November 26, 2025|

Filed under: Editorial

Walk the Line: Banjo-Kazooie

In “Walk the Line,” Wolfman Jew looks at the critical path of a game from start to finish. These games may be nonlinear open worlds, straightforward shooters, and anywhere in between. Some may be great at how it tells its stories and presents its worlds, some may not, but these give us an idea of how games function as interactive stories. As every article will be exploring the critical path of a game, expect spoilers for the plot, distinct formats for each article, and a generous length.

Earlier this year, I replayed Banjo-Kazooie. It’s something for which I’ve a lot of nostalgia; it might have been the first game I truly loved, and one I come back to every few years. Rare’s 1998 magnum opus is a high point of 3D platformer design, with excellent levels and ways to move through them. Its difficulty curve is mostly satisfying, its areas are full of exciting secrets, and by being short and digestible, it’s a treat to dive into again and again.

Image: Source Gaming. The end of the opening to Banjo-Kazooie. All the pictures in this article were taken off a second playthrough; for ease, they were also taken off Nintendo Switch Online.

But my playthrough in 2025 was a bit different. After I finished my customary 100% run (six hours and fifty-four minutes, pretty good casual time), I began taking stock of its overall structure. Because thinking back to the magical themed worlds, the grand hub that connects them, and the way you progress through it all, I realized that Banjo is something of a feint. See, it’s in a genre that’s often defined by expectations of linearity and nonlinearity. 3D platformers can be open and permissive, they can be directed and structured, and most spend their time in a balancing act between these two poles.

Banjo-Kazooie shows the push and pull in a way I find academically instructive. It is, on the whole, a linear affair, with nine worlds you’re generally expected to complete in a single sitting, in a single order. There are roadblocks to keep that critical path in place, most notably a central and almost entirely linear hub. This structure can be broken or circumvented, but there’s rarely a practical reason to do so. Instead, its openness comes from the worlds themselves. They’re open sandboxes designed for players to run through in whatever circles suit them best. And throughout the experience, different elements muddle the clear dichotomy of “open” versus “directed.” This playthrough helped me see the depth of the game’s own balancing act, and how every element—the difficulty curve, the moves, the nature of the gates and locks, even how the levels are put together—is part of a discussion on open, player-level games. It isn’t simply that a level is good; the features that make it good all reflect back on this idea.

Image: Source Gaming. The “Jiggy collecting” animation is a staple of replays. I took dozens of pictures of it.

So let’s go through it all. The worlds, the hub, the critical path. And through that, let’s look at the ways lackadaisical bear Banjo and his snarky bird friend Kazooie explore this thorny relationship between linearity and nonlinearity. It’s a journey that teaches us about level design, architecture, progression, difficulty, and expectations. So let’s go past the logos, the cute main menu, and jump right in.

SPIRAL MOUNTAIN

The most important thing about Banjo-Kazooie is that it is the most “post-Super Mario 64” game ever made. More than Grand Theft Auto III or Tony Hawk’s or Kingdom Hearts, it is a reaction to one of the greatest and most formative works in the canon. Mario 64 helped define what it meant to move about in a 3D space and how a camera would cover it. And it was also important in the history of player-directed design, as it eschewed standard levels in favor of a pick and choose buffet of sandboxes in which almost no level or collectible is required. It’s aged in obvious ways, but it remains both a very fun masterpiece and a touchstone for nonlinear game design. It’s the reason why 3D platformers are saddled with that debate of linearity versus nonlinearity. Almost all of them are responding to Mario 64‘s extremely permissive structure.

By the admission of Rare’s staff, Banjo is their googly-eyed response. The game’s got a lot more graphical polish—two years is a lifetime in that era of gaming—but it’s still a blocky, cartoony world. You collect golden trinkets, with the Stars and Coins replaced by jigsaw pieces (colloquially called “Jiggies,” itself the impetus for a litany of awful “getting Jiggy with it” lines by Nintendo, Rare, and their fans) and musical notes. To facilitate their own robust moveset, they split the player character into a duo: a bear who can roll and jump and punch, and a bird in his backpack who can double jump, spit eggs, or bring her legs out to run. And most of their time is spent in colorful worlds, all of which are entered through doorways in a sprawling hub.

Image: Source Gaming. Spiral Mountain, with its unique layout.

And yet, I think the similarities come across most in the level without Jiggies, Notes, or a wacky environment: the tutorial. Spiral Mountain is Rare’s take on the grounds of Peach’s Castle, the simplest and friendliest training ground there is. There are enemies and music and valuable collectibles (Extra Honeycomb Pieces, six of which add a chunk to your health bar and two of which can be found in the normal worlds), but it’s very soft. You’d have to go out of your way to suffer fall damage, and the baddies have passive AI. Like Mario 64’s earliest levels, it’s a tutorial not just on how to move a character, but to move them through a populated 3D space, even if that was a bit less novel in ‘98 than it was in ‘96.

Spiral Mountain also debuts many of the environmental tropes that define Banjo. It’s full of small alcoves and segments, each of which exists to teach one basic move, and each looks distinct thanks to graphics and objects. The quarry of rocks you break with the Beak Barge is different from the moat where you swim underwater. Bottles, Banjo and Kazooie’s mole teacher, is a useful anchor thanks to his molehills that act as key locations in later worlds. The eye-catching central mountain is an architectural tool for spatial reasoning that almost every world will adopt. It’s even got something for hardcore fans, as Banjo’s house features a secret mini-game. Pretty much all of these features help orient you, creating a branching pathway from move to move and Honeycomb to Honeycomb. That style—a mesh of targets connected by routes and low value collectibles—is how Banjo-Kazooie builds its worlds. The only time it abandons this philosophy is in the hub connecting each one.

GRUNTILDA’S LAIR

And what a magical thing, the hub. It’s a giant cavern, with stalactites and rough rock walls, but you’re always climbing up and finding things that don’t fit an underground level. The higher you get, the more unusual scenery you find, from basic tunnels to grand bridges to industrial rooms to indoor piers. These often, though not exclusively, preview upcoming levels, so the entrance to the Egyptian-style desert of Gobi’s Valley is in a room filled with a sarcophagus, sandstone bricks, and burning sand. Others are more random, like a crystalline cave or a room illuminated by insta-death lava. Most common are the portraits, mosaics, carvings, and statues of Gruntilda the witch, keeping the game’s villain in your mind at all times. Banjo is a fantastical fairy tale, so it fits that the more you rise, the more you feel like you’re digging down into something strange.

Image: Source Gaming. The very first room in Gruntilda’s Lair sets the stage: brown earthy graphics, an obstacle you can’t immediately overcome, and constant narration from the villain.

The lair is also filled with specific hurdles that force you to follow at least a loose order. The very first thing you see is a pathway, but it’s too slippery and requires a skill from Mumbo’s Mountain. Opening the entrance to Mumbo’s Mountain in turn requires getting a nearby Jiggy and sticking it in a jigsaw puzzle nearby. This two-pronged challenge of finding a puzzle and then the entrance stays true across the game, and it allows the critical path to have side rooms or dead ends with something you need. Even if Gruntilda’s Lair has a clear structure, you have to veer off again and again. Some gates can only be crossed with specific powers, encouraging you to try to find every move. Along the way, you’ll be stymied by Note Doors, which are unlocked by the total number of Notes you’ve found in the worlds. Maybe it’s redundant to have two collectibles, but I like it. The Jiggies get to be big ticket items tied to puzzles or bosses, while the Notes can act as breadcrumbs through each world and are more tied to overall progression.

Ain’t exactly commensurate, though, as the cost actually increases with every barrier. For the Jiggies, it’s easy: you spend them on those puzzles, and since every puzzle demands more pieces than the last, you’ll eventually find yourself at a point where the cost of a world is higher than the ten pieces you can get inside it. For Note Doors, it’s kinda fascinating, as they demand a higher average each time. Note Door #2 requires 180, so an average of 60 per the three worlds in front of it. Note Door #3, which is after World 4, requires 260; that’s 65 per four. 70 per five words, 75 per six… The average goes up exactly five points every time from the second door onwards, so even though you can get away with not getting any Notes in a world for almost the whole game, there is a rising pressure. Unlike the super chill Mario 64, Banjo does not want you to skip or even skim a level.

Image: Source Gaming. This late room hides its own look; the industrial pier (and the entrance to World 8 within it) is almost impossible to see until you’ve raised the water level.

My favorite part is the music. While there’s a delightful main theme, it deftly moves into a remix based on Banjo’s location. When you dive underwater, it becomes slower and bubbly. When you enter the room that takes you to the beach world, it gets a jaunty sea shanty remix. When you walk towards the ice world’s entrance, it seamlessly shifts to be wintry. Banjo-Kazooie was not the first game with a dynamic soundtrack, but it’s one of the best examples and employs the trick in virtually every location. This isn’t just fun but practical, as it’s another clue that you’re near a new world. Perhaps the most mysterious change is found at a pool near the entrance to World 2, Treasure Trove Cove. An underwater tunnel inside it leads to a strange woodland room with a puzzle on the wall and a theme to match… but no platform on which you can fill it in. It and two cauldrons that act as incomplete warp points tell you early on that Gruntilda’s Lair isn’t just a collection of spaces but something more complex and challenging.

MUMBO’S MOUNTAIN

The requisite initial grass level is decent. It’s essentially a 3 x 2 table; half the level is at the bottom, the other half at the top, and both elevations are split into three chunks. You start in a largely flat zone, with a couple monsters, a stone platform, and a Jinjo, a sort of colorful elfin kidnap victim. Every world has five Jinjos, and getting all five in one trip nets you a Jiggy, so it’s helpful to meet one right away. The natural trajectory afterwards is to go up the stairs to Termite Tower and go either to Mumbo’s village or the Stonehenge-esque platform, both of which flank it. Alternatively, you can pass a lake towards the lair of Conga, essentially not-Donkey Kong as a first boss. The village, the stone platform, and a tree near Conga have three moves that will prove essential over the journey: the Beak Buster, Talon Trot, and Egg Fire. These three, and the two moves in World 2, are the most important in the game.

Image: Source Gaming. A first-person view of Mumbo’s Mountain from the entrance. The hills block off the upper part from the lower.

That being said, the execution isn’t consistent. The first area is deathly boring. Termite Tower is useful for teaching players that the worlds will include various sub-areas, but not much else. The steep hills that divide the upper and lower section are interesting and allow some fun movement, though, and I like how interactive the village is. The Beak Buster can destroy the huts, while shooting eggs into the totem’s mouth breaks it (don’t forget the Honeycomb Piece before shooting the last head!). I think it’s best as a testing ground in the way Spiral Mountain was, but for larger level design and expectations. You are dropped into the corner of a large space and expected to just explore, finding what Notes, Jiggies, and moves you can.

Mumbo’s Mountain is most important for introducing its namesake, Mumbo Jumbo. He’s a sardonic and pretty racist witch doctor caricature who transforms Banjo and Kazooie into various animals. In five worlds, he’ll allow Banjo access to one form for an increasingly high number of Mumbo Tokens—another high value collectible with a rising cost. I always liked Mumbo. Everyone in the Banjo series falls on some spectrum of British snark, but he and Bottles are the only ones who manage to rival the at times hateful Kazooie. The transformations felt special and game changing, too, even if that’s not exactly true in practice. That comes through most strongly with this first one: the Termite.

Image: Source Gaming. Mumbo Jumbo turning the Termite back into Banjo and Kazooie. I also forgot to get the Honeycomb from the totem’s mouth and had to come back in.

The Termite can’t do anything cool; its only ability is to climb extra-slippery slopes. Given that Mumbo’s Mountain gives Banjo and Kazooie the Talon Trot, a run that lets them climb slippery slopes, it feels like self-parody. By the game’s own admission, it’s there to explain the concept, and that includes the ability to leave the level while you’re transformed. Basically, every world has a “Witch Switch” that, when activated, reveals a Jiggy in Gruntilda’s Lair. Two of them require these forms, in this case crawling up the entrance to Mumbo’s Mountain as the Termite. One transformation doesn’t have any role outside their world, and as for the other two… well, we’ll get to those when we do.

TREASURE TROVE COVE

For me, the defining element of Treasure Trove Cove is its scale. This is a huge island dominated by a mountain. It has a sunken ship and a series of stone towers and a lighthouse and a hunt for booty and the scariest shark in the history of gaming, and dear lord, it’s where the game teaches you how to fly! Flight in Banjo-Kazooie is wildly permissive, central to the final boss fight, available in seven of the nine worlds, and introducing it this early is a real boon (the other move you learn here, the Shock Spring Jump, is less flashy but no less important, and it helps that they both operate off metal pads). The architecture of the level encourages you to fly, to the point where you can ignore the staircase that takes you to the top of the mountain.

Image: Source Gaming. Treasure Trove Cove from the air, in all its glory. I flew up to get a good profile and was surprised by how tight it looks.

Two puzzles stand out to me. One’s a submerged sandcastle you have to drain and enter, with a (pretty simple) mini-game inside about hitting letters in the right order. The other, a challenge where you have to smash a number of giant X’s with the Beak Buster as you go around the island, makes you wrangle the entire level. These are more complicated than the first world’s collectibles, they also revolve around different kinds of spatial reasoning, and they can only be solved with specific moves. They suggest what will only become clearer throughout the adventure, that Banjo-Kazooie prioritizes puzzle solving.

Where Mumbo’s Mountain organized its areas into a table, Treasure Trove Cove is more like a web. There’s the stone walls that surround the island, the two legs of the mountain, the various alcoves up above, and the palm trees and evil treasure chests that pockmark the beach. Crucially, they’re full of big gaps and open spaces. It’s probably easiest to start by moving rightward and counterclockwise; Bottles’ molehills are roughly that way, their powers are essential for moving around the level, and that “X Marks the Spot” puzzle goes counterclockwise as well. But you can also move “right” in multiple ways: the stone walls above, the outer edge by the water, the inner space with the columns. And, of course, you’re free to ignore that. The level’s not so cumbersome that you have to perfectly move through it.

Image: Source Gaming. Collecting a Jinjo on the mast of the pirate ship. You can see the strange series of pillars to the right of the entrance.

Although Flight is surprisingly simple, the world ticks up the challenge just a bit in a number of other ways. The invincible shark is perhaps the most obvious; he appears in the water to nosh on Banjo whenever he touches the open water, making one Jinjo and a Honeycomb piece absolutely terrifying. Other underwater Jiggies are safer (or at least guarded by a murderous but more sedate sea mine), but they still entail wrangling the stiff swimming controls. There are a lot of enemies and a boss in the strangely animated Nipper the Crab. The stage is also the first time where you’re liable to suffer significant fall damage. Between these parts and a size that necessitates making a few runs around the island, World 2 demands just a bit more.

CLANKER’S CAVERN

While each level is harder than the last, Clanker’s Cavern is the first real escalation in Banjo’s difficulty. Primarily, that’s because it’s a water level (on top of a sewer level—it’s a gigantic garbage pool). Most of the world is underwater, with an oxygen meter that only starts being an issue here. Swimming is… well, it’s swimming in a Nintendo 64 game; it’s slow, and as those Jiggies in Treasure Trove Cove showed, Banjo moves like a submarine. The level’s also darker and more opaque. Plus, the most frequent enemies are these sluglike things that emerge from grills and do double damage.

Image: Source Gaming. A cutscene showing Clanker rising to the top of the water. It’s astonishing just how disgusting the level is.

Mostly, though, it’s due to the fact that the hardest, scariest, most upsetting Jiggy is also the only one you absolutely have to get. The gimmick of Clanker’s Cavern is its namesake: this giant, ugly, tortured shark trash compactor. Some Jiggies are rewards for easing Clanker’s torturous pain, like cleaning out his teeth. But with one exception, a boss battle in a back room, all of them can only be gotten if you free Clanker, who’s been chained underwater to eat Gruntilda’s disgusting refuse. You have to swim deep, far deeper than any area in the game, into a pit with a dour version of the already dour underwater theme. Thankfully, there’s a fish NPC who breathes bubbles you can use for air, along with one Jinjo and a few Notes. Swimming through the keyhole to unlock it is one of the most intense challenges for a first time player, and if you aren’t good with the swimming controls or find it too intimidating to even try, you’re pretty much screwed.

Beyond that, the Cavern is mostly a mix of tighter platforming and movement challenges. There’s one race in Clanker’s insides, but mostly, it’s long underwater pipes to go through with a ticking air meter, or rooms full of blades you have to dodge. The latter are solved with the Wonderwing, an invincibility state that’s only used as an explicit puzzle solution in the room where you get it (it’s mostly useful for combat). You’ve also got thin walkways and alcoves in the walls and steep falls that are, thankfully, made more tolerable by being above safe water. The jump between Worlds 2 and 3 feels more extreme than the jump between any other adjacent worlds, and it gives Clanker’s Cavern a threatening air.

Image: Source Gaming. Inside Clanker’s stomach, there are a few challenges. The most memorable is this race where you have to jump or swim through the correct hoops within a few seconds. It’s one of the first times a time limit comes up in the game.

It’s also just… unattractive. There are a few nice bits to it, like several glowing objects, and it’s interesting having an early industrial level in this soft fantasy setting. But it’s pretty ugly, all rusted metal walls and fleshy schmutz. Looking back, I’m somewhat surprised Rare would stick a sewer level next to a swamp level, since they share many aesthetic staples. Then again, Clanker’s Cavern does have its deep waters, tall platforms, and a verticality willing to go down as well as up. Bubblegloop Swamp’s main gimmick can’t make time for that.

BUBBLEGLOOP SWAMP

I think you can group every three Banjo levels together. For the first three, they’re all about exploring the three platforming planes: land, air, and water. For the next, it’s a bit harder to explain, but let’s start with Bubblegloop Swamp and go from there.

The first thing players notice when jumping into this nighttime bog is the foot-high water. It’s full of piranhas, making it a danger to Banjo’s barefoot lifestyle. This will not be the only version of dangerous ground—the next two worlds feature supercold water and burning sand—but they never feel as omnipresent as the water here. What you can actually walk on, a coterie of small islands and natural bridges, feel dwarfed at every second by the hazard. This is where the world’s move comes in, as the Wading Boots allow you to walk through the water safely. At least, for a few seconds. And technically, the Wonderwing can do the same thing; this just lets you conserve Gold Feathers. The Wading Boots are the first dud power, largely existing so the game can gate access to a few important locations.

Image: Source Gaming. This strange structure is vital for getting around Bubblegloop Swamp, but it’s also thin enough as to be risky crossing.

Fittingly, many of the challenges here incorporate this new hazard. Several dare you to risk falling in, like an obnoxious Jiggy near Mumbo that makes you cross the world’s thinnest bridge in ten seconds. One puzzle about breaking a nesting doll of eggs can only be reached with a barely floating leaf platform. And the stilt village and formation in the center of the world punish poor platforming with an embarrassing fall into the water. This distinguishes the bad water from those later environmental hazards, which are distinctly enclosed by safe ground. It also highlights how BGS uses a spoke-hub system, where a space is built around a main section that breaks off into smaller sub-areas. It’s used throughout Banjo-Kazooie—in Spiral Mountain, Clanker’s Cavern, and almost every subsequent world—but it feels more overt in this one. I chalk that up to the hazard; it makes each island seem larger and, thanks to the rickety wooden bridges that jut out between them, somewhat vulnerable. As an aside, you have almost complete freedom with where you go. One puzzle has you go through the islands in a specific order, but you don’t have to follow it to the letter.

The other thing worth noting is the level’s transformation, the Crocodile. It can go in the swamp safely, and it’s the only one that can attack, to boot. At the same time, the only things that require the Crocodile are pretty limited. A spare Jinjo, some Notes; these could probably be grabbed with a tasteful employment of the Wonderwing. The only place a normal Banjo can’t go is the conspicuous crocodile building that houses Mr. Vile. His mini-game is hard. It’s clever but kind of obnoxious, and unforgiving. Fortunately, the game includes a unique boon: the Running Shoes (or Turbo Trainers, as they’d be called in Banjo-Tooie). You can beat the mini-game without them—that’s how speedrunners do it, since it doesn’t actually cut down the timer—but frankly, it’s not worth the tsuris casually. As they’re not unlocked at the moment, you’d need to wait to come back after Chapter 6, but honestly, that’s fine.

Image: Source Gaming. Crocodile Banjo and Mr. Vile. You have to eat certain worm monsters and not others.

The Running Shoes are what unite these three worlds, and not just because they appear in all of them. It’s that you’re encouraged to wait for them in World 4, require them in World 5, but only unlock them in World 6. It’s that they’re one of two forms of footwear Kazooie can wear, acting as a sort of strange mix of transformation and power-up. It’s that they and the Wading Boots relate to environmental traversal, something that becomes important when you have deadly terrain to avoid. The middle third of Banjo is about different kinds of backtracking, struggling with dangers beyond enemies, and finding levels where the terrain itself is part of the difficulty curve.

FREEZEEZY PEAK

Fan favorite Freezeezy Peak has a lot going for it. It’s got arguably the best theme in the game, it’s a standout for snow levels, the most beautiful biome of the video game kingdom, and it’s just filled with fun little areas. The snow’s slippery enough to be memorable but not enough to be annoying. Mumbo’s back as well, even if the Walrus power is so bland that Rare didn’t even find a reason for you to take it outside the world. One of the things Mario 64 brought to the table was the idea of levels as dioramas, and while Banjo-Kazooie follows that really well, it never gets better at it than here. Every part feels bright and colorful, and it’s a joy to find each one.

Image: Source Gaming. Flying through the star in Freezeezy Peak is the climax to the level’s most complicated puzzle.

The use of space and elevation probably bolsters this world the most. It’s the most vertical one since Treasure Trove Cove and gives you a reason to stretch Kazooie’s wings. It’s also varied with things like Wozza’s Cave, the snowman’s broom and climbable scarf, and the big present pile. These create a spoke-hub layout like the one Bubblegloop Swamp had, but because every part of the snowman is also its own space, the spokes go up just as they go outward. In some ways, Freezeezy Peak feels like the best kind of 3D platform level, where movement always feels encouraged and rewarded.

World 6 is the breaking point of a theme that’s been bubbling up since Treasure Trove Cove, which is that while Banjo is a platformer and interested in platforming, its heart truly lies with multi-step puzzles and adventure game logic. One Jiggy makes you protect a number of Christmas lights, turn on a tree, and run through its star. Another involves coaxing a neurotic walrus out of hiding with your own walrus form. There are presents to collect for three tykes, each one tucked far away. It’s something that’s even baked into the moves. While Mario has long jumps and somersaults and a suite of very specific kinds of movement, Banjo has, essentially, single answers. Need to get to the top of a snowman’s head? Find a Flight Pad! A Twinklie Muncher is noshing on some allies? Hit ‘em with the Rat-a-Tat Rap! This isn’t a better or worse way to make a platformer, but it lends itself more to complex problems and less to balletic movement. This is exemplified by the Beak Bomb, the aerial dive bomb learned here. It’s the only way to attack in midair and an ungainly way to hit targets: enemies’ hats, giant buttons, or the gap inside a hollow star ornament.

Image: Source Gaming. The Boggy race, after you’ve gotten the Running Shoes.

The other thing Freezeezy Peak is known for is the Boggy race, i.e. that thing with the Running Shoes. There’s this polar bear at the start of the level, and if you help him (by slamming into him on a toboggan—another puzzle!), he’ll set up a race with Walrus Banjo. Beat him, and he’ll set up another race with Banjo and Kazooie. It’s impossible to win on your own, though. He can only be outran with the Running Shoes, but they’re unlocked in the next level. While this concept showed up earlier in Bubblegloop Swamp, this is the only time where you cannot do everything in a world on your first go. Depending on your perspective, it’s either a fun wrinkle that distinguishes a wonderful level or a problem that gives future levels an air of suspicion. Then again, with only one more move to go, perhaps it’s not something players will worry about.

GOBI’S VALLEY

After two levels teasing it, the Running Shoes are unlocked here (and for anyone cheeky enough to say “so why don’t you do this level first?,” this has a puzzle that requires Freezeezy Peak’s Beak Bomb). It’s Bottles’ final move, and there’s something deflating about it. There are those two earlier uses, and it is fun to move super fast, but the Running Shoes only show up once after this. And even within this world, there aren’t that many uses, which is a bit weird when worlds like Bubblegloop Swamp, Treasure Trove Cove, and Freezeezy Peak built a lot of their design around their moves. In a game flush with fun abilities, we end on the ultimate example of a tool that exists to solve a puzzle.

Image: Source Gaming. A decent view of Gobi’s Valley. It’s rather pretty with all the yellows, browns, and splotches of green and blue.

Divorced from that, Gobi’s Valley is good. It continues the theme of segmenting the level nicely, cordoning the starting oasis, Sphinx, and various pyramids off into specific sections. That idea of having contained, multilayered challenges is here, too; each pyramid either has or is part of a larger puzzle. It’s relatively easy to get into the groove of finding and opening a tomb before solving the next puzzle inside. Hit a target in the air, get in the pyramid before time runs out, feed a snake, and ride it to a Jiggy. The biggest innovation is probably in the ability to change the world itself, as one Jiggy causes water to fill up a dangerous pit and make another two Jiggies easier to get. That part is memorable, and there aren’t a ton of moments like it elsewhere.

Every Banjo level finds at least a couple ways to get harder: more enemies, harsher falls, water. Gobi’s Valley doesn’t have one obvious reason. Instead, it’s a buffet of increases. It’s the first world with an otherwise invincible enemy that can only be defeated with the Wonderwing. It’s got a lot of timed challenges, including one involving a maze and a nasty spiked ceiling (“slower than haunted house spiked walls, but not quite as slow as evil scientist spiked walls”), and platforming bits that hurt pretty bad if you fall. It’s got a lot of burning sand that’s hot to the touch, and unlike Freezeezy Peak, there is one large section with little safety—though it’s easily skipped. And there’s less slack thanks to there being fewer Flight Pads, shorter time limits, and less easy access to health. Most of these showed up earlier; Bubblegloop Swamp and Freezeezy Peak both have several timed challenges. It’s just more pointed.

Image: Source Gaming. Poor Gobi. He’s one of Banjo and Kazooie’s most hapless targets.

Gobi himself is an NPC tied to a couple quests. You free him to get a Jiggy, then you hit him to water a tree for another Jiggy, then, if you find him in a mysterious alcove, you hit him again to get a Honeycomb Piece. NPCs in Banjo-Kazooie are not uncommon, but they’re pretty simple. Gobi, Boggy, and Clanker are about the only ones who are tied to multiple puzzles. What makes this one unique—at least, beyond the fact that you repeatedly assault him to earn prizes—is actually not found in Gobi’s Valley at all. See, if you do all this, in that order, Gobi’ll flee, only to show up in the final world. It’s very much an extension of a philosophy of these three levels, that while spaces and entire worlds can be self-contained, they don’t have to be. This would be explored much more dramatically in Banjo-Tooie, for better and for worse.

MAD MONSTER MANSION

Whether they’re more deliberately scary or horror-adjacent, the “spooky level” is one of those great gimmicks of video games. There’s something so delightfully theatrical about them. And Mad Monster Mansion stands tall as perhaps the most Halloweeny of all. There’s a haunted mansion, haunted hedge maze, haunted church, haunted Ouija-ass game board, haunted well; even the flower pots are possessed. The enemy roster includes skeletons, tombstones, ghosts, and one giant specter you have to sneak up on. It was inevitable that this kind of fairy tale would have such a world. Probably also pretty likely that it would be a standout, but that doesn’t make Mad Monster Mansion any less fun.

Image: Source Gaming. This view from the top of the church gives you an idea about how big Mad Monster Mansion is. However, each section is pretty self-contained and easy to traverse.

One of the appeals of most 3D platformers is the idea that every spot on the map will have some secret or mini-game—it’s that diorama idea again, or a seasonal haunted house—and that’s very true here. The mansion alone has a wine cellar, seemingly a dozen rooms behind fun, breakable windows, and a chimney that puts you into the front room. While this is true of pretty much every level, it feels most concentrated here. This is partially due to all those bonus rooms, which put a button on this trope, but also the nature of the geometry. The hedge maze doesn’t look like the church grounds, which don’t look like the well. And thanks to Banjo’s phenomenal sound design, the footsteps and other sound effects pop really well here. There’s also not really an obvious route to pick. The front door’s the most, but as you can only get the foyer’s Jiggy via the chimney, it’s a dead end. The maze, church, and pipes that get you to the second floor awning all call out with relatively equal attention, even if I seem to always go with the former.

It is also, befitting both the spooky theme and the late game placement, another reasonable uptick of difficulty. These last three worlds really push the danger and complexity, and you can see that here. There are more enemies that only die to Wonderwing, enough so that you’re likely to run very low on Gold Feathers by the time you’re done (though oddly, neither of the worlds after this have these half-invincible enemies). Other monsters do double damage or have more health than any foe thus far. Despite being an outdoor space with less verticality than the previous two levels, the church interior goes so high up that slipping off the rafters is one of the most precarious falls in the entire game. There’s also the thorny side of the hedge maze, the two separate kinds of poisonous water… more of this world feels like it’s out to get you than any previous one. Nothing here is scary and nothing needs to be, but Mad Monster Mansion does get the value of even performative scares.

Image: Source Gaming. Pumpkin Banjo: the most important transformation of all. Somehow.

The biggest oddity is the Pumpkin, the fourth “animal” transformation. On its own, it sucks. It can’t attack and has only two bland abilities: it can touch hazardous terrain and is small enough to enter a leaky bucket, toilet, and storm drain. And yet not only is it tied to more Jiggies than most transformations, it’s the only one that is absolutely, 100% vital to beating the game. Near the entrance to Mad Monster Mansion is a gate. If Banjo and Kazooie break it, they discover a strange house but can’t enter it. The Pumpkin, however, can go through a hole in the door and activate a mysterious switch. This raises the water level in three rooms that had, thus far, existed solely to get you to the Mad Monster Mansion puzzle. But they’re actually part of the critical path through Gruntilda’s Lair. Raising the water gets access to the next world and another water level switch that lets you reach the final parts of the hub. This whole sequence is deeply strange, as it turns the least interesting form and a largely superfluous Easter egg—the ability to leave the world while transformed—into requirements.

RUSTY BUCKET BAY

Neither Bottles nor Mumbo show up in Rusty Bucket Bay; it’s the only world with that distinction. And that fits, right? The penultimate level—a giant barge and its polluted harbor—just exudes an atmosphere of proud, full-throated hostility. There’s only one NPC, a cute dolphin crushed by an anchor. One corner is full of glowing toxic sludge; another is patrolled by Snacker, that terrifying shark from Treasure Trove Cove. The oily water is so dangerous that you lose air when you’re swimming normally, and the air goes twice as fast underwater. There are multiple complex timed challenges. Half of the onboard vents are alive and violent. A challenging boss hides in the ship’s hold. Of course none of your friends would be here!

Image: Source Gaming. Another top down shot that tries to give you just an idea of the level’s scale. It’s hard, though, both visually and more conceptually. Notice the Witch Switch near the center.

If the first three worlds were united by an examination of movement, and the second by environmental challenges, these last three are about greater, outsized threat. In Mad Monster Mansion, that’s easy; it’s a haunted level, with big monsters. World 9 finds its own way through a ridiculous size and a complexity to match. But it’s here where that danger feels most unrelenting, and I think that’s partially because it infects all of the tropes that Banjo-Kazooie has used. Like Freezeezy Peak and Clanker’s Cavern, there’s a big central object, but the ship is dangerous. Like Gobi’s Valley and Mad Monster Mansion, the world is cut up into chunks, but each of those chunks has some awful gimmick attached to them. Like Bubblegloop Swamp, dangerous water is everywhere, but you’ve got to swim in it. And Jinjos are scattered about like in every level, but almost all of them are smack dab near some hazard. This world features all the architectural tools we’ve seen for seven worlds; they’re just engineered to hurt you.

Generally speaking, the contents of each world are largely standalone. One Jiggy might be required to get another, or one puzzle would have multiple steps, but you could largely run through an area however you wanted and get everything. But here, that’s harder. Because the water is an active threat (and ladders to climb out of it are limited), you’re somewhat restricted in what paths to take. If you start in the harbor, the safest direction, you’ll need to pay increasingly high tolls in Eggs to open up thin, precarious walkways. Opening a path to Boss Boom Box is similar; you start on the ship, climb over a thin walkway, and drop an explosive package on the ship. It makes the whole area feel like more of a problem to solve, which only contributes to this difficulty and pain.

Image: Source Gaming. The first—and easiest by far—chunk of the Engine Room.

With all that said, no part of Rusty Bucket Bay is as notorious as the Engine Room. Deep in the bowels of the Rusty Bucket is a giant clockwork platforming section, closer to Mario’s Tick Tock Clock than anything in Banjo thus far. There are moving walkways and giant spinning piston-like things, as well as a number of fans that require very, very specific timing that the game isn’t really built around. On top of that, you need to have turned off a switch from somewhere else on the ship to make the fans slow at all. Worst of all, though, is the bottom—or, rather, the lack thereof. Surprisingly for a 3D platformer of this era, only about four areas in Banjo have bottomless pits, so one showing up here shoots up the difficulty curve. The Engine Room makes you work without a net, in a precision platforming segment harder than almost everything else in the game. It’s not required, but as it’s tied to two Jiggies, you may have to brave it.

CLICK CLOCK WOOD

While Rusty Bucket Bay is the harder level in terms of active attempts to kill the player, nothing comes close to Click Clock Wood in size, scale, and complexity. Few of Banjo’s contemporaries can match this final world for wild ambition. The gimmick is as simple as it is fun: like other worlds, you’re circling a level, but instead of only doing that physically, you’re also doing it temporally. Click Clock Wood orbits this absolutely mammoth tree, and you visit it across all four seasons. It starts on a rainy spring morning. There are small leaf buds, an eagle egg, and a giant wasp nest. Midday summer brings grown leaves, bee swarms, a dried lake, the beginnings of a treehouse. An autumn sunset colors a large plant, a fully made treehouse, and a bevy of fallen acorns. Finally, there’s nighttime in winter, featuring a destroyed nest, a mighty eagle, frozen water, and enemies borrowed from Freezeezy Peak. Each one has a button to open up the next season, making it at once the most linear and the most (pun not intended) branching world.

Image: Source Gaming. The fall in Click Clock Wood is pretty. The fall, as in the action you can accidentally take off the tiny bridges and alcoves, is not.

Moreover, almost all of the Jiggies are tied to this progression in some way. Many quests require you to do something in one season so that it’ll change the future in the next. A boulder has blocked off Gnawty the beaver’s home in spring, you break it in summer once the water in the lake has dried, but since the hole to his home is too slippery, you swim up it once the water level’s back up in the fall (and again in winter for a secret prize). You hatch the baby eagle in spring, feed it caterpillars in summer and fall, then get its Jiggy in winter. Others are merely parts of stories told across the seasons, like how Nabnut the squirrel eats his stockpile of acorns in spring, freaks out about having nothing left in summer, and asks you to get him more in autumn. My favorite one of these might be the treehouse, whose Jiggy can be gotten in summer… if you’re willing to make a daredevil leap. I never am.

Of course, that’s only half the story, because the basic architecture of Click Clock Wood is ridiculously huge for an N64 title. Just one version of the tree might still be the physically largest Banjo world in pure space, as it’s an extremely vertical climb with multiple little sites, like the eagle nest or a super high outcropping that requires Mumbo’s final transformation. And the level changes a bit in each season as the leaves grow, fall, and get covered with snow in a way that alters traversal. Each one is difficult in slightly different ways. However, it’s also undeniable that the premise of the world forces you to do four variations on the same complex, precarious climb. It’s hard, you’ll probably fall a lot, and you’ll definitely follow the same path every time—there’s only one way up the tree, not counting one limited and risky shortcut.

Image: Source Gaming. Flying around as the bee in Click Clock Wood. You can only use it during spring, so the most efficient way to play is to come back spring right at the end to do its puzzles and leave the stage while transformed.

I can’t help but think of the Bee, the world’s final transformation. Mumbo Jumbo’s proud of it, and he deserves to be; it can fly freely, and without feathers. Its actual utility is limited; it only works in spring, it’s largely there for one Jinjo and Jiggy (and to get the final Jiggy in the hub), and it can’t start any of the multi-step quests. But it can move in a way that no one else can. The Bee is incredibly ambitious, and so is Click Clock Wood, a world so complicated that even unlocking it is a riddle. Its puzzle was back in that strange alcove by Treasure Trove Cove, one a casual player can find before even seeing the second world.

GRUNTY’S FURNACE FUN

After nine worlds, nine special moves, and at least 720 Notes, you’re ready to take the fight to Gruntilda. In theory. Instead, you enter a gigantic, impromptu game show and one of the more famously unconventional video game climaxes. Grunty’s Furnace Fun is a board game over a lake of fire, and every time Banjo walks on a space, he gets to answer a quiz from Grunty about the events of Banjo-Kazooie, the ten hour game he just completed. This includes names, graphics, musical themes, character barks, and retrying mini-games. Each square pertains to a specific type of question, so the giant eye covers screenshots while the Note covers sounds. Get it right and you can move onto the next square; get it wrong and you lose health and have to try again. Some squares are unique; the white Joker gives you two cards to instantly win a square, and the red skull kills you instantly.

Image: Source Gaming. Grunty’s Furnace Fun, offering rapid fire questions, rhyming, and a lava level at record low prices.

Naturally, there are problems. It’s a nightmare for accessibility, since a player with, say, auditory impairment can’t reliably answer the audio questions. You also can’t skip categories, which is a big part of actual game shows. It’s perhaps a missed opportunity that it doesn’t react to your past behavior, though that idea was fumbled in Banjo’s 2017 spiritual successor Yooka-Laylee. I’d say that the biggest weakness of Furnace Fun comes in the Grunty squares—questions about Gruntilda herself. Her good witch sister can be found throughout the hub, revealing biographical details that may appear as questions and are actually randomized across playthroughs. I don’t like them. They’re not fun to read since they’re mostly just body shaming jokes (woah, dogg, you’re saying Grunty has a big butt!?), but they also don’t relate to Banjo-Kazooie. What makes Furnace Fun enjoyable is that it’s a novel way of proving your mastery over a game. These questions are meant to make you scour Gruntilda’s Lair, which you already do, but they mostly kill the pace. I ignore the clues and brute force the questions for time, and that never feels fun.

With all that said, it’s a good final level and a great example of Banjo’s willingness to throw out standard game logic. It’s not that hard (especially since some questions have blatantly wrong false options), but it probably also shouldn’t be hard given it’s adding entirely new mechanics out at the eleventh hour. With the campy game show energy and the great theme, it’s best if it exists as a quick button before we complete the game, rescue Tooty, watch the credits, and…

…Wait a sec. We didn’t beat the bad guy!? Well, up we go…

TOP OF THE TOWER

Banjo-Kazooie features several bosses, though few leave an impression. Conga is largely a turret, Nipper is designed in a way that makes him somewhat uncinematic, and the rest are mostly cadres of otherwise normal enemies. The game and its engine just weren’t made for the trope, something that would become more obvious after Banjo-Tooie added a boss fight to every world. And perhaps that’s why Gruntilda is a terrible final battle. She’s hard, her patterns are slow, some of her moves are needlessly powerful, and the whole climax feels kinda arbitrary. It is a culmination of the tension in Banjo—the precision platformer, the puzzler, the adventure game, the “pick and choose” structure—in a way that kinda falls apart.

Image: Source Gaming. Part of the final battle. I was too scared to go through Clanker’s Cavern as a kid, so it took years before I actually saw this dumb fight.

Though maybe there’s another reason it’s so hard. Technically, this entire thing is the postgame; you get the credits after finishing the board game and only go back to do the witch in. And to do that, you need a lot of stuff. Accessing the final boss requires 94 of 100 Jiggies, so close to 100% completion that not going for it feels silly. And although I don’t think there’s a problem with making a post-credits challenge this involved, that doesn’t work when that quota is guarding the actual end of the plot. Tootie is a nonentity and her rescue doesn’t feel special, while Gruntilda has been annoying you for the entire ten hour adventure. She has far more dialogue than any other character and comments regularly over your victories and setbacks. Plus, her exit from the quiz is to run up a nondescript flight of stairs, making Banjo and Kazooie feel kinda hapless. As it is, there’s no ending without that final battle, and forcing players to do that much to have closure will either not register (i.e. the player was already collecting everything) or be an obnoxious barrier (i.e. they were playing casually).

ODDS ‘N’ ENDS, BITS ‘N’ BOBS, STOP ‘N’ SWOP

The world of Banjo-Kazooie is absolutely filled with silly, ephemeral nonsense. The church in Mad Monster Mansion has a stained glass window depicting Banjo and Kazooie, and you can jump in it to find a room filled with pickups. References to Rare’s history are littered everywhere. 1998’s top of the line graphics do a lot to make each area feel specific, colorful, and full of life. And alongside a massive cadre of unlisted cheat codes, all of which use the sandcastle of Treasure Trove Cove, the game features formal ones. Hidden in three locations across Gruntilda’s Lair is Cheato, a spellbook who gives codes that double the maximum amount of one Feather or Egg type. One requires the Crocodile, one the Pumpkin, and one a timed racing challenge. All of these make the game feel grand and mysterious.

While Banjo-Kazooie is better about letting you soak in a level than Mario 64, which booted players out of a level after every Star, there’s one issue. Due to the limitations of Nintendo 64 hardware, you can’t permanently take Notes. Instead, the game has a “Note Score” based on how many you got in one trip through a level. Want to leave Freezeezy Peak and unlock the Running Shoes, but you only got seventy-three Notes? Well, either stick it out and find the rest, get all 100 after coming back, or live with your reasonable score. This isn’t a huge deal, as the stages are small and individual Notes skippable, but it does strongly encourage staying until you’ve found everything instead of allowing a more chill pace. Banjo-Tooie would simplify this process by having fewer individual Note objects, and Kazooie’s XBLA remaster would make Notes and Jinjos permanent. Plus, the levels are small, so going back is probably “only” mildly annoying.

Image: Source Gaming. When these items came back in Banjo-Tooie, it was in more corralled, self-referential ways.

But what of the things that couldn’t be collected? This is teased in the 100% completion ending; Mumbo Jumbo reveals that there are at least three objects scattered about the world, giant colored eggs and a tremendous Ice Key that would allegedly become useful in Banjo-Tooie. This… did not happen. The Stop ‘n’ Swop plan, to trade seven items between games by exploiting a sketchy N64 memory quirk, wasn’t implemented, leaving these scattered to the winds. There are cheats to unlock them (which are permanent across all files in a Nintendo 64 cartridge and mess with your save on Xbox), ones that took years to be uncovered. But to me, the real value is in their existence, these inexplicable things haunting Banjo-Kazooie.

THEMES

Banjo-Kazooie’s levels are very open-ended. Almost every Jiggy can be collected in whatever order you choose, as few of them are required or part of a chain. The exceptions—breaking the lock in Clanker’s Cavern, the way Click Clock Wood sends you from one season to the next, the general safe routes in Rusty Bucket Bay—are rare. Instead, Banjo structures itself in a different way, through moves you need to collect and collectibles you can’t miss. The most linear area by far is the hub, which has tons of side rooms but inexorably moves up towards the final boss. That’s good for propulsion, especially since it can still take longer to finish than any individual world. In some ways, it’s really the main level of the game, with the most rooms, music, and overall focus. I’d compare it to a grapevine; you slowly go up, plucking one self-contained world at a time.

Image: Source Gaming. It was nigh impossible to even get a good overlook of Freezeezy Peak due to the snowman, who just towers over the stage in a way few platformer formations do.

This openness comes from the level design as well. Every level is built as a sandbox, with a major central area that fans out through dedicated sub-rooms, pipes, or natural geometry. Almost always, you start just a bit off from the heart; Clanker’s Cavern has a strangely large initial room that hides Clanker from first timers, while Bubblegloop Swamp and Freezeezy Peak have pathways that act like arteries to their personal centers. But how you move from hub to spoke is up to you, and the “optimal” way is something you find through replays. Fittingly for a game that was built around an interest in music, it often makes moving around feel more melodic and personal.

“THE END”

I have several takeaways. First, for all of Banjo’s fantastical aesthetics, its actual level design is very functionalist. Almost every level uses classic architectural tropes: central areas, clearly segmented sub-areas and sections, large structures that aid orientation, and distinct graphics to draw the eye. Even the hub, which has smaller rooms and a directed path, incorporates these. Granted, in 1998 these had not become video game standards (though they were for real world architecture), but it’s still respectable how timeless it feels. Techniques like these allow Banjo-Kazooie both actual openness and an illusion of openness, which is important.

Image: Source Gaming. This Croctus is part of a puzzle; you feed one an egg and another pops up, until the last gives you the Jiggy. This incentivizes going around the world in a specific way, but you don’t have to follow it that directly.

Second, this game is a great example of how collectibles are intrinsically part of level design. The Notes, Eggs, and Feathers act like guides and paths, while the Jiggies get dedicated puzzles. Jinjos and Mumbo Tokens are rewards for clever observation, and rare one-off items can be tied to specific quests. But you don’t have to actively focus on this. You just explore, try to get everything, and you want to because their use is very clear. This is ammo for a puzzle. This will let you turn into a walrus. This will unlock the next world. Every item feels worthwhile, and that justifies building levels around them. Almost every part of every world is blatantly made for the collectibles inside it: the pipe of Notes in Clanker’s Cavern, the precarious leaf in Click Clock Wood that holds a Mumbo Token, a jutting stone wall with a Jinjo at the end in Treasure Trove Cove, the pyramids of Gobi’s Valley that are all built around specific Jiggies.

And third, consider what you expect from a player. While I complained about its sudden tightening of the noose right before the final boss, Banjo is generally fair with its demands. Its slow uptick of requirements is not so extreme as to be inaccessible. The challenge of each world isn’t equal, but neither is the challenge of its individual collectibles. Even in a harder level like Mad Monster Mansion, there are easier Jiggies. You can find ones that are more focused on platforming or puzzle solving or mini-games and prioritize what you’d prefer. It’s fitting that the end game feels more annoying right as it also clamps down on that openness.

Image: Source Gaming. This is the last appearance of the Running Shoes, in Mad Monster Mansion and only one level after the world where you get them. They’re a good example of how some abilities only exist as situational puzzle solving tools.

All of these ideas would recur in Rare’s later work, but more importantly, they have become standards in 3D action games as a whole. Linear sections having an illusion of openness, stuffed sandboxes, multi-pronged progression; these are expected from almost every conventional single player experience. This isn’t because of Banjo-Kazooie, mind—its importance in gaming history is minuscule, and its contemporaries were exploring these ideas independently. Instead, Banjo shows us these tropes as both experimental and refined, and in an era where 3D gaming was still a wild west. It’s a classic for both innovation and polish, and why I can go back to it time and again.

Thanks to Cart Boy for edits.