Banjo-KazooieThe iconic bird and bear duo that first burst onto the scene in two excellent N64 platformers looked almost entirely different.
The story of how Banjo-Kazooie actually began development under the name Project Dream is still well documented. Before Banjo-Kazooie was a platformer about collecting jigs and defeating the green witch, it was a pirate adventure where Banjo was actually human.
But in the last issue Retro gamerFormer Rare artist and character designer Ed Bryan said Banjo was a bunny for a week or so. “We went from boy to bunny in about a week [before a bear]”,” he said. “The story is that I'm angry because Banjo was supposed to be a rabbit, but he clearly never was supposed to be!”
Although clips of Project Dream have surfaced over the decades, to my knowledge we've never actually seen what Banjo Rabbit looked like. But this recording exists somewhere. “I have some old DAT tapes that I used to back up my work, and I archived a couple of them,” Brian continued. “Almost everything was found on them, and I found a rabbit. I only shared it with Kaan Serin Steve Mailes because the internet would go crazy.”
The other half of Banjo-Kazooie is Kazooie, a sarcastic red bird who lives in Banjo's backpack and slyly mocks him throughout the game. The idea for it came about because the team “thought there had to be a reason for the double jump, and someone said wings could come out of Banjo's backpack,” recalls former developer Chris Sutherland. “Then in addition to that, why not just create another character with wings.”
GoldenEye 007 had a “strong influence” on the Banjo-Kazooie sequel because developers Rare spent “probably every lunch break for several years” playing the N64 FPS.
