Rare is Loco

Of course, we already knew this, what with Diddy Kong Racing being a layered, seemingly never-ending endeavor. But the level to which they are crazy (brilliant) is even depthier than we imagined.
This post pretty much goes against everything I said about Banjo Kazooie in the last post; I don’t actually have that much against the game, I just think it’s the best game to make fun of, what with it being about a bear with a bird in his packpack who fights ugly runts of enemies and collects golden jigsaw pieces so as to defeat an evil witch. Oh yeah, and the game’s equivalent of Toad is a fat, short-sighted mole named Bottles. So yeah, pretty much prime mocking material.
In any case, it was a half decent game. However, in traditional Rare style, it was also an evil, mean game. Not in the way of Diddy Kong, mind you, where they lure in children with fuzzy woodland creature characters and then pound out their hopes of there being good in the world by making the game mercilessly hard. While still involving a cast of cute creatures, Banjo Kazooie is actually a rather easy game if you just want to defeat Gruntilda (the equivalent of the Final Bowser) without getting 100 jigsaws (I refuse to call them “Jiggies”). However, Rare has a habit of making games go far beyond the seeming end of the game (Future Fun Land, Adventure 2), and Banjo was no exception.
Seeing as I am likely the only one among us who has ever played Banjo Kazooie/Tooie, I’ll take a moment to detail the scenario so you, too, can appreciate the revelations I have recently have.
Banjo Kazooie was of the generation of N64 games directly based of Mario 64. It follows the formula invented by the N64 platformer: One huge playing field (once again a castle, albeit a much less loveable, asthaetically pleasing one) in which several sub-worlds are contained, and in each sub-world there are a handful of Jigsaws (stars) which can be found. Several Jigsaws (Stars) can also be found in Gruntilda’s (Peach’s) lair (castle).
One of these subworlds is beach-themed, and in one part of the sub-world is a sand castle. Upon entering the sand castle, Banjo finds that the floor is made up of tiles, each with a letter on it (there are many repeating letters for convenience). As I recall, one of the Jigsaws in that particular sub-world involved a character telling you a code, which you ground-pounded (ground-pounded) in proper sequence, opening a cage at the back of the room which held a Jigsaw. Many of us took this Jigsaw to be the sand castle’s sole purpose, and went on with our lives (meaning the rest of the game).
Later in the game is a snow-based sub-world. In this sub-world is a cave which a walrus resides in. There is another, smaller cave opening in the wall. When you enter, you see a key made of ice right in front of you. It is huge, and therefore, by the laws of video games, must be important. You walk forward, but meet an impenetrable glass wall. America utters it’s first “WTF?” of Banjo Kazooie.Bummer.
Now, let’s say you get all 100 Jigsaws in the game. Apparently, Mumbo Jumbo (A Wizard-esque character) then shows you the location of two huge eggs that you should find in the game. If you do so, nothing happens. America utters its second “What the Fuck?” of Banjo Kazooie.

Jump to Banjo Tooie. About halfway through the game, you encounter a large vault made of ice with a KEY HOLE. There is NO WAY to open this vault. America is pissed off. Apparently, N64s retain the memory of the game you were just playing for 60 seconds after the game is turned off. The rumor was that N64 had created a “Stop ‘N Swop” in Banjo Kazooie, a point at which you could, if you had the ice key (How?), turn off your N64, insert Tooie, and have the ice key. This rumor was completely unfounded back in 2002, when I played the games.

Then I found this last night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrjQ_yLT1-U


Let me explain what you just saw. Prior to the beginning of this video, this player had gone to the sand castle and entered the code “NOWYOUCANSEEANICEICEKEYWHICHYOUCANHAVEFORFREE”
This code was not known when I played the game, not given in guides, and is noticeably long. How could someone have guessed it? Someone at Rare must’ve slipped.
After entering this code, the sheet of glass in the walrus cave disappeared, and the key was theirs.
Next, the eggs. Mumbo shows you two at the end of the game, but these two do nothing. Why? Because Rare was a pest and made six eggs appear at the end of the game, and only told you about two. We see this gamer get all of the eggs, and miraculously find the “Stop ‘N Swop” given the vague clues like “in the castle”. They turn off the game when told to, and insert Tooie. There is an error.

At this point, Rare announced that their idea to transfer the key and eggs to Tooie was true, but that Nintendo shot it down when Tooie was made, so while there was a “Stop ‘N Swop” in Kazooie, the transfer in the end was futile. However, Rare was trying to pull a fast one on us. Here is a video of Banjo Tooie, irrefutable proof of the key and eggs transfer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biND6aRmBu8&feature=related

Okay, I’m really immature to have enjoyed that, but whatever. The truth is the idea really was canned in Tooie production. But the intricacy of Banjo Kazooie is astounding, and secrets that take years to discover (especially with all the gamer geeks out there in the world) are evidence of devoted designers. I guess this’ll inevitably be a game soon to appear in my “epically revisited games”, and maybe I’ll have to go against my ways and finish the insufferably boring DK64 (Video game slut?).

So maybe Luigi is in 64.


Just kidding.

On the Family Guy note, I love the expression on Stewie’s face whenever he’s in a shot, and two other people are having a conversation in front of him. The artists make no effort to make it look like he is mentally present, he’s just staring off, eyelids half-closed. Check it out sometime.

-OSK

Rock and Roll Jesus With A Cowboy Mouth