Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie originally released for the Nintendo 64 in May 1998, yet new information on the game is still cropping up today. In a recent video, Rare veterans delved into five (or so) heretofore unknown Banjo-Kazooie factoids, shedding further light on the making of the 3D platforming classic.
- Banjo-Kazooie’s intro and character tracks very nearly featured singing, but the notion was scrapped to allow the music to shine. Additionally, the game’s introductory cinematic was originally going to be made via motion capture. Although the team eventually opted for hand animation, we have the mo-cap build to thank for Banjo’s shimmying hips.
- Interestingly, a few of Banjo-Kazooie’s assets were based on a cancelled Rare project: Dream. The ghosts from Mad Monster Mansion, a haunted house level, were built using the troll heads from Dream’s N64 version, and Gruntilda’s gargoyles came from the trolls in the NES version.
- Much of the game’s iconic humor stemmed from the real-world problems of Rare staff. The grumbled line, “Umanaka,” for example, resulted from frequent cries of “Ooh, me knackers” from composer Grant Kirkhope, who was apparently concerned with his testicular health.
- Once upon a time, Banjo and Kazooie’s climactic encounter with Gruntilda ended with the defeated witch casting one final spell to turn the protagonist pair into toads, forcing the newly rescued Tooty to scout all the game’s levels to collect coins to reverse the spell. Unfortunately, the ending was trimmed down and Tooty was never made playable.
- The many Jinjos scattered around the game take their name from red-headed artist Graham “Ed” Bryan, who engineer Paul Machacek describes as being “very ginger.”
Machacek himself has a place in Banjo-Tooie in the form of the extravagantly named boss Lord Woo Fak Fak. According to designer Steve Malpass, Machacek expressed a colorful vocabulary during Banjo-Tooie’s development and would frequently swear his frustrations away. However, each time he surmounted a coding hurdle, he would triumphantly proclaim, “Woo,” which cemented the name.
It will be interesting to see how Banjo-Kazooie's humor bleeds into upcoming spiritual successor Yooka-Laylee, whose developer, Playtonic Studios, was largely cobbled together from Rare veterans.
Source: Rare
Via: Siliconera
