Fans of classic Rareware games will likely see this coming from a mile away, but former Rare coder Chris Sutherland stated in a new interview that Banjo-Tooie took some direct influence from GoldenEye 007 during the development process. If you’ll remember from the game, at different points throughout levels, Banjo will hold Kazooie like a rifle and use her to shoot eggs from a first-person perspective. It’s a little ridiculous, but a fun diversion from the platforming action.
Speaking with Retro Gamer magazine, Sutherland said, “There were four or five of us on the Banjo team that would play GoldenEye, probably every lunchtime for a couple years, so that was a strong influences on Banjo-Tooie.” He explains that the game’s director, Gregg Mayles, was keen on the idea of the duo splitting up at various points, so the logical extension of that idea was for Banjo to use Kazooie as a bazooie… I mean, bazooka. This extended into the multiplayer mode, which was basically kid-friendly deathmatch.
Image source: Banjo-Kazooie Wiki
“Once we split the characters apart, suddenly your move set was reduced,” Sutherland said, “so you couldn’t do all the things you could do before. It was another way to give you a different set of moves. Then there were missions built around that.” Despite playing the game as a kid, I don’t have the most vivid memories of Banjo-Tooie. I do recall messing around in the multiplayer mode, but seeing as how I had both GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, I didn’t really need to stick with the game for long. At any rate, it was a cool little mode to tack on.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
