/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.4863139]

So what is it that puts Banjo Kazooie above Mario 64 for a number of people?
I like both games, but I've never put my finger on what Banjo offers that Mario is missing... Except writing I guess?

[Anonymous No.4863165]

>>4863139
It has to be nostalgia. The Banjo games and 3d DK games play like total asshole.

Completely opposite Mario 64. At least Conkers kept things constantly fresh.

[Anonymous No.4863168]

I guess there's just more wow factor in BK.

BK has a show don't tell story while Mario's story is told through text. Spiral Mountain is much more impressive than the castle exterior, likewise, Grunty's Lair seems more impressive and full of secrets than Peach's Castle. Bowser chimes in when you enter the castle and his own levels, but Grunty taunts you (rather charismatically) through the entire game. And while Mario's movement is super comfortable and defined what a 3D platformer should feel like, Banjo and Kazooie's moveset is far more exciting and impressive. They might not be able to wall jump, but they've got projectiles, limited invincibility, hovering, and more.

Also, in Mario 64 you get all your moves up front save for the special caps. Whereas in Banjo, you unlock your moves as you progress. Might seem like Mario is objectively superior in this regard but people really like having a sense of progression.

Grant Kirkhope's music also goes a long way, while Mario 64 re-uses tunes left and right, and not all of them are impressive.

The only thing I feel like Mario has over BK is that Mario is a lot more nimble, and the level design more challenging.

I still prefer BK though, and I prefer Tooie over both.

[Anonymous No.4863205]

>>4863165
looks like someone's still pissed about the ice key.

[Anonymous No.4863259]

banjo kazooie just feels like it has more to it. you learn moves, the worlds are more in-depth (at the cost of there being fewer of them, of course), you have shit like transformations from mumbo, a fuller cast, stuff like that. i love both but to me banjo feels more complete

[Anonymous No.4863265]

>>4863165
Your opinions are trash.

[Anonymous No.4863272]

Mario 64 kind of felt like a bunch of sandbox maps and BK felt more like a complete game.

[Anonymous No.4863276]

>>4863165
I agree, the game is terrible and aged poorly.
>>4863265
much like your taste in games?

[Anonymous No.4863287]

>>4863139
mario 64 is great but its basically a proof of concept with quickly made 3d levels floating in a void and not a real game

bk1 is amazing but lacks mario 64's physics

[Anonymous No.4863429]

>>4863139
The worlds kind of "make sense", there's a nice story that fits the overall theme of the game, that is a fairy tale. The graphics are amazing and the characters are extremely charismatic.

[Anonymous No.4863435]

>>4863165
Banjo's alright, but DK64 was awful.

[Anonymous No.4863475]

Banjo kazooies Levels look way better than mario 64s. Mario does have some of the best 3D gameplay and controls though I dont really care for any of its levels.

[Anonymous No.4863494]

>>4863139
To me Banjo feels like a polished version of Mario64. Same basic concept, but lot's of little defects are ironed out, such as not having to leave the level when you get a jiggie, handling is a bit better, better atmosphere, the world feels more alive, learning moves on the go...
I could go on, but you get my point.

[Anonymous No.4863496]

>>4863168
>I still prefer BK though, and I prefer Tooie over both.
hello fren
I also like Tooie a lot, dunno why it gets all the hate. The backtracking gets slightly annoying at times, but it's still a cool feature that you have to revisit levels later on.

[Anonymous No.4863509]

To preface, huge fan of both games.

Mario 64 is the better game, but Banjo does some things better.

Mario 64's design is basically to create a toybox for you and litter it somewhat incidentally with surprises. The stages are sort of nascent, but on the other hand this makes them work better as platforming stages.

Contrast with Banjo, where the level are basically a stage for nine "events" that generally reward you for completing a short trial rather than having platforming or navigational skills. The stages do feel more alive, but this to me is not a plus or minus, because Mario 64 has a winning pensive atmosphere.

I play Banjo when I want a funny romp and more cool things to collect, but I play Mario when I actually want to do platforming.

[Anonymous No.4863530]

Banjo Kazooie is to Mario 64 what Donkey Kong Country is to Super Mario World. The Rare games have better graphics, charming characters and and some cool ideas but they don't even come close to Mario's controls, level design, difficulty balancing and overall "game feel".

For those of you who have completed both BK and Mario 64, how many jiggy locations in BK do you remember? And how many star locations in Mario 64 do you remember? Seriously write them down you'll see that Mario 64 was way more memorable, which imo makes it a better game.

[Anonymous No.4863595]

>>4863530
i think i can honestly remember a pretty similar number of jiggys vs star locations so i think there might be a little bit of bias there on your end. banjo's level design definitely wins for me, I think mario's level design sometimes feel better as a results of the faster and smoother control.

[Anonymous No.4863641]

>>4863595
Also Banjo had 10 jiggies per level plus the grunty switch, Mario only had 6 stars plus the boring 100 coin star.

[Anonymous No.4863642]

>>4863276
>games
>aging

[Anonymous No.4863682]

BK had a lot of charm and it was able to build upon and improve everything Super Mario 64 did. I preferred BK as a kid but as an adult I find the SM64 worlds more charming and fun to replay than BK for whatever reason they just feel more like a chore and not as fun to replay while Mario still feels "classic".

But back in the day, BK felt like an epic journey through the castle that Mario couldn't match. The world felt more alive with the interaction of constant NPCs, the music, uniqueness, humor and new mechanics etc.

[Anonymous No.4863685]

>>4863139
SM64 for me. Mario just feels amazing to move around and I still beat the game about once every 6 months. Banjo I haven't played in years, the controls just never quite did it for me compared to Mario.

[Anonymous No.4863696]

Who remembers the Keebler elf and BK crossover commercials? BK Just felt EPIC compared to Super Mario 64, the marketing was on point and the game delivered.

https://miscrave.com/articles/keebler-banjo-kazooie/

[Anonymous No.4863897]

>>4863530
Of course you're gonna remember sm64 star locations. The game tells you where they are before you start the level.

[Anonymous No.4863906]

Anyone who says BK is trash is just butthurt that a western developer outdid their nippon counterparts.

[Anonymous No.4863917]

>>4863139
Banjo lets you accomplish shit and stay in the level, while mario 64 pops you out and makes you replay the whole level again.

Also, banjo just has better gameplay in general, and has abilities to learn and such.

But so many people have mario 64's dick so far down their throat that they can't admit it when ither games are better. Even other nintendo exclusives, or even other mario games.

[Anonymous No.4863948]

>>4863435
Woulda been a solid 8/10 if you could just pick up any collectible with any character, or switch on the fly.

[Anonymous No.4863953]

>>4863948
DK wasn't meant for the third dimension, plus the fucking cartoony xylophone music made it even worse

[Anonymous No.4863962]

>>4863494
It took almost 20 years for them to fix that, I just wish they did it on a game that has more than 4 or 5 satisfying stars/moons to collect.

[Anonymous No.4863978]

>>4863496
I didn't mind backtracking until I became a boring methodical adult that felt the need to get everything in each world before moving onto the next one. I'm trying to let go of that notion though, I actually revisited Tooie again after 15 years (give or take) and it didn't bother me much, and I found I still prefer it to BK. BK is too easy until Rusty Bucket, but I feel like Tooie has a decent level of challenge right out the gate. The only knock I'd give Tooie is that Grunty Industries is a little confusing, and the Canary Mary race in Cloud Cuckoo Land is bullshit ( I had to borrow a friend's turbo controller to beat her in the past, I don't have one of those anymore )

[Anonymous No.4863984]

>>4863530
I letrally remember all of them.
I remenber most of tooie's too. Even thought I think it's a bad game.

[Anonymous No.4863996]

>>4863953
>talking shit about Grant Kirkhope

Opinion immediately discarded.

In any case, DK could work just fine in the 3rd dimension. Just because one game didn't do it right doesn't mean it can't work. I just think they need to take a more Crash Bandicoot style approach where the levels are more about linear platforming than exploring and collecting things.

[Anonymous No.4863997]

>>4863996
didn't they do this for the wii

[Anonymous No.4864008]

Rare in the N64 era lived or died by their tendency to half-ass things.

BK and DK64 are both really slapped together. Everything design-wise is very simple and archetypal. The ways the environments are networked aren't all that intricate, they just have challenges superimposed on them. Like, you might have to hit a switch that makes a Jiggy/Banana appear at the top of the hill and gives you a 20-second timer. But it doesn't really speak to the design, they (somewhat obviously) just created whatever area they wanted and then did the best they could with the challenges. Now in BK this works because it was a new IP, but with DK64 it fucking sucked because you went in expecting something resembling Donkey Kong Country and just got "DK's Hip Hop Playhouse - Collect All the Shit."

On the other hand, Banjo-Tooie was WAY too deliberate. This is fun in some ways, but they also tried to get a cinematic experience out of it, so not only do you have to keep track of all the shit you need to come back to, but you have to sit through tons of cutscenes and dialog, not to mention little demonstrations whenever you hit a switch or do any other action. And those happen literally every 30 seconds or so because BT is built around switches. You have to collect this item to get this asshole to open this door so you can learn this move so you can head through this previously inaccessible tunnel to rescue this animal to make this other animal feel better about reopening his shop whereupon if you break open a secret passage, you'll find a Jiggy. And they all require a short cinematic.

Conker was more deliberate and also cinematic, but because it was linear it didn't feel overbearing.

[Anonymous No.4864023]

>>4863996
I never said that Kirkhope was a bad composer, I just prefer Wise's moody atmospheric songs from DKC a lot more.

[Anonymous No.4864028]

>>4863997
No? There was some shitty racing game, but no 3D DK platformer exists outside of 64.

[Anonymous No.4864036]

>>4863996
Grant Kirkhope, while fine, is generally a "heard one soundtrack, heard 'em all" composer.

[Anonymous No.4864038]

>>4864023
Fair enough.

[Anonymous No.4864040]

>>4864036
I mean that's true if you're just listening to the songs by themselves, but it's more about how his tunes compliment your surroundings in the game, especially in BK and DK64 where the style of the music changes seamlessly depending on your surroundings.

[Anonymous No.4864047]

>>4864040
Yeah, he's a better arranger than he is a songwriter.

[Anonymous No.4864382]

>>4863139
Mario 64 is a bit more 'iconic' - it's the game a lot of people think of as "THE" N64 title to have.
Banjo Kazooie is more, let's call it 'refined', the game world is better filled out, with more secrets and a visual style that helps accent the wonkie gameplay you're in.

Ultimately, they're both great games, whichever one you prefer ultimately comes down to which one you played first, and for me it's Mario 64.

[Anonymous No.4864503]

I dunno they are hard to compare. I can't say i like one over the other. Mario 64 has a classic feel to it. Banjo Kazooie was wacky and goofy. Mario had tight controls. once you got used to levels you could run full speed and never miss a ledge when you jumped. Banjo's controls felt unnecessarily loose and clunky. Combine that with a lot of uneven and sloped surfaces in levels added a lot of frustration. it looked good but made things harder than they needed to be.

Banjo had more variety in puzzles and mini games. that and bigger more detailed levels to explore maybe is what put it above mario for some people

[Anonymous No.4864513]

>>4863509
Thanks for the good comparison. I sunk hundreds of hours into mario64 as a kid and regard it highly, but unfortunately never had BK.

[Anonymous No.4864638]

The rumors and secrets were real in BK, but in Mario 64 they were all hoaxes.

[Anonymous No.4864867]

Everything in Banjo goes for that "you can do anything" feel, the problem with it is that the gameplay is so diverse the player can easily notice how limited things can be thanks to technical limitations, while Mario with his apparently more limited moveset can also make feel like you can do anything too, making the game an even more active experience in every subsequent playthrough, while BK needs something else to keep the player entertained. The devs were obviously aware of this and that's why the levels have this atmosphere to them that makes them cool to explore, it gives it the feel of it being a more complete game with a lot more things to do, Mario 64 makes up extra content by having secret levels on the castle, which sometimes have 2 stars in them but on Banjo every extra content feels like you should collect it, otherwise those special movement panels and mini games would go to waste.

Platforming also lends itself well to other genres and Banjo is more of an adventure platform game like Kirby or Yoshi Island, while Mario has always been in the more action side of the genre (even in the RPG games this rings true), it makes sense considering Banjo development didn't even started as a platformer. I personally really enjoy the series but I wouldn't call it great or must play, it doesn't really have the attention to detail of a good adventure game and it doesn't fare well as a platforming game, I think many SNES games did a better job at combining those 2 things better.

[Anonymous No.4864926]

>>4863139
pretty simple op, in difference to super mario 64 banjo kazooi has:
>the worlds arent as empty
>it's not about the same jumping mechanics every level with a different skin
>characters!
>mystery
>sexy witch on game over, sexy huge melons girl when beating the game

[Anonymous No.4864938]

I'm one of those people that like Mario 64 more than Banjo. I just like the controls more, there's not as many "collectibles" while still keeping it fun. I get Banjo has its personality, different characters and all, but I just feel like Mario 64 is the better experience. The world is also unique rather than being essentially a saturday morning cartoon with different episodes.

[Anonymous No.4865165]

>>4864047
Was he also in charge of character voices and sound effects? I'd rate bk higher just based on those 3 things

[Anonymous No.4865292]

>>4864638
No, the secrets in Mario 64 were real. There were courses hidden in little nooks in the castle, Power Stars hidden in rabbits, Yoshi on the roof. The uninteresting things people obsessed over, those were "hoaxes." Like the fuzzy text on the statue in the garden where you can go to Big Boo's Haunt? Any child who didn't have fetal alcohol syndrome would have seen that and thought it was just some graphic designer leaving his signature or a meaningless inside thing.

In Banjo, the eggs and ice key were real, but this was meaningless because Rare couldn't implement them the way they wanted. So in Tooie they just put them back in as regular collectibles.

>>4865165
I think he was.

[Anonymous No.4865361]

>>4863139
Banjo-Kazooie is really great at constantly giving the player new things to do, new places to explore, and weird little characters to meet. Tooie is full of lengthy fetch quests and backtracking bullshit and Mario 64 has terrible near-identical filler stars, but BK just gives you these quaint little worlds and tells you to have at it. It's an inferior platformer, but saying "Banjo-Kazooie has worse platforming than Super Mario 64" is kind of like saying "Ocarina of Time has worse platforming than Super Mario 64". It's true, but not the point.

[Anonymous No.4865621]

What I'm getting out of everything here is
>Mario 64 has amazing controls and a versatile moveset that feels like a dream to use even in a vacuum, while Banjo's are clunky and unsatisfying.
>However, Banjo's level design makes up for this by giving you well-made objectives and events littered around each level so that you constantly have something to do.
or to put it another way
>Mario 64 uses collectathon structure, its free-flowing moveset, and its level design to create an incredible sense of freedom, while Banjo does a better job of making you see everything the game has to offer and making sure you do so in the way it was intended to be experienced.

[Anonymous No.4865669]

I don't understand why people constantly call Banjo a platformer.

It's a collectathon adventure game, with the odd bit of platforming here and there. Banjo doesn't often ask you to make hard jumps, or skilled manuevers. The fun is from traversing the landscape and discovery. Mario is ACTUALLY a platformer. Banjo just has platforming in it.

You'll notice you can count the number of bottomless pits, moving platforms and parkour section in the first two Banjo games on one hand.

[Anonymous No.4865685]

>>4865669
It's not an exact science, and genre doesn't speak to difficulty, even if they're correlated.

[Anonymous No.4865790]

>>4865621
This is an odd post, like you haven't even played the games but are for some reason trying to collate a bunch of opinions about them instead of forming your own.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Banjo-Kazooie's controls or physics. It works. It feels good enough. There's just not a lot of depth or momentum there. You Talon Trot everywhere and Feathery Flap over every gap. There aren't interesting platforming problems like chaining wall kicks or finding enough runway for double/triple jumps. (That said, Mario 64 almost never rewards you for really digging into your moveset and you'd have to download Star Road or something for that.)

>Mario 64 uses collectathon structure, its free-flowing moveset, and its level design to create an incredible sense of freedom, while Banjo does a better job of making you see everything the game has to offer and making sure you do so in the way it was intended to be experienced.
See, this is such a weirdly wrong thing to say. SM64 is the one that kicks you to the start after every star like it thinks you beat a linear stage. Banjo levels are hublike and give you a ton of freedom in routing them. They also don't care which levels you do as long as you pick up enough notes, jiggies, and abilities on the way. In Banjo-Kazooie you can infamously go into Grunty's Furnace Fun before Click Clock Wood, so you might get asked quiz questions about a level you never bothered to play.

[Anonymous No.4866146]

>>4865790
>This is an odd post, like you haven't even played the games but are for some reason trying to collate a bunch of opinions about them instead of forming your own.
No I have played both, I'm just trying to get a grip on why these are considered equals when I've always considered one of them Mario in an entirely different league
>There's nothing particularly wrong with Banjo-Kazooie's controls or physics. It works. It feels good enough.
Yeah they WORK, but Mario 64's are exceptional, they have a great weight and agility to them, and they interact with terrain in a lot of interesting ways. Banjo never feels like you need more than what you have, and you could easily play Mario 64 with a moveset that's just as limited, but Mario 64 is all about its movement and the game is at its best when you know all of the idiosyncrasies of that.
>That said, Mario 64 almost never rewards you for really digging into your moveset and you'd have to download Star Road or something for that.
This much is a fair point, Mario 64 needed better/more endgame challenges
>freedom
Mario 64's freedom is in a much broader scope, by which I mean the game's core structure is as nonlinear as the gameplay in levels. You can complete many of the missions in a level in any order just like in Banjo, but you also unlock levels in chunks rather than a linear order, and you can skip much more of the game because only about 60% of the game is required to reach the final boss.
Meanwhile, Banjo's requirements are considerably more strict, and you need to 100% the game to get an actual finale. You have to collect more to even reach the """end""" because you can only completely skip one level.

[Anonymous No.4868487]

Is no one going to mention the timing of release?

SM64 was the blueprint that was superb, but BK built off it. IMO at the time there were not any other 3D platformers worth playing (gex? Silicon Valley?)

In the long run they have their differences that everyone’s pointed out, but at the time BK felt like the redux to SM64.

[Anonymous No.4868852]

>>4863139
I had way more fun with SM64 than BK as a kid, but as an adult I think SM64 is the superior game but BK is more fun to actually play.

[Anonymous No.4868864]

>>4863953
>plus the fucking cartoony xylophone music made it even worse

The OST was the only good part of DK64.

[Anonymous No.4868865]

>>4863496
I also like Tooie more, it's basically a metroidvania in a 3D platformer framework whereas BK was kinda a simplistic but charming Mario 64 style game. It really felt like you were exploring a world. It was well done. Kazooie is more easily replayable though.

[Anonymous No.4869558]

>>4863139
high quality meme soundtrack

[Anonymous No.4869605]

>>4868487
There is a video of what Rare were doing prior to Banjo. Basically they were working on a new IP that was going to be on SNES, but they shifted to N64 instead. Basically they developed an engine for SNES then N64 and at some point they saw SM64 and decided they needed to rethink things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w72kj20YNA0