Video games - Banjo-Tooie

Home > Listing Index > Video games > Banjo-Tooie

	Video games - Banjo-Tooie

Banjo-Tooie is the sequel to the 1998 Nintendo 64 game Banjo-Kazooie
. It was released on November 1, 2000 for the Nintendo 64. It was published by Rareware and features the popular video game characters Banjo and Kazooie.

Aim

As before, the aim of the game is to collect all the Jiggies (golden jigsaw pieces) that can be found. There are ten in each level, and an additional one is awarded for finding each of the nine families of Jinjos hidden throughout the game. This, in addition to the Jiggy awarded at the very beginning by the benevolent Jingaling, king of the Jinjos, brings the total to 90.

As a platformer, the game is groundbreaking in that the levels are not stand-alone areas linked only by the overworld; on many occasions in the game the player is required to cross between the levels, or return to a level after learning a new skill in order to use it. The train stations in most levels are an integral part of this system; once the station has been opened, it is possible to move between levels on the train. This is vital to completing the game.

Stop 'n' Swop controversy

The original Banjo-Kazooie contained several areas which could be seen but not reached, containing secret and mysterious items. During Kazooie's ending, the game explained that these areas were only to be reached by completing certain tasks in the forthcoming sequel Banjo-Tooie and linking that game up with the original in some unspecified way to unlock them. After Banjo-Tooie was released however, Rare made no further mention of this link-up capability and no way to link the games was ever found; the general consensus among fans is that the feature was quietly dropped because of impracticality and was thus not implemented in the sequel. Supporting that conclusion is the fact that some of the most famous unreachable items in Kazooie reappear in Tooie in places where they can be reached through normal gameplay, appearing in special "Banjo-Kazooie Cartridges." By including these in-game "cartridges" it can technically still be argued that these secret items are in fact "coming from" the original Banjo-Kazooie game, although in quite an anti-climactic nature. The unreachable areas from Banjo-Kazooie do not appear in any form at all.

There are still a few situations in Banjo-Tooie which seem to curiously lack a purpose (such as the drunken Captain Blackeye who mopes the same few lines of dialogue over and over). Also, dedicated fans have been able to hack Banjo-Tooie with a GameShark to trigger the message "Stop 'n' Swop" (sic) to appear. It is possible that the intended link feature may have originally involved removing the Banjo-Tooie cartridge and plugging in the Banjo-Kazooie cartridge while the Nintendo 64 unit was still turned on. A website devoted to the discussion also speculated that the intended link may have actually been intended to involve Donkey Kong 64.

The areas that were unable to reach finally were revealed to be reached by using codes at the Treasure Trove Cove level to get the "easter eggs"

It is possible that a functioning link feature may still actually exist in the games, but has simply never been discovered. The amount of inconclusive fan hacking makes this seem quite unlikely, however. In a Rare Xbox game, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, the massive speculation on "Stop and Swop" was poked fun at in the form of a blackboard in one level that purports to offer a convoluted "explanation" of how the process works.

Plot

The game takes place two years after Gruntilda the Witch was defeated by Banjo and Kazooie. Over this time, she has been buried under a rock with her assistant, Klungo, trying to save her. On a stormy night Gruntilda's sisters appear and remove the rock. Gruntilda is now a skeleton and wants a new body. She then kills Bottles the Mole and heads off with her sisters to get her a new body using B.O.B. (Big-O-Blaster), a machine that sucks the life force out of living things.

As the game's one-player mode opens, Banjo, Kazooie, Mumbo Jumbo, and Bottles are enjoying a game of poker in Banjo's house. But outside, the mischievous goon Klungo is helping Mingella and Blobbelda resurrect their witch sister, Grunty. They do succeed in reviving Grunty, although she is no more than a skeleton with witch's robes. Mumbo witnesses this ceremony, and speeds back to Banjo's house to warn his friends. The witches give chase, and Grunty hurls a deadly spell at the house. Forewarned, Banjo, Kazooie, and Mumbo get away in time, but Bottles, suspecting the claim that Grunty is back to be trick by Mumbo to win at poker, stays put and is caught in the blast. The witches speed away in their Hag 1 machine, and Banjo and Kazooie watch as Bottles wobbles out of their destroyed house and dies at their feet. Shaken, they agree that they must chase down Grunty and foil her plans once more. Mumbo informs them that he will return to his hut and prepare some magic to aid them.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Banjo-Tooie ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Banjo-Tooie; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay