it feel very choppy and slow. The original version of the Xbox Live version also had some frame rate issues which were fixed in updates.
- Due to hardware limitations on the Nintendo 64, the Stop 'n' Swop feature can't be used in the original version of the game (The Items are still Obtainable in this version though via N64 Pak Enemies). The port for Xbox Live solves this though and adds extra things to unlock by Stop 'n' Swop that wasn't in the original game.
- The worlds can be too big even with Warp pads, which can sometimes make it frustrating to figure out what to do or where to go. This isn't helped by the fact that the worlds still have the same amount of objectives and less collectibles than the first game, resulting in them having large amounts of empty space.
- Because of her sisters, Gruntilda's obnoxious (in a good way) rhymes are gone.
- Mingella and Blobbelda considering her rhymes to be annoying is hypocritical, since their own way of speaking (anastrophe) is also very obnoxious.
- The infamous Canary Mary race on the final world. Canary Mary's AI rubberbands so much that it feels like it's cheating to make her win. To win that race, you have to move slowly and always stay just behind Canary Mary which will cause the rubberbanding AI to maker her go slowly as well, then right before the finish line zoom right past her. And even with this method, Canary is still likely to win as the moment in which you need to speed up is very specific.
- Some of the soundtracks do not sound like that they are supposed to in the Xbox Live Arcade port; several notes (mostly the strings) are on a lower octane than they are supposed to, and all of the vibrato effects are lacking in some of the instruments, notably the Theremin because it sounds flat rather than wobbly. The differences between the soundtracks in the XBLA version and the N64 version can be proved here.
- When in first-person shooter mode, the cursor will automatically go to the center of the screen when not in use, instead of staying where it was moved, making aiming at things very difficult.
- In a similar way, there are many sounds effects that cut out halfway in the Xbox version, with the other half sounding like they are playing from very far away, or just not playing at all. Examples include explosions, the Stompasaurus roar, Kazooie's beak bomb, grates breaking, and Jamjars' Hatch Opening.
- Even though the game has a list of cheat codes that are intended for use, the Xbox version blocks access to half of them, meaning there are several cheat codes that can never be used unless playing on the N64.
- Kazooie can be unlikeable In the "Bottles's death" scene. She is also selfish to the NPCs, as she only promises to help them with their problems on the condition that she gets a Jiggy.
- While Mumbo is playable for the first time, his only real purpose is to activate special pads to use magic spells. He runs slowly (like Banjo), he can barely jump, and his only attack isn't too useful.
- Several of Jamjars moves are the same as previous moves that have already been unlocked, like "Airborne Egg Aiming" and "Sub-Aqua Egg Aiming" being the same as the normal Egg Aiming ability, only slightly upgraded.
- When playing as Banjo and Kazooie separately for the first time, their solo moves (Pack Whack and Wing Whack, etc.) also have to be unlocked.
- There are two level sections in which you must move very slowly to avoid detection, which is a gameplay mode that shouldn't be used.
- There are no extra lives in this game and no game over screen, either. However, the only way to get a game over is to save and quit your file, but all you'll get is the text that says "Game Over" with its background theme playing.
- The Lord Woo Fak Fak level contains blood whenever the player damages Fak Fak's boils and also the world "Fak" sounds similar to "F*ck" or "F*g" which both of them are incredibly inappropriate for a E-rated game.
Trivia
- Lord Woo Fak Fak, the boss in the fourth world, was inspired by Rare engineer Paul Machacek, who would curse every time he encounter a programming error and would shout "woo!" when the error has been resolved.
Reception
Like its predecessor, Banjo-Tooie received critical acclaim and has a 4.33 out of 5 ratings on GameFAQs.
At the end of the game, Gruntilda mentions the game's sequel "Banjo-Threeie", but such game was never made. It is speculated that the game was under development for the Nintendo GameCube but it was cancelled when Microsoft purchased Rare studios. Instead, "Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts" was released for the Xbox 360 8 years later, and it was heavily disliked by fans because it was released as a driving game rather than a platform game like the two predecessors. Years later a spiritual successor was made called Yooka-Laylee.
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