Banjo-Kazooie vs. Banjo-Tooie

Let’s take a look at the late nineties of Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 had just been released and 3D gaming was a very rare thing if not unthinkable thing. I was very young at the time the Nintendo 64 first came into being and had only known the NES to exist. Two dimensional gaming was all my little 5 year old head could comprehend at the time. I remember going into a Gamestop video game store for my 5^th birthday and receiving a Nintendo 64 as a gift. The rest of the afternoon was spent with my parents trying to figure out how to connect the thing to the TV. We knew we got it right when the title screen for Super Mario 64 appeared and all we could see was Mario’s giant head.

“It’s a me, Mario!”

Super Mario 64 was unlike anything I’ve ever played. After growing up on graphics as best as Super Mario Bros. 3, I was blown away by what my new video game console could do. Super Mario 64, as a game, was phenomenal and is easily one of my favorite Mario games of all time. It introduced the world to the future of video games and set a very high standard for modern games to come. Without really any prior knowledge as to how to program a 3D game, the developers of the game had to invent their own standards to be followed by everyone else who tried to make a 3D game. Even though 3D games existed before the Nintendo 64 (see Atari Jaguar), the Nintendo 64 was the first to show us just how much potential 3D video games had. Super Mario 64 invented the formula for control within a third dimension.

Now Super Mario 64 is far from a perfect game. One huge flaw within the game’s engine is its horrible camera controls as compared to today’s standards. They showed just how primitive of a game it really was. Despite being so primitive, it rarely detracts from the gameplay of Mario 64 as the game was designed around open environments. Playing the game for the first time as a kid, I didn’t know what good camera controls were. I just knew I was playing a good game…maybe even the best. Perhaps Mario 64 set the bar so high, no better game could ever come out? What could possibly be better than Super Mario 64? Enter Banjo-Kazooie.

Banjo-Kazooie came around roughly two years after Mario 64’s launch. This game felt and looked like Mario 64 at first glance. As a child, I thought this was just going to be some Super Mario 64 clone/wannabe. I was sure proven wrong. The game took the basic formula Super Mario 64 started by having a controllable 3^rd person camera, open, colorful worlds, and many different button combinations that all flow perfectly together. Banjo-Kazooie took these elements, and improved upon them to make them better than I could have ever imagined. When comparing Mario’s camera to Banjo’s camera, the latter wins by a landslide. Banjo also moves much more fluently and smoothly when comparing the games. This game perfected 3D platforming to me and to this day, I have not found a proper competition for it…or have I?

This is where our title for this article comes into play. Banjo-Kazooie received a sequel two years later titled “Banjo-Tooie.” This sequel was planned even before Banjo-Kazooie was to be released as it is referenced at the end of the game.

“Stupid Bear and dumb Kazooie, I’ll be back for Banjo-tooie!”

Banjo-Tooie was almost an exact clone in terms of controlling Banjo. Therefore, the perfect platforming controls returned in this game as well. Banjo-Tooie also added a ton of new moves for the player to learn alongside the old classic moves. Banjo-Tooie was a much longer game and had boss fights that actually resembled something intimidating rather than a small mission. At first glance, Banjo-Tooie looks like a more refined and polished game than its predecessor and has way more content and length than the first could ever muster. Does this make it a better game however? Let’s analyze the two games, pointing out the flaws and high points of both games. This article may get a little nitpicky at points so be warned. Also, this will obviously contain Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie spoilers (…Griff stop reading).

Let’s look at the level design and the collectibles for both games. Banjo-Kazooie boasted some very colorful graphics and huge open levels.

N64 Graphics are known for being boxy and pixelly, but playing through, the walls and ground are decorated with awesome designs and incredible detail. You don’t usually notice the pixels unless you zoom in close.

Banjo-Kazooie had a very unique theme to each world that had amazing music to complement it. The levels are designed to be played through in one sitting, collecting as many things as you can. The sounds are very peppy and light hearted, even in the haunted world, Mad Monster Mansion.

Seriously, a talking toilet…in a haunted mansion…

You are to collect 100 notes, 10 jiggies, and 2 honeycombs per level in order to one hundred percent the game. I love having this many things to collect because it allows me to explore the world the game has put me in in any order I wish to. It also gives me a reason to want to explore such well-designed areas. Sometimes the game can just capture me inside its universe and I would never want to leave a world. These are the kinds of levels that makes a person just want to go back to and just free-roam in without any purpose other than to have fun.

As for Banjo-Tooie’s Levels, they each have their own unique themes as well.

Half fire, half ice…a concept never used ever in the history of all video games right?

I’m being unfair with what I said above, fire and ice are two of the greatest themes to have in any level. Banjo-Tooie makes excellent worlds just like the original, but are much more lengthier and larger. Despite the larger levels, Banjo-tooie nerfs collecting things by a significant amount. Where you would have to collect individual notes, feathers, and eggs in the first game, Banjo-Tooie bundles groups of collectibles inside convenient little nests.

Example of such collectible nests. Notes came in groups of 5 (with one nest of 20 per level), red feathers 20, gold feathers 2, and blue eggs 20.

These nests made collecting things less of an effort to do, decreasing the amount you would have to collect in order to maximize your inventory. Jinjos were also overhauled in this game. In the first game, you would collect 5 jinjos per world and you would get a jiggy.

These are Jinjos. These little creatures are one of many unique character designs within both games.

In Banjo-Tooie, you had to collect a certain amount of a certain color jinjo in order to receive your jiggy. It made Jinjo collecting seem a lot larger of a feat to accomplish. A new collectible was added called cheato pages as well. Collecting 5 of these pages would unlock a new bonus for you to play with. These bonus’ were more cheats than unlockables, as some of them allowed you to regenerate health and not take fall damage.

Cheato is a character from the first game who would award players “cheats” for finding him.

In the first game, the cheats you unlocked were more like neat bonuses than actual cheats. They would increase the amount of eggs and feathers you could carry at one time. Tooie’s cheats make you feel invulnerable. It’s almost not even staying true to the spirit of the game. Kazooie had these kinds of cheats as well, but they were never revealed to you in game. Tooie gives away these cheats for free almost (but some of the insane ones like infinite items and invulnerability are left hidden).

Honeycombs are still present in Banjo-Tooie as well, being just as hidden as they were in the first game. Jiggies obviously make a return as well. However, despite all the previous items being there, the game feels like there is much less to collect. Sure, there are a lot more different items to collect, but there are less of these many items. What wowed me from the first game was all the stuff to do within these non-linear worlds. Banjo-Tooie felt dumbed down compared to Kazooie. There were fewer notes to collect per level, there were fewer worlds in general, and despite there being less, the levels feel so much larger and longer. It made the game feel a bit more tedious than the first game.

The graphics also felt a bit duller and the frame rate seemed lower in the second game. Comparing the two games side by side, Banjo-Kazooie seems a lot more colorful than Tooie.

So in terms of level design and the amount of collectibles, Banjo-Kazooie wins this round. Let us take a look at the individual missions in each world: the jiggy collecting.

Jiggies play the most important role in both games. They are the means to unlocking new worlds and to progress further into the game. There were many different ways to obtaining these jiggies in each world. Sometimes you would have to do certain things for characters i.e. get an item for someone, sometimes you would have to platform your way to a jiggy, and sometimes you would have to do mini-games for a jiggy prize. Both games had these elements but Banjo-Kazooie had more jiggies where it seemed they were just giving it away for free.

Both games had mini-games for jiggy prizes, but Banjo-Tooie had way more of these games and they were, for the most part, enjoyable. Banjo-Kazooie’s mini-games would, 8 times out of 10, kill you if you were to fail them. Dying in Banjo-Kazooie would send you back to the start of the level and you would lose every single note you collected in that level. You would have to collect them all over again if you did not get all one hundred of them at first. This makes dying a huge loss and risk, and even if you are the best at combat and dodging enemy attacks, you could still very well die and lose everything just from losing a simple game.

I’m mostly referring to these two games right here. The first one, he chomps two honeycomb from you if you lose, eventually leading to death. The second is instant death if you fail to navigate the maze.

In my opinion, that penalty is too harsh. Thankfully, with the larger number of mini-games in Tooie, only one mini-game has a real risk of death (not counting the 1^st person segment in Grunty’s Industries) and that is the Tower of Tragedy quiz at the end of the game. And even with this risk, you don’t lose all the notes you collected in a world in Banjo-Tooie. This makes the penalty for death in the game almost zero.

We now come to the boss fights of each game. Banjo-Kazooie had boss fights that I would hardly consider boss fights. They would last for about two min. and be over with. Some levels didn’t even have them. Banjo-Tooie had very elaborate boss fights however with multiple phases in each level. These fights could go on for as long as ten to twenty minutes. In this department, Banjo-Tooie wins by a landslide. The mini-games and boss fights are so much fun to play and are very satisfying and rewarding in the end.

Mr. Patch, the boss fight for Witchyworld in Banjo-Tooie.

So at this point, we know the general pros and cons of both games. Banjo-Kazooie had better level design, and an appropriate amount of collectibles, while Banjo-Tooie had great boss fights and mini-games. Some people prefer not losing their notes every time they die, but I personally liked that about the first game because it gave the game a penalty for dying and an incentive not to. But at this point, both games feel exactly the same to me. I could not put one game over the other. Both take the Super Mario 64 control formula and expand upon it to make something brilliant. We need something that can be a deciding factor to which is the better game. I believe that factor is the atmosphere of both games.

What do I mean by atmosphere? I mean the general feeling of the games. This can extend to the environments, the music, and of course the plot. Let’s start with the plot. In Banjo-Kazooie, the opening scene is one with the witch Gruntilda in her lair. She wonders who could possibly be more beautiful than she is when in reality she is made out to be the ugliest thing in the world. She finds out Banjo’s sister Tooty is much more beautiful than she is and sets off to kidnap her and steal her body. This plot alone sets up the quirky nature of the game to come. The rest of the game is spent going after the witch in her lair until you finally confront her in the ultimate showdown.

In Banjo-Tooie, the opening scene starts out with the witch still defeated by Banjo in the previous game and is in need of rescue. Banjo is playing poker with his best friends when they hear word of Grunty’s return. She is on her way to deal revenge on the bear. They all escape except for Bottles the mole, the person who taught you all your moves in the first game. The rest of the game is to seek out revenge for Bottles and to stop Grunty from draining the life force of the entire Isle o’ Hags.

I prefer the plot to the original game much more. It’s simpler and doesn’t need a lot of explaining. Also to me, it makes me want to accomplish the end goal much more than the end goal of the sequel. I’d much rather fight some evil witch to save my sister than to avenge someone already dead. As for the music of both games, I find the soundtracks of both to be perfect for the games they are in. Grant Kirkhope is one of my favorite composers of all time, and he does the job of matching the games with excellent music. It is just my personal preference that Banjo-Kazooie has the better soundtrack. It goes back to how I feel about the atmosphere of both games. I like the atmosphere of Kazooie better than the second game, therefore I like its music better.

Finally, let’s talk about the environments of both games. This is the factor I think decides which game is the better of the two. The specific area I’m referring to here is the actual over-world of both games. Banjo-Kazooie’s over-world is the witch’s lair. Your goal is to scale the witch’s lair in order to fight her at the very top. In Banjo-Tooie, you are following these tracks left by a digging machine the witch traveled in. Once you reach the end of the tracks, you can fight the witch.

To me, the first game’s over-world is so much better than the second game’s.

In Banjo-Kazooie, the atmosphere of the lair is one of great mystery. You never know what is going to be in the next room. You just keep climbing and climbing the lair until you reach the very top. The goal is one you are very anxious to get to. You are always wondering what is going to be at the very top of the lair. It keeps you wanting to play the game and progress through each world with much anticipation.

In Tooie, you are on this huge island trying to chase some vehicle the witch got away in. You do not see an end in sight at all. Plus, the overall design of the island is rather poor compared to the atmosphere created by Grunty’s lair. It’s almost no competition really. In Grunty’s Lair, the end is the top of the tower, and the delivery for when you get there is very satisfying. The second game just can’t deliver the same feeling at the end of the game. The overall charm of Banjo-Kazooie appeals to me more than the charm of Banjo-Tooie. It’s the over-world and the level design that keeps me coming back to Banjo-Kazooie more than Banjo-Tooie.

So it is my opinion that Banjo-Kazooie is the better game. You are free to disagree with me, and I am curious to know your thoughts if you do. All in all, Kazooie seemed to have better music, better level design and collectibles, and an environment and story that keeps me coming back to the game time and time again. This is not to say I do not like Banjo-Tooie. Both are absolutely superb games. I may even like Banjo-Tooie more than I like Super Mario 64! There is just something about Banjo-Kazooie that keeps me close to the game and defines what a 3D platformer should be. Kudos to you Banjo-Kazooie! May your legacy live on.

Image Sources:

http://www.dkvine.com/games/bk/music/Page%201/20%20-%20Mumbo%27s%20Mountain.jpg