I think it speaks volumes of Banjo-Kazooie's stellar soundtrack that Grant Kirkhope is sort of the darling face of classy old Rare now. It's definitely a deserved accolade- no matter how unorthodox it might be that a composer overshadows the rest of the dev team, don't see that too often.

Beyond great music and precise platforming, what really sets the bear-and-bird's outing apart from its contemporaries is that cheeky, irreverent English humour and charm. The kind of game that has you smiling the whole way through, unless you don't realize you have to break in through the windows in Rusty Bucket Bay. Slightly bullshit, but went straight back to smiling when I hear all the lovely sound design again. Jinjoooo.

With the highly competitive era of the N64 & PS1, where there seemed to be just about one masterpiece coming out every month. This game still managed to write itself in the history books as one of the titans of it's era. Rare creating a game that many see as close to the levels of quality as Mario 64. Although I must say, as much as I love the game I can't say I see that personally, but moving on.

The movement in the game is impeccable, It's not the precise and fluid buttery smooth movement from Mario, but still an an incredibly well made movement, with loads of options on your set on how to travel around the vast world in this game. Which only helps to create an even large incentive to explore and collect more items.

Banjo Kazooie in my view is one of the best Collect-a-Thons the genre has seen. Really only failing to be the best in it's era due, to the simple fact that Nintendo released one of the greatest games of all time during it. Even still, it still uphelds itself today as one of the golden standards of the Collect-a-Thon genre. And one that every game developer, large or indie. Should look on to when it comes to developing a fun collecting experience.

I won't speak much about the games soundtrack. Because listening to it simply speaks for itself.

Banjo Kazooie to me is incredibly close to being a perfect game. And from seeing my rambling here you might even wonder why it isn't. Simply put, the game is finally starting to show some age, with a recent short play test of the game. I found myself a little bored, not as glued to the screen as I found myself growing up. An issue that would likely be resolved had the game received as much love as Mario 64 has, with it's very impressive modding community keeping the game up even to modern standards with 1920x1080 support, and 60fps. And Ocarina of Time also getting similar love with ShipofHarkinian(which if you are interested in playing Ocarina tdpay, should absolutely be the way you do so!). Banjo however has not received the same support, the game continues to become more and more outdated. I'm not one to complain much about frames and resolution, but Banjo is starting to show its age, and its something we need to accept. Banjo likely will eventually get a remake. Until that day however. Banjo to me is a solid 9/10

My sister and I adored this game to the end. I remember we bought this on the off chance of it just looking kind of cool by the commercials? But we were still unsure. But us only being kids at the time, we were just dying of laughter, and having a blast collecting collectibles and honey combs, and exploring a wide variety of different seasoned maps. Banjo-Kazooie put Rare on the field, it was an instant classic. It quite possibly rivaled even Super Mario 64. Hell, I would say it’s actually better than Mario 64. It’s that’s good.

this was actually the first game I vividly remember playing and kinda set the standard for me when it came to collect-a-thons and 3D Platformers, incredibly straight forward gameplay and unique move set makes this a very easy game to recommend to anyone of any age to enjoy, the british humor is a nice touch as well, while its age does show its head if you're playing the XBLA versions you shouldnt have much issue as there are a few QOL features such as notes being saved on exiting and re-entering levels where as in the original N64 due to limitations exiting a level would reset non priority collectibles such as notes

TLDR: this was the first game I remember playing so I love it for that.

Looking back on the games I played over the course of my childhood, I've noticed that some of my most memorable gaming expirences came from Rare. Before I discovered Banjo-Kazooie, I played and beat the GBA port of Donkey Kong Country 2 and the DS remake of Diddy Kong Racing, but out of those two games I found Diddy Kong Racing DS to be much more interesting. I frequently looked up information online on how to unlock everything that the game had to offer. Apon doing so, I eventually discovered that there was a whole other version of the game that came before it with a few characters that weren't in the DS version. This is how I discovered the existence of Banjo. It wasn't until I connected my Xbox 360 to the internet for the first time a few years later that I would rediscover Banjo-Kazooie and download the demos of this game and its sequel Tooie. Not long after, I was able to purchase both of them and enjoy them to my heart's content. The Banjo-Kazooie games quickly became some of my all-time favorites, leading me into developing a fascination for the developers that made them. I've even attempted speedrunning this game on the 360 version multiple times with my best time being around 5 hours. Having just finished another playthrough of this masterpiece, I will say this is easily Rare's best collect-a-thon and one of the best 3d platformers ever made.

There are a lot of positive things to say about Banjo-Kazooie. The graphics are nice, the characters are funny & memorable, the worlds are enjoyable to explore, and the size of said worlds are just right. One big issue with some of the games that came after this one such as Donkey Kong 64 & Banjo-Tooie are that the worlds are just too damn big and require a lot of backtracking. WIth Banjo-Kazooie, all the objectives & goodies are scattered throughout the levels in a way that isn't intrusive. The only exception being one jiggy you'll have to backtrack for in the middle part of the game, but unless you're aiming for 100% completion it is totally optional.

As far as negatives go, the controls can be a little confusing. It could be since my last playthrough was a couple years ago, but I had some trouble remembering the imputs for a few moves or just accidently doing the wrong thing. It was never something I thought about until I played this version but that's probably because of the obtuse design of the controller. The other issue is something that the 360 version fixes which involves having to recollect the Jinjos and musical notes if you died. It can be very aggrivating to go through the process of getting them all again, especially if you die in any of the later worlds. However, the reason this issue exists is because of hardware limitations so its somewhat excusable.

Banjo-Kazooie is Rare's most iconic IP and rightfully so. Its tight level design, beautiful worlds, and memorable cast cement this game as the best 3d platformer on the N64. Between Banjo-Kazooie & Mario 64, I'd say the bear & bird duo gave the Italian plumber a run for his money.

I've always had a soft spot for Banjo-Kazooie, but I had more familiarity with its future ports. The original still has a great sense of style, good music, quirky humor, and so on, but it's a little rough to play thanks to a somewhat awkward control scheme and camera. Despite its place in history as a seminal collect-a-thon platformer, the game was at times more stressful than enjoyable, as many activities per level are reset on death, which just isn't very entertaining with how long stages become, how high the requirements are the beat the game, and how linear the stage progression is.