Your favorite of the four Rareware platformers for N64

[BetaWolf47]

With the recent hype for Yooka-Laylee, I've decided to revisit the games on which it is based. What do you think they did right, and what do you think they could learn from? In order of release...

Banjo-Kazooie: This is, hands down, my favorite of the bunch. Everything feels completely spot on, from the controls, progression, pacing (nothing really outstays its welcome), sound design, level variety, etc. Every single bit of praise this game gets is well deserved. Even though I only rented it, it left a bigger lasting impression than any of the others.

Donkey Kong 64: Another solid entry, with much of the same strengths as Banjo. Played the hell out of it when I was young, but never beat it (why did they make beating the arcade Donkey Kong mandatory?) and still like it well enough. Unlike a lot of other people, I don't even mind that there are far too many items to collect. It's the fact that a lot of missions aren't very creative to begin with. The vast majority of Gold Bananas are just hitting a switch to open a gate that it's hidden behind, or hitting a switch to unlock a barrel that takes you to the same minigame as last world.

Banjo-Tooie: My second favorite. Not much to say that hadn't been said about the first game. Could have been on par or better than Banjo-Kazooie, if they hadn't changed certain aspects. Levels are larger, but not as thought out as the prequel. The FPS segments probably weren't necessary. While still a great game, less is more in this case.

Conker's Bad Fur Day: Honestly, I do not like this game. It changes genres at various points for the sole purpose of parodying pop culture. The genre implementations are inferior to Rareware's own outings... the shooting sections are worse than Jet Force Gemini and platforming isn't even close to Banjo-Kazooie, for instance. There are very, very few skills to learn, and the overall progression is painfully linear. The comedic adult presentation is pretty well done, however.

[Tanooki]

The only excellent one was their last, Conker's Bad Fur Day ...but a second player is Banjo Kazooie.

Crude jokes aside (which are funny mostly) Conker was the best laid out game from them. The controls and camera are well refined, stage designs are top notch too, story is actively keeping you going as you move along. Most of all it lacks the heavily overkill collect-a-thon crap of previous games (DK64 being on the horrific end of that re-running the same junk 1x5 for each Kong with a bloated overworld causing in all the game to roll in well over 100 hours when it should be like 20-30.) Thanks to the removal of overkill collecting the game has excellent pacing that keeps you rolling and not doing some horrific stop and go re-run of the same spots getting lots of stuff to breech a door to do it all over again with story bits thrown between the slog.

I do hope their new game (let's face it, it's the real Rare at it) that'll pop up being funded now on kickstarter takes the lessons they conkered late in the N64 era and keeps the game flowing nicely. It appeared they did with the likes of Starfox Adventure (man I wish someone would still leak Dinosaur Planet as I loved playing it at E3) and Kameo.

[celerystalker]

I liked Conker best. Honestly, I'm not in love with any of them like I am with Super Mario 64, but Conker tried to do more than the others. Its comedy isn't all timeless, but there's some good stuff there, and it had more interesting levels as less of a collect-a-thon.

[Nebagram]

From a pure writing standpoint, Conker is an absolute masterpiece, and a technical masterpiece for a 64-bit cartridge-based system. But... My vote went to Banjo, overall it's just such a tight game. In order, I'd go BK, CFD, BT, DK64, but all 4 of them are brilliant.

[BetaWolf47]

Wow, I completely underestimated the popularity of Conker's Bad Fur Day. It really is technologically impressive for N64. Rareware always knew how to get the most out of the system.

[Tanooki]

No doubt for all the detail the game had, then they go and create a moving fur texture and independent eyes and teeth+inside of mouth for Conker as well was really showing some attention to detail. They never had something so animated in 3D on the system before that point as it usually was piss poorly done non or moving images on a polygon over a face at best.

[retroman]

Out of all the games listed. I had the most fun playing Banjo-Kazooie back in the day. May need to go back and try them all out again and see if my opinion changes.

[pseudonym]

Conker for me, although the first Banjo game would be a close second. I was never a fan of Rare's tendency to shoehorn collectibles into their games around that time.

[sfchakan]

I would trade all 4 games for just Jet Force Gemini, my favorite Rare game for the N64. I'm actually not fond of any of the 4 options given here and realize that it's just, like, my opinion, man.

[Gamevet]

I'm not a big fan of Conkers. I had two boxed complete copies of the game and sold them on the cheap, before the prices sky-rocketed.

The only other game on that list that I've played is the first Banjo-Kazooie. It's a pretty decent game, but not something that I'd consider a must play.

I'm with sfchaken. I enjoyed playing Jet Force Gemini more than the other RARE titles.

[Tanooki]

I agree that Jet Force Gemini would be near the top of my list too over most of those on the list. The only time that game bugged me really was when I found that the ending was the half way point, I couldn't go further, games like that who pull that stuff just demotivates me completely. Kid Icarus on 3DS is one of the few I've finished if any that did it, and only because I came back to it a year later and just hammered it out quick.

[BetaWolf47]

I never really played Jet Force Gemini until way later. Now there's a game that could've benefited from having dual analog. I got pretty far, but I got stuck at a certain boss with Lupus because I can't get my reticule where it needs to be.

Goldeneye would be my favorite Rareware title outside of these four. It has the distinction of being my very first FPS, and a good one at that.

[WCP]

With that Kickstarter recently, a lot of podcasts have been bringing up the topic of Banjo Kazooie, and some of these people have been talking major, major smack about the original Banjo Kazooie.


I'm not sure if Banjo holds up today, but back when it released, I was totally enthralled by the game. I was basically playing that game for months and months after it released. I never did try any of their other N64 games (other than Blast Corps), mainly because I ended up getting a 3dfx computer and played PC for most of late 97, 98 and 99.

[Tanooki]

I think talking smack about it, depending what it is was 100% fair. The game was made longer than necessary with a very boring stop and go wash rinse repeat design of the game where you had to collect and ever increasing amount of items in each area blocked by a door with a growing number. It quite well broke the smooth flow of the game having to continually run around the same areas over and over again to get wider and higher to reach yet another single or cluster of items to pop open the door. Finally you breech the door, sometimes you'd get another little cut scene with them, the witchdoctor or someone else if not a boss fight. It got really tedious and increasing annoying as they grew the pot needed to get through yet another door. Had the game just let you go from A-B in a giant area, opt into fanning out fairly more to a special set of items that would have a cool perk to it, so the flow and story kept on chugging along the game would be an awesome game. I never finished it, my brother was into collect-a-thon garbage and I wasn't. That's why I voted primarily for Conker, you could keep playing and enjoy it. If that's what it's being dinged for it's entirely fair because it was a cheap way people in the 90s went with to make a game take a lot longer than necessary. Perhaps it was the size limits of the N64 carts causing this to a point, I'd understand that entirely, but it did grate on a lot of people. Had it not been for Rare carrying the N64 for half it's life with Nintendo on the other half, they would not get the praise they did had there been a full library of games.

[BetaWolf47]

I beat Banjo-Kazooie for the first time just about three years ago. I still think it holds up amazingly well, and the collect-a-thon elements are handled really well. It's DK64 that overdid that to a fault. Plus, there's more to it than the collect-a-thon elements, like the immensely charming atmosphere the game has, and some of the best level design of that era.

The thing with Conker and a lot of other linear 3D adventure games is that I don't feel like I'm really playing them, so much as just going to point A to point B as I'm being told; it's the same thing that modern games are faulted for. It would be completely meaningless to me if it weren't for the humor of the game.

[celerystalker]

I don't have any issue with going from point A to point B as long as there's a reasonable challenge in between. Most 2D platformers were always that way, and while there is certainly room for exploration in platformers, I also like some to be more linear/challenge focused instead of wide open/collecting focused. The very best manage a bit of both in a really tight package.

[Kwyjibo]

I just started playing Banjo-Kazooie after playing through Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, and I think that was a bad idea. TPL feels like they took the BK formula and improved upon it greatly(or rather, streamlined it). Things like not having a long jump or a ledge grab make BK feel slow and awkward. I can see why it was so popular back in then, they did a lot of really cool things. I'm pretty excited for Yooka-Laylee at this point, good 3D platformers are hard to come by these days.

[jammajup]

Conker for me and I am not too ken on the others.