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Banjo-Tooie is the sequel to the game Banjo-Kazooie, both released for the Nintendo 64
console. The characters are the same as in the original; Banjo and Kazooie fight the witch Gruntilda along with her sisters. The
game was released in 2000 by Rare.
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 benvolent 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 completeing the game.
The original Banjo-Kazooie contained several areas which could be seen but not reached, containing secret and myserious
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 impraticality 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. 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.
Rareware, which was purchased from Nintendo by Microsoft in 2002 to make games for Microsoft Game Studios, is developing another follow-up in the Banjo-Kazooie series for the Xbox or its successor.
Story
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 out of people.
Banjo and Kazooie now travel on the Isle o' Hags to track down Gruntilda to avenge Bottles' death and destroy Grunty once and
for all.
Main Characters
- Banjo- A loving, yet somewhat confused bear. The hero of this tale.
- Kazooie- A loud-mouth bird. Banjo's sidekick.
- Mumbo Jumbo- A shaman that helps the duo by performing various tasks with his
magic, including changing the landscape of courses.
- Gruntilda- A witch that vows revenge on B&K.
- Srgt. Jam-Jars- Bottles' brother. Teaches B&K new moves.
- Humba Wumba- An Indian lady and Mumbo Jumbo's rival. Transforms B&K into other forms.
Levels
- Mayahem Temple. An area which was probably sacred to some extinct primitive race (the level's name being a pun
combining "Maya" and "mayhem". Contains Easter Island-style stone heads which shoot darts (as precursors to the boss of the level), little stone
people who speak gibberish when Banjo speaks to them in his normal state, but give useful hints when he turns into a Stony
himself. The boss of the level, hidden away in a first-person
shooter area, is Targitzan, the god of target-shooting, who is made up of several layers and spins around while shooting
darts.
- Glitter Gulch Mine. A stereotypical American gold mine containing a prospector fox, a mad old flying woman dressed as a canary and a trapped flying saucer. It is also, notably, the site of the first train station, where
the boss, Old King Coal (a large humanoid lump of coal), must be defeated to allow the train to move between levels. Banjo can
change into a TNT detonator here, which is vital for blowing up piles of rocks, clearing
entrances to new areas.
- Witchyworld. A macabre, highly unsafe fairground endorsed by
Gruntilda. It is made up of three zones, the Space Zone, the Spooky Zone and the Wild West Zone, and the main attraction, the big
top, which is actually inhabited by the theme park's boss, the surreal inflatable dinosaur Mr Patch, who must be fought in the air. Banjo can transform into a van here; the van carries money,
which can be used to pay for access to rides. It is also indestructible and kills enemies just by driving into them.
- Jolly Roger's Lagoon. Composed of two very different areas, the small nautical village inhabited by the eponymous
Jolly Roger (a highly camp frog who owns a pub,
Jolly's) and the lagoon itself, which, thanks to Mumbo Jumbo's magic, can be explored without a danger of running out of oxygen,
unlike all other underwater areas in the game. The boss is Lord Woo Fak Fak, an anglerfish who inhabits Davey Jones's Locker (in the literal sense; Davey Jones's locker is one of many lockers
at the bottom of the lagoon). Banjo can transform into a submarine here, and Lord Woo Fak Fak is unique in that you can fight him
in your transformed state.
- Terrydactyland. An area dominated by a small mountain and inhabited by dinosaurs and three tribes of cavemen: the Unga Bungas, the Oogle
Boogles and the Rocknuts. It is apparently named after Terry, a pterodactyl
whose eggs have been stolen. He immediately suspects Banjo of the theft and therefore attacks him. When he is defeated, he asks
Banjo to find his eggs; once the eggs have all been found and hatched, he awards another Jiggy. Interestingly, there are two
possible transformations in this level: large T-rex and small
T-rex.
- Grunty Industries. A factory, also endorsed by Grunty (hence the name). An interesting feature of the level is that
the factory itself is closed to start off with, meaning that only the limited area outside the building can be explored. The
solution is to open the train station, which is inside the factory but can be opened by a switch outside, then take the train
into the factory. The boss of the level is Weldar, a giant blowtorch who does not
take kindly to trespassers. Banjo turns into a washing machine, the
main point of which is to wash employees' clothes for a reward.
- Hailfire Peaks. An inspired take on the conventional fire/ice levels of platformers, Hailfire Peaks is made up of a
glacier and a volcano in one formation.
Consistent with its twin nature, the level boasts two bosses, Chilly Willy and Chilli Billi, an ice dragon and a fire dragon, respectively. Only after beating both is a Jiggy attained. It also has two train stations,
but only one transformation: a snowball, which grows as it gains health and shrinks as it is injured.
- Cloud Cuckooland. The final level, and the most surreal of all. It is made up of an enormous pink mountain surrounded
by floating platforms. It boasts such oddities as an enormous piece of cheese, a
castle made of jelly and plants which have
giant eyeballs. The transformation, the comparatively mundane bumblebee, is
recycled from Banjo-Kazooie's Click Clock Wood (also the last level).
There are two Mumbo huts in this level, a red one and a blue one. In one lurks the level's boss: an evil robot impersonating Mumbo Jumbo.
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