Banjo-Kazooie Member Review for the N64

A Bird In A Backpack.....Alright!

Sooo, you're a bear, you're laying in bed, having a nice Sunday morning lie in with your bird friend sleeping in a backpack hanging on a hat-stand (like always). When you wake up hearing a fight! A girl on girl fight! Ashamed to say, one of the girl's a a FUGLY slut witch, who wants to steal your younger sister's good looks so she can hit on the blokes of Banjo Country. A regular plot yes? Well its basic format is...female stolen into evil castle - go and save her. I'll give Rareware that cookie.

Let me translate, the bear is Banjo, the bird in the backpack is Kazooie. MORPHIN-TIME! Together they are Banjo-Kazooie! Two kick-ass primate/flyers that absolutely rule the N64 gaming world! The fugly slut witch is Gruntilda who has stolen Banjo's sister Tooty so that she can steal her good looks to make herself look good. It's Snow White, without the apple, but with a modern image-transplant device! And Banjo-Kazooie are the princes out to save her (no incest jokes please)!

The gameplay of this game is fantastic, I reckon Donkey Kong 64 copied this game. Let me elaborate: you go around in Gruntilda the witch's lair, which is formed into 9 magical worlds for Banjo-Kazooie to explore. In each world are 10 Jigsaw pieces to retreive by performing tasks and doing favours for people. Or just finding them in corners or tricky platforms, whichever way, theyre all a mission to find. Sound familiar to DK64?...I thought so! There's also 100 notes on each world, honeycombs for additional health, loads of stuff to find in each magical world of the slut's lair. It's never-ending fun. I've played it since it came out ages ago and I still love playing it now!

The control's are...fair! Easy to use, but it's because you have so many moves! You learn about 5 moves in the tutorial (i mean proper moves, like a sturdy charge, and a high jump), and you still learn moves in each level until you get to the 6th magical world! So the controls are sure hard to remember with so much going on, but it doesn't matter when you can be SO creative with so many moves to choose from! They all mainly use the c buttons conjoined with the Z button. All the moves are combos of the buttons, let's put it that way...but you definately get used to them quickly. I just think it's such a feat to have so many moves, well Rareware would have to be damn creative with a bear and bird moulded together!

erm, the sound....it's pretty good actually! It's not poor quality, and there's a different tune for each world...each with a cool bounce tune that makes to hum along in out-of-tune fashion! Also, when in the lair, there's a requiem of "Teddy-bear picnic", fitting to the image eh?! The effects are also good quality, the voices aren't existent. But they're spoken in sounds, and some of the voices for some characters will crack you up. I love it everytime!

So, if you're into good retro games, and you still ahve your N64, BUY this game. I seriously recommend. It's a lot of fun to play! I've just ordered Banjo-tooie from eBay, I'm sure I'll be reviewing that soon :P. But if you liked DK64, you'll love this...because DK64 copied this in my view! Look out monkeys of the jungle...the bears are about to have their picnic!