Banjo wins IGN awards, blueprint ideas still in the cards
Where was the BK XBLA love?
This E3 was a rather interesting one if you were a video game fan. If there was something brand new that you were expecting to see, chances are you saw something new that you most likely didn’t give a fuck about. Rare in this case didn’t disappoint by showing off their two most anticipated games in recent times, as well as the surprise announcement of Banjo-Kazooie on the Xbox Live Arcade. Yet it was Nuts & Bolts, strangely enough, that won the most prestige despite the rabid indecision and division in the Banjo fanbase.
IGN rated Nuts & Bolts as:
- Runner-up for best platform game at E3
- Runner-up for best Xbox 360 platform game
- Runner-up for best overall Xbox 360 game
- Runner-up for best Artistic Design for the Xbox 360
- Winner for the Most Innovative Design for the Xbox 360
As you can see, plenty of hope and hype is in this upcoming release. While not strictly Banjo-related, the Mii60 Avatars won the runner-up of overall surprise for the Xbox 360, while Banjo-Kazooie for the Xbox Live Arcade didn’t even merit a mention. At least I thought it was a surprise.
While on the subject of Banjo, another recent interview with Mark Betteridge gives away more Nuts & Bolts information. For starters, he mentions that 6 million copies of both Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie were sold. Quite an accomplishment for a bear and bird mascot that only released two console games. Early on in the interview, he states that Nuts & Bolts officially began its conception and development in 2005, very soon after Banjo’s GBA appearances.
In regards to the blueprints and vehicles, while sharing vehicles isn’t exactly set in stone, how exactly they’ll be shared is still in the works: “There’s still some debate about wouldn’t it be cool if I could share the vehicle even if only in the test track and not in the full game?,” Betteridge said. “We’re still in the balancing and polishing stage of the game at the moment. There’s not a 100% decision on it really,” he added. When drilled a bit more about sharing vehicles, Rare’s Senior Director replied that “Yeah, possibly. If we think it’s a definite worthwhile improvement on it.” Thanks to a previous interview with Eurogamer, we already knewn that vehicle blueprints can be traded. As Mark Betteridge said regarding that, “a significant part of the game is the community aspect, the ability to trade blueprints and see what else other people have built…” Makes perfect sense, especially when Banjo-Kazooie.com was first unveiled and we found out a bit in the code regarding pictures and the community.
All this Banjo information, and it didn’t even take up half a Scribes edition (Loveday, get cracking. Writing the BK3 script is hardly an excuse). In case you’re still confused on how the game works or haven’t read what MR thinks of Nuts & Bolts from the Xbox Holiday Showcase, you can check out our first impressions here.
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