The heroic bear and bird return at last to defend Spiral Mountain from their nemesis Gruntilda. Groundbreaking vehicular platforming awaits in wild new worlds packed with features and faces old and new. Build awe-inspiring vehicles and tackle the Jiggy challenges in any way you see fit! Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Rated 'E10+'. Release DateNovember 11, 2008. PlatformsXbox 360.

Japan's been having a hard time of late. Financial crises, massive foreign debts, bankers topping themselves, the works. As if allthat were not enough, now there's a new casualty.

Mario's been made redundant.Yes, I'm afraid it's true. The portly plumber has munched his last magic mushroom. P45 in hand, he's off down the Job Centre to signfor his Giro and, if he's lucky, get himself a part in The Fuller Monty. No more chaste flirting with the Princess, no more rowdy nights onthe town with Luigi. Just daytime TV, boil-in-the-bag and endless scouring of the 'Sits Vac' bit of the local free rag.Who has done this?

Which heartless swines have kicked Nintendo's mascot out on his ear? Here's a hint - they're British, they wrotethe best game on the N64 and they're called Rare. Damn, that last one was a bit of a giveaway. Bear NecessitiesWhen Banjo-Kazooie first appeared in public at the 1997 E3 show, reactions were positive but also tinged with cynicism - didn't it lookan awful lot like with better visuals? Rare obviously disagreed; when your editor rang up Rare a couple of months prior tothe 1998 E3 show to ask about Banjo, he was immediately greeted with the reply, 'Oh yeah, you're the one who said that Banjo-Kazooie was just a Mario clone.' Memories like elephants, damn them.One thing you're not going to see in this review is any wholesale word-eating. The inescapable fact is that Banjo-Kazooie (along withdozens of other games) owes an enormous debt to for its creation of a new game style, and anygame that takes a similar approach - a 3-D world with platforms and puzzles - is going to be compared to the N6Vs debut title.

Whatsets Banjo-Kazooie apart from the Crocs, Gexes and of this world is that Banjo-Kazooie takes everything thatmade the Shigeru Miyamoto game work so well in the first place -and then does them all better.There's a certain irony in that - after all, it wasn't all that long ago that Japanese companies had the reputation for taking an existingproduct, fixing the bugs and improving on the original so much that the new product became the definitive item. Now, it's happenedthe other way around. After playing Banjo-Kazooie, going back to Mario is like trading down from a Bentley to a Fiesta Popular Plus.They both do the same job, it's just that one of them is so much more refined. Bust a MoveAt the start of the game. Banjo and Kazooie are fairly hopeless candidates for rescue work, only able to manage a small jumpbetween them. But with the help of bottles the mole, they quickly turn into a laser-spitting 500 foot death mecha! But theycan manage this little lot.

Moves:. Claw Swipe: 'He's coming straight for us!' When stationary or moving slowly, BANJO can lash out with his ham-sized fists. Fearsome Forward Roll: If Banjo's got a bit more speed, he performs this staple of pe classes everywhere. It's gotta hurt kazooie,though. Climb: Trees, pipes, masts, i whatever - if it's tall and thin, Banjo can climb up it. Fnarr fnarr.

Rat-a-Tat Rap: Nothing to do with green discs in several kazooie's first attack - she pops out of her backpack and pecks things. Mighty Flipflap Jump: Handy for climbing onto tall ledges, this is a wing-assisted backwards somersault.

Beak Barge Attack: A combination of Banjo's bulk and Kazooie's beak, it's most useful for smashing doors open. Egg Attack (Forward): Kazooie can spit a rapid-fire barrage of eggs from her mouth. Not sure about the biology here. Egg Attack (Back): Much more realistic! With an amusing farting noise, Kazooie spurts eggs from her ass like yolked mines. Beak Buster: Banjo-Kazooie's Version. Of the traditional platform bottom bounce, kazooie slamming face-first into the ground.

Wonderwing: 'And after aaaaall. You're my wonder.wing?' Use the golden feathers to make yourself inveencible. Talon Trot: One of the most useful moves - Kazooie hoists Banjo on her back and uses her sharp claws to climb steep slopes. Shock Jump Spring: Kazooie can make massive leaps into the air if she jumps from on of the green discs in several of theworlds. Planetoid 3d software pc. Fly: Being a bird, you'd expect Kazooie to fly, but she's got to learn how! Once she does, she's a natural ace.

Dive Bomb: Hassled by annoying showmen? No problemo - while in the air, Kazooie can perform a devastating diving attack. Waders: To get safely through scalding sand, poisoned water or piranha-infested pools, Kazooie can don this protectivefootwear. Running shoes: When a burst of extra speed is needed, Kazooie can whip on a pair of nikes.BK FlamerBanjo-Kazooie has a plot, of sorts - it's hardly Tom Clancey, but it's still more than Mario's 'rescue the Princess' postage stamp job. Evilwitch Gruntilda has kidnapped young Tooty the bear, intending to do a remake of The Fly by stealing Tooty's beauty (en routey) andlumping the unlucky ursine with all her general mankiness in return. When you lose the game, you actually get to see thistransformation take place - y'know, green skin and fangs aside, the new-look Gruntilda ain't at all bad for someone who isn't evenreal.Naturally in true heroic style, Banjo the rednecked bear, is definitely not going to take the snatching of his sister lying down (there'sdoubtlessly a dodgy joke about the 'closeness' of redneck families in there somewhere, but we'll save that for another day), so hecourageously leaps to the rescue. Along for the ride is Kazooie, a sarcastic bird of some description (a 'breegull', whatever the hellthat is) who normally lives in Banjo's rucksack but can pop out whenever she's needed.Kazooie move away from 'Mario with better graphics' to 'Mario beater'.

The first time you play the game, you have no choice but toexplore a small grassy area patrolled by Bottles the mole, who gives you the basic moves you need. When you first enter the gameproper, Banjo has a couple of attacks and a high jump, but little else. However, the further you go, the more moves the pair acquire.Each time you find a molehill, Bottles pops up to teach Banjo or Kazooie a new move - which, as luck would have it, is needed toprogress further within that world. The first time around, it took over nine hours of play before Banjo and Kazooie were fully kitted outwith all their moves. Oddly enough, by the time the twosome are fully tooled up, it's Kazooie who proves the more capable of the duo.Maybe the game should have been called Kazooie-Banjo. On second thoughts, perhaps not. That's a stupid name.

Worlds In MotionLike before it - that comparison is going to keep coming up, so get used to it and stop complaining - Banjo-Kazooie is divided up into themed 'worlds', a kind of Disneyland without the queues and the small and sticky piles of sawdust.Entrance to these worlds is won by finding the 100 jigsaw puzzle pieces hidden throughout the game and using them to complete thevarious pictures hanging on the walls of Gruntilda's lair. Mario fans who try jumping into the pictures will be disappointed, since theactual entrances can be quite a long way from the puzzles that open them. Mumbo's MountainInitially, only one world - Mumbo's Mountain - can be explored, the single jigsaw piece needed to open it handily being in the samearea as the picture. Everything else is tantalisingly out of reach, up a steep path that the lumbering Banjo isn't able to climb.Mumbo's Mountain is a kind of microcosm of the game as a whole, offering players the chance to hone their skills and get to gripswith the kind of obstacles that crop up throughout Banjo and Kazooie's quest. There's a small lake to practice swimming in, platformsto leap from, puzzles to solve and enemies to smash to pieces.Also popping up for the first time is Mumbo the witch doctor, quite an important character in the game since he can turn Banjo andKazooie into other animals (or indeed objects!) with abilities that let them reach otherwise inaccessible parts of the level.

On Mumbo'sMountain, the pair are transformed into a termite, which can ding to the perilously steep surfaces inside a huge termite mound nearMumbo's hut. While the ultimate reward here seems to be just a puzzle piece and an extra life, don't be so sure - Mumbo's magicextends further than just his mountain.Each world holds ten puzzle pieces, 100 musical notes (which when collected in sufficient quantities let you open sealed areas) andvarying numbers of eggs (for shooting), red and gold feathers (for flying and invincibility), honeycombs (for energy) and Mumbo'smagical crystal skulls. There are also five Jinjos in each world, that are little multicoloured creatures with long noses who award you apuzzle piece when you've got the entire polychromal set. Mr NoseybonkCollecting the puzzle pieces isn't as simple as it sounds. Although some are visible from the off, the only brain-teaser being exactlyhow to reach them, most of them are hidden and require you either to solve a puzzle or complete some task to make them appear.The further you go into the game, the more demanding the puzzles, which stands to reason really.

It'd be rather pointless to havethings get easier the nearer the end you were. Like, forinstance. Early puzzles include spelling out the name 'Banjo-Kazooie' on a tiled floor (after first figuring out how to drain the room ofwater) which is straightforward enough, but later ones involve tapping out a tune on a giant church organ and making life comfortablefor a huge mechanical shark!For those who prefer action to thinking, Banjo-Kazooie doesn't skimp in this respect either.

As well as dealing with the small-fryenemies infesting each world, who can be clawed, rolled or pecked into oblivion, there are larger bad guys who have to be nailed intheir own individual ways.Nipper the giant crab, a resident of Treasure Trove Cove, seems at first to be invulnerable, responding to Kazooie's insults withswipes from his massive pincers. Eggs don't harm him and his crustaceous body is impervious to anything Banjo has to offer, so howis he defeated? There's probably some smart way to do it involving precision tinning and darting between his claws to chin him, butthe easiest approach is to wait until you've got Kazooie's 'wonderwings' ability later in the game, then come back and deck him whileyou're invincible. The brute force approach - works every time!Other fun sections include a toboggan race against an overweight single parent bear, some -style precision flying through aseries of Egyptian statues and a truly bizarre subgame where you have to help a set of Christmas tree lights get to their pineydestination without being eaten by glass-chewing green heads that pop up from the floor! All of these events take place within thegame worlds, so it's possible for smart players to check out the lie of the land in advance before committing themselves to a contest. Oh What An AtmosphereOf course, all of this kind of thing has been seen before, in, which offered a similar 'worlds within worlds' approach,and in fact had more levels squeezed into a cartridge half the size of Banjo-Kazooie's.

However, you only have to take one look tosee what Rare have done with all the extra ROM space - they've used it to create some of the most stunning-looking environmentsever seen on the N64, and indeed on any machine to date.While early levels like Mumbo's Mountain could be accused of looking like Mario 64 with better detail Kazooie that doesn't havesome well-designed texture slapped on it), the further you go into the game, the better it looks. Clanker's Cavern is a masterpiece ofatmosphere, a polluted cylinder of rusty metal and garbage that somehow never looks quite as gross as you'd imagine. Its centrepieceis danker himself, a mammoth mechanical shark who despite being very nearly as long as the entire level is gorgeously animated. Histail slowly wafts from side to side (letting you climb up it and jump to other areas), his gills open and close, his fins send him bobbingponderously up and down in the oil-slicked water-even his eyes track Banjo around the level!The worlds themselves might not seem original if they're boiled down to one-liner descriptions -'the snow level', 'the Egyptian level','the haunted house level' -since Mario 64 also had these staples of platform gaming. What sets them apart from anything you've everseen before is the sheer amount of detail in them.The fantastic Mad Monster Mansion ('the haunted house level', if you will) in particular looks good enough to stand as a game in itsown right.The entire look of the game is generally cartoony, which is pretty much what you'd expect of a title where one of the title characterslives in the other's rucksack, but backed up with an attention to detail that bizarrely often makes it look more realistic than somegames that strive for a believable look. The only other N64 game that comes close to matching Banjo-Kazooie's glowing look ofsolidity is, and while Acclaim's title has more impressive lighting effects, ultimately its hi-tech tunnels have a lot less variety. Musical SpoofThe music within the levels also varies, not just from world to world, but from section to section, smoothly segueing from one style toanother as Banjo and Kazooie move around.

An early case is in Treasure Trove Cove, where the music goes from jaunty Caribbeansteel drums to a sea shanty as you get nearer to a pirate ship, but there are plenty of other examples.As Banjo and Kazooie wander around Gruntilda's Lair, which is effectively a hub level that allows access to all the others, thestandard music is a mutant version of Teddy Bears' Picnic, just far enough removed from the original to avoid any annoying legalproblems. Approach the entrance of Gobi's Valley and the musicians start to walk like Egyptians; head across the graveyard to MadMonster Mansion and you get a mournful organ rendition straight out of Dracula's castle. Shark simulator ps4. The character select screen of Diddy KongRacing played with the idea of changing the music to fit the moment, but Banjo-Kazooie grabs it, runs with it and plants it square onthe touchline.Sound effects are also well done. Even though Banjo and Kazooie's little yelps and squeaks do start to wear thin after a while, theynever quite go so far as to become annoying. The 'speech' of the numerous characters is put across with appropriate burbling noisesas the text of their conversations appears in bubbles on screen; Banjo has a germless yokel drawl, Kazooie a dry parroty squawk,Bottles the mole a muffled Kenny-style mumble and Gruntilda a demented cackle.

Even bit-part players like feathers and glasstumblers (I kid you not) get their own distinctive little wibbles.As well as the spot effects, there is also great use of atmospheric background noise. Clanker's Cavern echoes with rusty squeaksand rattles as the metal muncher shifts against his bonds, Bubblegloop Swamp has an underpinning of mysterious croaks and gurglesfrom unseen swamp dwellers and, in a superb example of sonic subtlety, the higher you climb above Treasure Trove Cove, thequieter the music gets, until at the top of the island's lighthouse all you can hear is the wind blowing across the mountain.

Jump AroundIn play, Banjo-Kazooie is very much of the Mario 64 school, though tightened up a great deal. Making the most difference is thevastly better camera control. Even though the basic functions are the same - rotate around Banjo, zoom in, zoom out - it's a lotsmarter, most of the time avoiding the irritating habits of 3-0 cameras where they can't decide where to position themselves.Annoyingly (and somehow inevitably), the few places where the camera really struggles to keep up with the action are the oneswhere you're at risk of losing a life if you make a wrong move.

One particularly irksome section is in the depths of Clanker's Cavern,where air is scarce -a friendly fish provides bubbles for you, but because there's a huge block at the centre of the deep pool you're inthe camera often gets stuck behind it, making it impossible for you to find the vital oxygen. Another takes place over a sea ofinstantly-lethal lava, where just as you start to negotiate a twisting path the camera often decides to throw an eppy.These glitches aside, the camera does probably the best job to date in any 3-D platformer. Useful tricks include a 'look' mode whereyou get to see the world through Banjo's goofy eyes, which shows off the impressive amount of attention put into every object in thegame, and by holding down the R button you get a kind of floating camera, making it easier to judge jumps, so most of the game willbe spent with the shoulder button welded down.Each of the levels has had a lot of time and effort spent to make them challenging without being overly frustrating. There's nothingmore annoying in a platform game than having to make a series of precise jumps to reach a certain area, only to have one slightmistake force you back to the start. Banjo-Kazooie does have a few sections where careful jumps are needed, but the game is fairlyforgiving of mistakes, and thankfully if you do screw up it never takes too long to get back into position for a second try. Captain BK And His BandBanjo-Kazooie is also quite a funny game, as in funny ha-ha.

Much of it is Childrens ITV-level stuff, with lots of discussion ofGruntilda's underpants and personal hygiene, but the characters themselves are more appealing than anyone was expecting. Banjo'sa bit of a cipher, which is par for the course for a game hero (be honest, Mario has no real personality at all, does he? Yelling 'Mamamia!' And going droopy-eyed when he's tired isn't going to get Robert De Niro interested in the role), but Kazooie is a star, insultingeveryone she speaks to and complaining vocally whenever something looks as though it might inconvenience her. Selfish, rude, lazyand hedonistic - she could almost be a real person!Even though the overall theme of the game is squarely aimed at kids, there's still the odd bit of good oP British Carry On-style comedyfor older (note that I didn't say 'more mature') players. One scene has a dried-up palm tree complaining about the lack of water,prompting Kazooie to enquire after the condition of his nuts, and there's also a talking toilet called Loggo who could have comestraight from the pages of ViziIt's this sort of humour that keeps Banjo-Kazooie from sinking into the kind of sanitised Disneyesque world occupied by Mario, wherenot only do bad things never happen, but bad thoughts are banned too.

If Nintendo are Disney, which they would undoubtedly like tobe, then Rare are Warner Bros - on the surface doing the same thing, but with just enough of an anarchic edge to keep theminteresting. (Nobody mention Space lam, or the analogy collapses.) The Summing Up BitIt's a pity we didn't wait until we'd seen Banjo-Kazooie before we carried out last issue's updating of the Nindex scores.

If we had,Mario 64 would have suffered rather more, since in comparison to Banjo-Kazooie it looks like Stephenson's Rocket beside a Eurostar.It just goes to show what a difference two years can make. Mario 64 was the first game on the N64, and at the time people wereabsolutely frothing at the mouth to praise it as the greatest videogame ever written.Now, it looks positively barren and simplistic. Even though Banjo-Kazooie is the same type of game, it's a far more immersiveexperience, and it's not just because the graphics are better. Mario's stark, angular landscapes made it obvious that you were playinga game, but Banjo-Kazooie spares no effort to convince you that you're exploring an actual world.

A strange fantasy world, to be sure,but it's got an internal logic that was sometimes missing from Mario.With Banjo-Kazooie so good, it makes you wonder what Rare plan to do to make their other cutesy adventure, Twelve Tales: Conker64, an improvement. Based on what was on show at E3 (see last issue), the style of play is very similar, but while Banjo and Kazooieovercame the preconceptions that were formed based on the character designs ('A redneck bear? Conker still looksdisturbingly twee. And those eyes, those mad staring eyes.Just how much long-term play Banjo-Kazooie will ultimately offer is debatable, if only because it's the sort of game that will be playedintensively from the moment it's taken from the box until it's been cracked.

Once all the puzzle pieces have been found, there's notmuch incentive to go through the game and find them all again unless you're trying to improve on your completion time. Much of thegame's challenge comes from trying to work out where all the items are and how best to reach them, but once you know, it's possibleto clear out a whole world in a matter of minutes. In the short term, once you've opened up ust how much long-term play Banjo-Kazooie will ultimately offer is debatable, if only because it's the sort of game that will be played intensively from the moment it's takenfrom the box until it's been cracked.

Once all the puzzle pieces have been found, there's not much incentive to go through the gameand find them all again unless you're trying to improve on your completion time. Much of thegame's challenge comes from trying to work out where all the items are and how best to reach them, but once you know, it's possibleto clear out a whole world in a matter of minutes. In the short term, once you've opened up a few levels there are several points thatoffer infinite life loops - go into the level, take the shortest route to an extra life, leave the level, re-enter the level ad infinitum. Sincedeath comes fairly infrequently anyway once Banjo and Kazooie have got their full set of moves, the most common cause of thegame over sequence is the inconvenient human need for sleep.That shouldn't deter you from buying the game.

Banjo-Kazooie is brilliant, plain and simple, and another example of why Nintendohave become so dependant on Rare -the company produces games that are every bit as good as Nintendo's own, if not better. Andthere's no higher, recommendation than that! Banjo is the best 3D action/adventure game to date. Around almost every corner there's something that simply floors me. For instance, in one level you enter a large water-filled room where a giant mechanical shark is anchored. The thing easily takes up the entire screen and is really awesome-looking. In another level, you can fly all the way to the top of a huge snowman and then take a sled down his scarf.

The levels give me a feeling of great depth. This coupled with the instructiveness of the levels makes Banjo one to buy. I haven't played a game in a long time that offers this much gameplay. You have to use all of the moves you learn in order to truly complete each level. There's musical notes, Jingo’s, puzzle pieces, a number of minigames and adventures, characters to meet up with and many other objectives. Experienced players may beat early levels in less than an hour each, but beginners will definitely take a lot longer. With nine levels of modest size, the game is a formidable opponent.

The graphics are easily the best on the system, and the music is a lot of fun. The sound effects on the other hand are just damned annoying by the fourth level or so. Why the game is so sickeningly cute I don't know, but it's nonetheless the best game in the genre by far.

Go on and buy it! Originally planned to be Nintendo's big holiday title last year for the N64, ended up going through two huge delays, pushing the game's release back from last November to this coming July. Fortunately the extra time that Rare's had to work on the game is obviously paying off-what we played recently at Nintendo was majorly improved over last June's already impressive version that was shown at E3.Banjo-Kazooie could be simply defined as a clone and left at that, but it's just no longer true. There's so much depth to the game, so much variety and technique-and such amazing graphics (yes, Rare's topped themselves yet again), that BK is sure to keep gamers glued to their sets for far longer than Mario 64 ever did. In fact, the depth of gameplay is what really makes BK shine.

For one, you've got two main characters (Banjo and Kazooie) who each have unique abilities and must help each other out throughout the game (combined, they have over 20 different moves and techniques at their disposal). That alone adds much to the game. But then there are the multiple objectives on each of the game's nine worlds.

Not only must the pair search out and find special Puzzle that are hidden throughout (similar to the Stars in Mario 64, if you will), but they must also collect special Musical Notes, Mumbo Tokens, Jinjo Birds and more. To get past certain obstacles they'l have to rely on the help of a shaman named Mumbo who can transform them into different creatures that each have their own special abilities.BK is looking incredibly promising right now, and with Rare's proven track record, we're confident that the game will be everything we've expected and more when it's released this July.

We'll be back with more on this one soon. Banjo-Kazooie, the latest N64 offering from Rare, emphasizes teamwork in a Mario-like setting. Characters & StoryThis 128-meg game features two playable characters: Banjo, a honey bear, and Kazooie, a red-crested breegull. Banjo can punch and roll into enemies, while Kazooie (who travels in Banjo's backpack) can fly and can run up hills. Although you can control only one character at a time, the two characters share a total of 24 special moves, which they perform in 16 worlds as they try to rescue Banjo's kidnapped girlfriend, Piccolo. Gameplay & Fun FactorBanjo-Kazooie puts a nice twist on its action/adventure theme by allowing you to switch between the two characters any time during the game. While the gameplay engine feels 'lifted' from Super Mario 64 (and the game may be dismissed by some as a mere clone), the technique and teamwork between the two characters quickly grow on you.

GraphicsUsing full 3D environments, Banjo-Kazooie is filled with color and detail. The images never distort (even at point-blank range), and the duo's animation is excellent, from.Banjo's awkward punches to Kazooie's little flailing feet as he runs. The polygon graphics are almost seamless.

As of the 13/03/17 build (master/3cae25f) the emulator runs through the intro videos smoothly, with correct audio, but past those, I get many assertion errors:(Those two errors keep repeating themselves when I click ignore)I can still hear the music, then it will cut off, then I can only hear ambience sounds.After clicking ignore many, many times, the errors stop for a while and the emulator is stuck on this screen:Then I got errors again after about 5 minutes of waiting, and decided to close the emulator. Loading screen emulation isn't accurate enough. Lots of lag and stutter, grass didn't render right and some other stuff like those decorations on the buildings and some vines, 30 minutes of gameplay and no crashes to report. This is running on the DX12 version and the latest build as of 1/17/2019. Despite all of this I made it to the highest place in this world. There is also slight input delay but that's to be expected at this framerate and stutter. It averages around 13fps most of the time.

And sometimes going even above 15fps but after it hits 15+ fps after a second or so it hangs for ca. 3 seconds and then it goes to normal.Specs:CPU: AMD FX-8300 (overclocked to 3.7Ghz)GPU: Palit Nvidia GeForce 670RAM: GSkill Ripjaws X Series 2 x 8Gb Dual ChannelMotherboard: GA-78LMT-USB3OS: Windows 10 Pro Version 1803 (OS Build 17134.523)PS: I had Chrome, Discord, Steam and MSI Afterburner running in the background while testing the game.