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.

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

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.