Banjo Kazooie

When I was a kid in the hospital for asthma attacks I played this and thought Banjo was a beaver, I’m Australian so bears weren’t much of a thing here and I remembered him having some teeth visible for some reason. That was way before Nuts & Bolts existed so I’m not conflating it with that fugly design. I could never get past Mumbo’s Mountain because you know I was in the hospital and couldn’t do stuff properly, I kept asking for the beaver and bird game as a gift. But anyway-

Finally playing this again on n64 online and haha yikes it is unreal to me how much smoother Spyro already was by this point. I don’t know if the emulation is just shit on this one but everything feels floaty. Note system also does indeed seem like bullshit. I’ll stick with it but can’t imagine this being as good as the original Spyro games tbh and it is shameful more 3D platformers are not of their quality to this day

Playing Banjo Kazooie for the first time;

First 30 minutes: This is really funny.

Two hours later: Oh that's right, I hate collectathons. And BK makes you pick shit again after dying. Fuck that.

There should be an entire semester in design school for why collectathons are bad

eekum bokum

Once you know the layout of the levels, they’re quite easy to run through and grab the notes again if you die, which shouldn’t happen much considering how many honeycombs the game gives you. The only real tough spots are the last two levels, but it adds a great sense of tension and difficulty progression as you near the end of the game