Banjo-Kazooie/Xbox 360 Differences
This is a sub-page of Banjo-Kazooie.
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A "redooie" of sorts was released by 4J Studios for the Xbox 360's "Xbox Live Arcade" service on November 26, 2008 worldwide. This version of the game was later used for Rare Replay, running on Xbox One models via software emulation. It appears to have been completely rebuilt for the 360 rather than trying to emulate N64 hardware, and therefore has several major structural changes.
Contents
- 1 Unused Textures
- 1.1 Nintendo 64 Banjo-Kazooie Logo Texture
- 1.2 Copyright Details Texture
- 1.3 The End Texture
- 1.4 Nintendo 64 Game Over Texture
- 1.5 Remastered Left Stick Sprite
- 1.6 Remastered B Button Sprite
- 1.7 Remastered Coconut Character Sprite
- 1.8 Remastered Beta Empty Honeycomb Sprite
- 1.9 Remastered Beta Hourglass Timer Sprite
- 1.10 Remastered Christmas Tree Timer Sprite
- 2 Gameplay Changes
- 3 Visual Changes
- 4 Other Stuff
Unused Textures
Nintendo 64 Banjo-Kazooie Logo Texture
This texture is found in the Nintendo 64 version of the game during the title screen demo. This was replaced with a higher resolution texture of the Banjo-Kazooie logo in XBLA as one of the many updated texture enhancements. It's still found in the asset files of XBLA as the newer texture doesn't actually replace the old one due to the N64 Banjo-Kazooie logo being made up of combined square textures. The new one is an all in one texture and not made up of 32 by 32 pixel squares.
Copyright Details Texture
XBLA's copyright details were later turned into custom text boxes in the final game and the copyright textures were removed altogether. Also something to note is that the "Press Start" and "No Controller" letter textures are still present in XBLA as well, just unused. These were both replaced with text boxes and a Xbox 360 notification respectfully.
The End Texture
This was used in the Nintendo 64 version of the game when Klungo is pushing the boulder to free Grunty as the game comes to a close. In Banjo-Kazooie XBLA, it was replaced with the higher resolution Game Over texture.
Nintendo 64 Game Over Texture
This is found in the Nintendo 64 version of the game every time the player either dies with zero lives or watches the game over cutscene. It was replaced with a higher resolution version in XBLA as one of the many updated texture enhancements. It's still found in the XBLA version as the newer texture doesn't actually replace the old one, due to the N64 game over texture being made up of combined square textures. The new one is an all in one texture and not made up of 32 by 32 pixel squares.
Remastered Left Stick Sprite
The Xbox 360 Controller's left stick moving right. This texture was customly made to replace the Nintendo 64 joystick found on the View Totals screen. However, similar to the copyright details texture, the XBLA developers ended up changing the View Totals screen's layout to support a red arrow telling the player to navigate to the next screen.
Remastered B Button Sprite
The Xbox 360 B Button sprite that was set to replace the Nintendo 64 B Button in the View Totals screen. But just like the left stick sprite, the View Totals was changed to show a static B Button Sprite in the bottom right corner to show the player that they can exit the View Totals menu by pressing the button.
Remastered Coconut Character Sprite
The unused talking coconut icon from the Nintendo 64 version was updated with new eyes.
Remastered Beta Empty Honeycomb Sprite
The unused talking empty honeycomb sprite was also updated.
Remastered Beta Hourglass Timer Sprite
An unused hourglass timer that was likely used before the final game's timer was changed to a standard looking hourglass.
Remastered Christmas Tree Timer Sprite
An unused timer sprite of a Christmas Tree also found in the Nintendo 64 versions of this game. It was most likely used to count down the time you had left after hitting the star with eggs behind the Christmas Tree in Freezeezy Peak. There is some unused code left in the game that associates this texture with a timer. The only custom timer with a different sprite is Rusty Bucket Bay's propeller timer, so this must have been Freezeezy Peak's version of that.
Gameplay Changes
- Notes and Jinjos now stay collected permanently (like the sequels), substantially lowering the difficulty of collecting them all. In the N64 version, every Note and Jinjo in an area had to be collected in one visit and one life.
- This change resulted in a bug: Notes collected during the scenes of Bottles' Bonus Puzzles would not count but remain in their collected state, rendering them permanently lost. This was later fixed.
- The Xbox 360 version uses the second analog stick to modernize the camera movement.
- This introduces a bug where a player can cause Banjo to die during the Rusty Bucket Bay demo and gain control of the game during the demo.
- The Stop 'n' Swop items are automatically available if the console has a Banjo-Tooie or Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts save on it. Collecting them leads to bonuses in said games, mimicking the original intent.
- Pressing L + R + B to skip dialogue no longer works as the L Button wasn't mapped to the inputs. This feature was undocumented in the N64 versions and is an unused button combination that still exists within the XBLA version's code.
- The N64 version allows the player to enter any number of cheats in Treasure Trove Cove's sandcastle, but the third cheat input (not counting those that the player got legitimately from Cheato and Bottles as well as the Stop 'n' Swop cheats) will erase the game file. In the Xbox 360 version, entering any cheat except for those given by Cheato and Bottles will disable saving for the current playthrough and remove the player's score from the leaderboard. Oddly enough, there is no penalty for inputting too many cheat codes in the Xbox 360 version, even though all the text about erasing the savefile still shows up.
Visual Changes
| Nintendo 64 | Xbox 360 |
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The draw distance has been stepped up significantly, meaning objects no longer fade in or stop animating from a distance. This is even clearer with a bump in resolution and aspect ratio.
The N64 version uses several different LOD models for Banjo and other enemies depending on their proximity to the camera. The XBLA version always uses the highest-detail LOD model for everything at any distance.
The Xbox 360 version supports 4:3 and 16:9 gameplay aspect ratios. However, 4:3 is only supported on Xbox 360 hardware and is not accessible on later releases of this version such as Xbox One or Xbox Series S/X.
| Nintendo 64 | Xbox 360 |
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Several textures have been redone. Some are simply in higher quality, while all talking head icons have been redone from scratch and the speech font has been changed to Andy Bold, matching that in the legacy release of Nuts & Bolts. One infamous change above concerns the... "upgrades" to the HUD textures. The rerelease recreated them using the in-game models, as Rare had lost all of their models during the move from workstations to modern systems.
| Nintendo 64 | Xbox 360 |
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The poster found in one of the Rusty Bucket Bay cabins previously featured Berri from Twelve Tales: Conker 64. Since that game was given a major overhaul after the initial release of Banjo-Kazooie, the poster was changed to instead feature Conker from Conker's Bad Fur Day (pulled specifically from the cutscene where Mr. King Bee pollinates the sunflower) for the Xbox 360 release.
| Nintendo 64 | Xbox 360 |
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In the N64 version, the textures surrounding the entrance to Freezeezy Peak are incorrectly stretched. This was fixed in the Xbox 360 version.
| Nintendo 64 | Xbox 360 |
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Most Nintendo references have been removed:
- The N64 "N" no longer exists on the start-up screen, leaving a very awkward change in pacing as the Buzzbomb whizzes by... nothing.
- The Nintendo logo on Mumbo's xylophone is replaced by a Microsoft Game Studios one.
- Banjo still plays a Game Boy to represent File 3, but the startup noise no longer plays.
| Nintendo 64 | Xbox 360 |
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The empty honeycomb wheel does not rotate in the Xbox 360 version. This is likely because the redone honeycomb graphic is wider than it is tall, making the wheel look oblong if it were to turn. The timing of the animation is unchanged, however, so there appears to be a delay before the newly collected honeycomb shows up.
Several portrait textures in Banjo's House and Mad Monster Mansion were replaced with ersatz versions of them, as it seems 4J didn't have access to the original images:
| Nintendo 64 | Xbox 360 |
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- The Kazoo-era portrait of Banjo in a forest is replaced with a similar-looking mockup of him in Click Clock Wood.
| Nintendo 64 | Xbox 360 |
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- The portrait of Mumbo was replaced with an in-game screenshot of him sleeping in his skull.
Other Stuff
- The Xbox 360 version was built off the US v1.1 version and not the later Japanese version build. Anything that was changed or patched in Japanese (except for text and textures) was not ported to the Xbox 360 version.
- The stable framerate of 30 FPS on the Xbox 360 version fixes many clip-based glitches.
- Firing eggs from behind before grabbing the Jiggy from Napper the Ghost will often crash the Xbox 360 version.
- Constantly exiting and entering the file select on the Xbox 360 version (by signing in and out about 30 times) will cause a state called corruption, where many models become stretched out and distorted. In this state, many things will cause the game to crash.
- The two ending cut-scenes are missing some content. In the first ending, the scene in which Banjo and Kazooie return home through Spiral Mountain via a pre-recorded gameplay demo is removed entirely. In the second ending, the scene in which Mumbo shows off Treasure Trove Cove's Stop N' Swop egg is cut short after the gameplay demo desyncs and Banjo and Kazooie fall off the tower. A desyncing issue such as this may be the reason the former scene is missing also.
- Minor additional changes to the ending cut-scenes also occur. In the first ending, to account for the additional development staff of the Xbox 360 version, the cast reading out the credits cycles around a second time (eventually finishing with Loggo rather than repeating the full cast all the way to Nabnut). In the second ending, all instances of "Banjo-Tooie" are replaced with "Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts". The end of the epilogue cutscene (where Klungo tries to shift Grunty's burial boulder) is overlayed with text that says "GAME OVER", whereas "THE END" appeared in the N64 version. It's unclear why this change was made, but the swap may have been made for time-budgeting reasons, avoiding having to recreate a higher-resolution version of the "THE END" graphic solely for this moment.
- Despite the changes listed in the above two bullet points, Kazooie's dialogue in the second ending remains unaltered. She still expresses concern that she won't be in the next game (originally "Banjo-Tooie", now "Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts") despite her name being in the title, and she still refers to having seen multiple eggs despite only one showing up.
- Motzand's organ minigame in Mad Monster Mansion has the key sounds harmonize with the background music in the N64 version (which avoids dissonance, but will result in the same key making different sounds depending on when you hit it). In the Xbox 360 version, all keys make the exact same sound. (Neither version has the keys make the sound they would make on an actual organ.)
