Do you think it’s possible to make a Banjo-Kazooie Part Three? Unfortunately, there are a few experts on the matter who believe the answer is no.
Those experts are the people who made Banjo-Kazooie themselves. As reported by Video Game Chronicle, Rare veterans Chris Sutherland, Steve Mayles, and Grant Kirkhope shared in an interview their unanimous opinion that it just isn’t possible anymore, or at least, the way things stand today.
Let’s start with Christ Sutherland, who was lead programmer in the company:
“For a long time, there was doubt whether there was any audience for that type of game. Of course, there’s some audience, but is there enough to justify the kind of scale of game you would need now [for a first-party title]?”
Obviously, Nintendo does well with their platformers, but that’s Nintendo, and they’re often the exception to the rule. That’s the big question. The characters themselves, like we’ve seen with Smash Bros., people have a love for them. But do they love that game?
And if you made a different kind of game, would you be back to a Nuts ‘n’ Bolts thing, where it wasn’t what they were expecting? I’m still hopeful that something will appear, and we’ll all be proved wrong.”
If you examine the current batch of newer 3D platformers, unfortunately, Chris’ comments prove true. Games like New Super Lucky’s Tale, A Hat In Time, Yooka-Laylee, and the upcoming Penny’s Big Breakaway are all smaller games, with the first three being true independent games in terms of production.
The other big platformers are remakes of old games, like Crash Bandicoot, or reliant on very old, established IP, like Psychonauts 2 or Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. All these games have a hard limit to their appeal, with only Mario games like Bowser’s Fury having the potential to exceed those expectations.
Grant Kirkhope chimed in with his comments:
“I feel like you’d have to get a team with the humour that we had back then, and that’s hard to replicate. I think Rare would be open to somebody if they found the right team, but I don’t feel like that team exists. Also, I’m not convinced the audience is there either… I don’t feel like there are that many Banjo fans out there.
The whole Smash Bros. thing was spectacular… it really was. I think all the team that worked on that game had a tear in their eye when Banjo turned up in Smash Bros… it was just an unbelievable release of emotion. Seeing all those [fans] crying on videos was heart-warming, and we all felt it. That was a once-in-a-lifetime event when that happened.
But I still feel like, is there that multimillion-dollar thing within Banjo-Kazooie? I’m not convinced there is.”
Grant points out something that makes Banjo-Kazooie unique among other platformers. It had a unique quirky sense of humor, that is so particular that it isn’t clear that other studios would be able to duplicate it. We have seen in the recent failed Saints Row reboot, that that sort of gamefeel is not something you can just recreate in an assembly line.
Finally, Steve Mayles revealed what he believes is the only way forward for the game, if it can even happen:
“I’ve said before, that would be the way to do it… because obviously, it takes so much money to create a brand new, top-end game that the sensible thing to do would be some kind of remaster to test the water and see if the audience is there. But importantly, I think it would have to come out on a Nintendo platform as well.”
Mayles’ idea isn’t unreasonable, as that is what other companies when it came to reexploring their legacy IP. For what it’s worth, Rare Replay’s sales, while respectable, would also respectably put that idea on the backburner completely.
Microsoft’s own attempt to do something new with the franchise, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, to be brief, did not live up to the sales of previous games, and has itself proven divisive, though some fans and critics have put it up for reappraisal though the years.
But it wouldn’t be the worst thing if Microsoft just ensured that Banjo-Kazooie and Rare’s other classics stayed available on future platforms. At least new generations of gamers can re-experience what those old games were like.
